Crewing a Sailboat in the Greek Isles

After Athens we jumped onto a sailboat with an Italian skipper named Alberto whom we met via internet on the website floatplan.com. We got the idea from fellow travelers we met trekkıng in Nepal back in October (our Alaskan friends - thanks Andy!). Before we became "salty" (that means "experienced" in sailor talk), the thought of sailing had conjured up two different images. The romantic one was of a luxurious boat sailing off into a beautiful sunset. The adventurous one had a captain with a peg-leg who would tell you to swab the deck or else you would be forced to walk the plank. As it turned out both images were a little true and we loved it!

The first part of our voyage took us to a recently active volcanic island named Santorini where we stayed on anchor in the harbor, which was located in the sunken caldera of the volcano... yikes! We were taken by surprise when Alberto, the ship captain, asked us (nicely) to swab the deck. We thought he was just joking until he handed us a mop and bucket! No threat of walking the plank was uttered by Alberto (he's much too nice for that), so we considered ourselves lucky.


In addition to cleaning, Captain Alberto and Melody (the other crew member), were really good about teaching us the ways of sailing the seas. We practiced sailing knots, changing and adjusting sails, mooring, and we even put Kelsi behind the wheel... Other than a few accidental circles due to insufficient wind she was an excellent helmswoman!

The boat we were on was named "Gaia," which is the Greek goddess of the earth, and she has been with the same owner for over 35 years. Alberto was our skipper and we were really happy to have such an experienced and enjoyable captain to learn from... not to mention a fırst rate Italian chef. It is going to take a little while to recover from eating copious amounts of pasta every day for a month during the gourmet sailing experience. We had dinner parties almost every night with Alberto's sailing friends we met up with at different islands.

We will show you more pictures of "Gaia" soon but here is a nice picture of her:

The great thing about crewing on a personal sailboat is that we got to stop off at many beautiful Greek Islands. Some islands were remote with no tourist accommodations while others were popular with really expensive accommodations, but the boat always provided a comfortable home base and Alberto always prepared amazing meals. Whats more... it was really affordable since we just paid for our share of groceries, fuel, and port expenses. AND... we were always trying to supplement our diet with a bit of bounty from the seas. It was our first experience eating and preparing octopus, although we have to admit that it is pretty tasty!

The Greek flag is a pattern of blue and white colors. These colors are very reminiscent of the dominating sea and sky landscapes of the Greek Islands, and the island locals have even elected to use blue and white as the main colors for most buildings. We stopped off at about eight or nine islands and they all had epic histories and heroes of biblical proportions (literally). Some of the islands we visited were Santorini, Ios, Naxos, Dhonousso, Patmos, Samos, Khios, and a couple other smaller islands surrounding these. Given that our blog is titled "The Odyssey of Rusty and Kelsi," it's worth mentioning that we hitch hiked across Ios to visit Homer's grave. Aside from that, we'll just let you enjoy a few snapshots we took of the beautiful Greek Island architecture we found so attractive:

We loved being on a boat with a captain and fellow crew member we could learn from. More than that we enjoyed exploring the islands together. Here are all four of us together: Kelsi and I with Melodie Fee and Alberto.

We also wanted to briefly mention some of the other friends we met along the way: Raimon, Pepe and Carmen who sailed with us in their boat for the first third of our trip and Carlo, Susanna, Max and Alessandra who sailed with us in their boats for the last third of the trip. We had so much fun meeting Alberto's sailing friends and enjoying their wonderful company and friendship as well as delicious dinners :)! Also, we need to mention one really sweet lady who gave us a grand goodbye of hospitality as we departed our sailing excursion through the Greek Islands. We drove our rental car across the medium sized island of Khios to the main city, Khios Town, to catch a ferry to Turkey. Once we arrived in Khios Town, we became lost in windy neighborhoods and stopped to ask directions from the sweetest Greek lady who decided to jump in her car and lead us out to the main road after giving us a tupperware container of homemade rose jam. It was such a sweet ending to our wonderful experience in Greece!