Prévesa to Sámi (Kefallinía), Greece
April 4-5, 2001

Wed Apr 4, 2001

We are still in Prevesas but intend to leave tomorrow and head on south. We know the town a bit better and in fact have done extensive reading regarding this area. I am sure that some of what I say and the way I say it sounds elementary to some of you and in no way am I attempting to tell a story about something that you perhaps already know, I am just telling of how I see it.

This area came into importance when the great battle of Aktion was fought in 32/31 BC It seems that Julius Caesar had a lady friend, Cleopatra, incidental but important to the story. He also had a nephew Octavius and a great general, Mark Anthony. The two were to share the power of the empire, Anthony would rule all of the Eastern part of the empire and Octavius would rule all of the Western part of the empire. This sharing was to happen when Julius Caesar died. It turns out that the aristocracy of Rome was not too happy with Julius either, and he was assassinated in 44 BC.

As you might expect there was a bit of struggle to define east and west and the two began to quarrel about who was going to be the ultimate ruler of the empire. Octavius was a studious methodical type of man and Anthony was a go-getter who would drink and game with the troops. He also began hitting upon Cleopatra and became so entangled in the romance that he let his duties as general fall by the wayside. As you might expect this became obvious to Octavius and he began plotting an overthrow of Anthony. Anthony was somewhat aware of the possibilities and prepared for the day, whenever it would come. He had 500 ships and had them surfaced with iron sheets to protect against someone ramming them. He also had more than 100,000 men in his garrison. These included some ships that Cleopatra had loaned him from her Egyptian armada. Octavius had but 400 ships, all lightweight, maneuverable, and fast and he had only 80,000 troops.

This was sort of lopsided to start with. Octavius gathered his troops in their boats at a site only 6 miles or so north of Prevesas and made preparations to battle Anthony. On the proper day when the wind was from the NW he put to sea and sailed to Aktion, today's Prevesas, for the great battle. Anthony wanted a land battle but could not entice Octavius into such an event. Anthony's men were ill fed, ill prepared and really not too full of fight so they began to desert to the side of Octavius where life was better. Octavius had blockaded Anthony's supply route and taken advantage of the lack of attention by the great general.

While the battle was going on with ships nose to nose and fighting in whatever manner was typical, Cleopatra sails out of the bay loaded with all of the treasures right through the battle and turns south for Egypt. Mark Anthony notices that she is packed and leaving so he instructs his particular ship to follow her. The battle is of such a nature that almost no one notices that Anthony is gone. Eight days later, the troops in Aktion heard that Anthony and Cleopatra had arrived safe in Egypt. They immediately surrendered to Octavius. Anthony and Cleopatra committed suicide.

Octavius then was in fact the ruler of the empire, and given the name Augustus Caesar. He then created a town, Nicopolis, to commemorate his victory over Anthony. He forcibly moved people from other communities to populate his city of victory. It is this town that Kathy and I visited this morning. There are city walls, which are several miles long with arched gates every 200 meters. It was a very large community and has three basilicas of the first Christian churches. Paul wrote the book of Titus while living in this walled city. There are very few restrictions as to where one might walk or go.

As I have said before we are in the area where Odysseus was to have spent a great deal of time. This is why we are here, we are seeing and visiting some pretty nice places.

April 5,2001

Today we left Prevesas and headed southeast for the "inland sea". This area is bounded by the mainland on the east and several islands on the west. The islands are Levkas, Meganisi, Cephalonia, Ithaca, Zykanthos, and some smaller ones. It is clear deep water that is blue and the islands are green, very green with tall Italian Cypress trees and others that I don't know the name of. It reminds me of the Pacific Northwest in the area of Vancouver. The sea side villages are very small but are separated from one another by very small distances. It is a well protected sailing area. If I were to be chartering a boat I would charter in this area. The mountain tops of the islands are very tall considering the width of the island. Some to 5000 feet with an island width of perhaps 4 miles. The area is built for the tourist trade, of which we are here before they arrive. Everyone is painting buildings, fitting charter boats and in general very busy getting ready for the soon to be onslaught of Europeans.

The Levkas channel is of historical importance. The island of Levkas was once connected to the mainland but seven hundred years BC the people dug a channel The channel silted up and was unusable by 420 BC. While Octavius, soon to be Augustus, was in the area he had it repaired and re-opened. Cleopatra probably used it in her run to Egypt. The canal is still used today but now has a drawbridge. We used it yesterday and came down the canal to the southern of Levkas. We are in Nidri. This is a very small non-descript town beneath a very large mountain. Several sail boat chartering companies have operations here. It is also the closest town to Skorpios Island which we all know is the island that is owned by Aristotle Onasis, husband of Jackie K. Skorpios has an ongoing security system and maintenance program that is very elaborate. It is said that if you walk on the island, which is forbidden, the security force with dogs will be in your face in just a few minutes, day or night. We are going to have lunch anchored in a bay on that island tomorrow, which is legal.

All is well on Traumerei. I have got the outboard running and everything is operational. We have mailed several cards but were informed by the local postmaster that we have been putting 100 drachmas too little on the card. We only do what we are told. There is a marine hardware store in Nidri that has more equipment than the West Marine store in Tempe and in fact more that the San Diego store, if one only accounts for sailing/boating supplies. This excludes motors, dinghy's, clothing, books etc. The store is in a space no larger than our living room/dining room combination. It is packed, for example George has the Lofrans Remote control unit for an electric windlass, 4 models! We are in Tranquil bay with several other cruisers. As some of you know I read a newspaper any time I can get one, sort of a news junkie. I have access to one weekly newspaper in Greece, the Friday English version of the Athens News. So we are not real up on what is happening.

We took the local bus to Lefkada this morning. Wanted to see what the big town on the island was like. We found a busy medium size town. It is a transportation center and there is a NATO air force base nearby. The base provides a sizable income for the place. This is the base that the AWACS planes and the F16 fly from. It is a busy base with the Albania unease and the historical problems in the former Yugoslavia. We found a marine hardware store that had a specific piece of equipment that I needed, so small a part and very lucky to find it. I need to install a receptacle at the helm wherein the remote control for the windlass can be operated. Thus the helmsperson can control the windlass while the other person is scurrying about getting off of the boat and tying to the quay. It has now been completed and tested, it works. We were invited to a boat for a late social where we were the only Americans in the company of two Brits and two Scots. A lot of questions regarding the USA but the one hot topic was the prevalence of firearms in the USA. The lady from Scotland said she would never go to the USA, for that reason alone. Her husband is a retired policeman from Scotland who worked in Northern Ireland and does not own a gun. I told her of several of my friends and how many guns they had, they were wild eyed astonished, they really couldn't believe it. It was hard to explain why and easy to explain it didn't matter why one wanted a gun, the right to bear arms is a constitutional right that will never be given up!! The British fellow showed me how to use SMS (simple messaging system), which is a part and parcel of the cell phone craze. It is amazing what is available. Boaters here "talk" to each other via SMS rather than the VHF. While we were in Nidri this morning we noticed young girls walking in pairs and each pair of girls were carrying an Easter basket covered with flowers. After seeing several pairs we were in a store when the girls came in and solicited money. We gave them some drachmas and they started singing to us. It was a very long song and of course not understood by us. The merchant explained that the practice was common on holidays and almost everyone contributed. While we were in Levkas we saw it again and had a further explanation, the girls are soliciting money not for the church, nor a girls club or anything like that, the money is for them. The merchant said that she had a relative who would do this on occasion and sometimes collect as much as 40,000 drachmas, $100.

We had a good night and woke to find a calm Palm Sunday, so we packed it up and sailed away. We sailed around Skorpios, the Onassis compound, and into a sheltered cove on Meganisi, total distance 4 miles. Not too hard of a day. We are the only boat here now but the brothers who run the shore side taverna speak of a different type of a situation in July/August. They say there will be 30 boats tied to this pontoon, which is perhaps 60 feet long. They will serve 400 meals at noon and another 400 in the evening. The action is non-stop for two months. He said that he would gross 2,400,000 drachmas, $6000, per day for 2 months. The restaurant is open air and measures perhaps 50 feet wide by 60 feet long. He will have perhaps 80 to 100 tables on the beach and it is only 40 feet from the restaurant to the water! He has a scrapbook that shows several pages taken in the Onassis compound and one of special importance of George Bush Sr. When he was president he visited this site and ate at the restaurant. He is shown shaking hands with the locals, and he is most informal, no shirt on. A very neat picture. We had a comfortable night side tied to a pontoon and then had breakfast at the marina tavern. It is a bit rainy but it seems that it has been that way ever since we left Corfu. We want to go south but wait awhile to see if the weather is going to permit it. We do get away at midmorning and sail down the Straits of Meganisi to the Straits of Kefallinia. The sun shines periodically and the trip only takes 3 hours.

We are in a small village of Fiskardo, at the north end of Kefallinia. They have a small Marine Environmental Museum here. It is funded by donations and being developed by young people from many nations. They are not paid but are provided with housing and meals. The project has acquired a rather large building on the top of the hill, with a spectacular view. They have recovered pieces of WW II fighter planes that are debris in the local area, some amphora, some coins , a complete whale skeleton, and other sea life items. They have an artist in the group who is doing a splendid job on illustrations. It is a nice thing to see activity like this. It is the smallest enclosed bay that we have ever been in. When we back into the quay and tie stern to, we are less than 20 feet from a merchant's storefront. There is a street that goes behind the boat and if we were to put our plank out, to get off of and on to the boat, the cars would run over the end of it. There are few boats here yet and those that are charter boats on a holiday. There were three from the UK and one from France. We ate dinner in a rather nice Taverna where the lady is anxious to tell us of her trip to Hollywood. The food was great but we ordered too many dishes. The scordalia was really super with the beets. The night is a bit disconcerting in that we were really close to the wall and there was a wind all night. It also rained and hailed during the night. Like we have said there have been no days yet wherein it hasn't rained on us. The temperature was in the low 70's in Corfu and we even got to wear shorts. It has been in the low to mid 60's ever since we left Corfu. Perhaps someday it will get to be spring. This morning we decide to leave, even if it is a bit rainy and go further south, looking for sunshine.

We would like to get to Lixouri for Easter, but it is going to be difficult. The priest of the Greek Orthodox Church in Tucson is from Lixouri. We sail down the Straits Of Ithaca towards our next stop. For those who have read The Odyssey, this is the area where Odysseus goes ashore to be found by the swineherd and thence to his own home to rescue his wife. It is a very significant place in the poems of yesteryear. We sail into a small town where we stop for lunch. On the way down a pair of NATO F16's flew over us at no more than 200-300 feet. I really believe they were lower but that would be hard to believe also. It is raining on us here also. We are in Eufimia on the island of Kefallinia. After a brief stop we head to another village on the south part of the bay, Sami. Here we back down to the quay, get cleaned up and have a rest. Tonight we will rest better but first we will walk the streets of the new town. We really have moved trying to find an Internet Café. We have been unable to check our mail for about a week..

No Internet café in Sami! We did meet a very nice English- speaking lady that runs a super market. She answered a lot of questions for us and as we were leaving she asked that we come back if we needed more information in our stay. We found the Orthodox Church and happened to be wandering by when a service was beginning. We both had on our yellow foul weather gear but we wanted to observe a service in an Orthodox church in this week, so we went in. We sat at the rear left side and just behind two young girls and their mother. We were an odd couple, yellow clothes, clearly not Greek and didn't know when to stand or sit. The two girls kept looking at us and giggling. The service had about 60 women and 5 men, if you don't count the additional 5 men who did the reading and chants. The 4 men, other than me, sat in the front right side and I was the only one among the ladies. This was not immediately apparent however. The reading was about 15 minutes of monotone reading that everyone else understood and crossed them selves at the appropriate time. The chanting lasted for 45 minutes and most likely longer. We decided that the next time everyone stood we would leave, so we really don't know how long the service was. The priest changed head gear a couple of times and mostly stood by listening to the reading and chants, except for the time that he took the smoking pot around the church and waved it in front of each icon and towards each row of people. The church is very full of icons and looks to have been recently refurbished. We went to the boat and had supper around 9 PM before saying goodnight.

Next Travelogue