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I think I need to start this story about a year ago. Around Christmas last year a tiny seed of a travel idea germinated in my head.

Dodecanese, Greece

Nickjenkins
2003-11-20 16:38:39

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of the crew opted for some excellent seafood but in an uncharacteristic poor pick I had the pork souvlaki and spent most of the evening green with envy.

The restaurant also featured some excellent live music with a keyboard accompanied by a reborn Greek Eric Clapton on Bouzouki and vocals. We liked the bouzouki player so much we embarrassed him a little with a round of applause but perhaps not so much as when his mobile phone rang in the middle of a piece.

The local music continued that night when, much to our delight, we discovered on that the local festival included an open air concert in the main square. I sat for about an hour and listened entranced to the music along with a couple of hundred foot-tapping locals. The stage was set in the corner of the square and against the black backdrop of the vertical crags which surround Pothia on three sides. High above the players, suspended against the night sky, was a brightly lit monastery and the music floated up towards the monks who must have thought it an epiphany.

Early in the morning we arose and prepared to set off (etiquette demanding that the last arriving boat leaves first). After a bit of scrounging around Helen and Viet-Anh managed to provision the boat and we had quick breakfast before raising the anchor and heading off.

Well at least that was the theory. It turned out that raising the anchor wasn't as easy as we had anticipated because in some mysterious Gordian transformation, another boat's anchor chain had ridden over ours. It took the combined efforts of Simon and Ian to free us. In the process we were dragged out of position and had to do some emergency fending to keep us off the other boats moored at the quay. Still we were free and we turned and headed out to sea and, except for one small incident which will remain known only to me, the crew and one slightly irate Greek fisherman, we were off !
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