sailing around the Peloponnese

Slowly working our way around the Peloponnese...  Koiladia on the northeast side was our last stop with friends before heading off alone again.  The bay had nearby hills for hiking and harvesting wild arugula and asparagus, and a beach filled with plastic debris which made for good boat-building material for the kids.  The funniest thing was when we were on the boat doing schoolwork, when all of a sudden John looked outside and yelled “BUOYS!”  Some fisherman had apparently lost a whole box of small doughnut-shaped buoys overboard somewhere upwind of us, and so for the next half hour, John and the kids had a mad game of chase, zipping around the bay in the dinghy and scooping up buoys before they drifted to shore.  It was the Greek version of Harry Potter’s Quidditch!  

Then we sailed to the Byzantine walled city of Monemvasia.   Monemvasia’s Eastern Orthodox church was modeled after the Aya Sofya church in Istanbul.  What a tangled history…both served at various times as either a church or a mosque as the Greeks and Turks fought over the land, culminating in the “1923 population exchange”, where about 1.5 million Greeks moved from Turkey to Greece, and 500,000 Muslims from Greece to Turkey in an “agreed mutual expulsion.” 

 

We sailed/motored around the southern Cape Maleas of the Peloponnese on a calm day with a huge pod of striped dolphins, and then spent an evening anchored in the funny little bay of Porto Kagio.  We drifted in circles on anchor and read aloud the stories of the Trojan War, as the wind blew down from the barren hills topped with odd square towers of the Mani inhabitants, the true originators of the word “maniac” (notwithstanding any legitimate claims to that title by Maine residents).

 

In Kalamata, in between eating way too many fat black olives, we rented a car to visit Sparta and (what else?) their stunning olive museum, the Byzantine walled city of Mystra, and to hike in the Taygetos mountain range.  One  more stop in the Peloponnese, and then we’ll head to the Ionian Islands and up towards the Adriatic.



The "S.S. Minnow" is ready to sail in Koiladia

 

Chasing errant Greek fishing buoys

Sailing to the walled city of Monemvasia

 

Looking down from Monemvasia to Tenho, the only
sailboat  in the marina (circled in black).

 

Aya Sofya in Monemvasia.  First a church,

it was a mosque while under Turkish rule, and is

now restored as an Eastern Orthodox church.





And here's our photo of the Aya Sofya in Istanbul

from our visit in December, with minarets

from when it was converted to a mosque in 1493. 

In 1935 it became a museum.



Kids watching dolphins from the bow





Striped Dolphin



 

Taygetos Mountains from the castle on top of

the Byzantine walled city of Mystras

Greek lunch!  Wild arugula, cheese, bread, olives & wine