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September 10, 2005
Way from Lesvos to Rhodes!
We left the harbour in the afternoon, rised the sails immediately by using the wind-shadow of a huge ship, turned around and headed to the first waypoint. We had sixteen of them on this trip that is quite a lot. Like always we had 4 hours shifts between us. This way everyone has the opportunity to have a rest. Fortunately I had the 4-8 shift hours with Dimi. So 4-8 in the morning and 4-8 in the afternoon we were responsible to sail and stear Anna. It is an exceptional experience especialy in the morning when all the stars are there for you to enjoy life even more.Dimi has a lot of experiences in sailing and a lot of good stories to tell. I learned a lot from him.
Sunny the greek action-coordinator and Klitos the best greek activist joined us for the trip. They had a very good time with us on Anna no wonder why...
At some stages the wind got so strong that we had to put the sails down as it was far too dangerous.
We saw some flying fish on the way! Flying fish is very interesing. They even can fly a full circle if they want to, but cant moove their wings (or fins?) as a bird. (If they could moove it, they would be birds anyways. On maybe not I don´t know...)
Everyone put on one more kilos on this way as Leo (we call him The Doctor for his cooking abilities) cooked a fantastic food for us. This is my 5th or 6th extra kilos I guess.
We got some bad news from the port that they can´t provide any place for Anna in the port. It was very dissapointing for Sunny but as always we could manage it somehow. The last bit of the travel was very enjoyable! We had some serious waves so we had to tie the windows down in case if the water goes over the board. But the water didn´t get over the board, we arrived to the port safe. We were staying next to a motoryacht that costs about 10 million Eur to the oppinion of the Captain. It was very interesting to see how rich people live their everyday life on a thing that´s price could feed all the homeless children in Romania for two-three years. We couldn´t stop stearing at them and they couldn´t stop stearing at us. I felt like in the zoo.
Somehow we get this cultural shock very often. When we get to a port after sailing for a longer time we just don´t feel like getting out of the ship. We are not interested in the people and the noise they create. After having a good sleep we sailed to the other port in Rhodes. The mayor of the town didn´t want to help us by givin a good place for Anna so we had to transport the exhibition with a truck.
Rhodes is very much a turistic island. There is an oil powerplant here producing 205 MW electricity. This should be too much electricity for such an island however they have blackouts times to times so they are planning to build a new one. They need such a lot of electricity because of the millions of tourists visiting this fantastic place every year.
Dimitri the campainer was having some hard discussions with the responsibles.
Anyhow I can understand the tourists to come here. There are a lot to see on this Island. If someone needs a deserted beach he just has to rent a car or a scooter and off he goes! There is a whole fortress in original condition built some 600 years ago. We got lost in the small narrow streets of this fortress several times. There are many bars, restaurants and many more typical tourist attractions to visit. I think that the whole Europe and about half of England is spending their holiday time here.
Today is the 9th of September. This afternoon there will be a life radio broadcast from our tent using only clean energy. Tomorrow at 8 o´clock we tie off the ropes and we start our six day sailing trip to Beirut Lebanon. We hope the good weather for our journey
Greg
Posted by Hussein at September 10, 2005 5:37 PM