S/V Aphrodite

Michael Morazadeh joined us in the Canaries. Margi Sells arrives tomorrow. Our spinnaker has been repaired and the engine mechanic comes Friday. It is likely that we will depart Saturday for St Lucia. We will post our log as we are sailing.

Madeira is part of an archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, 300m off the north western coast of Africa and about 600m from Europe.  It was discovered by the Portuguese in 1418 and like all things Portuguese, in our opinion, it is a jewel.  The island is small, 35m long and 13m wide, but mighty in [...]

 
We are in Portugal now, the southern coastal region known as The Algarve, in Lagos where Brisa came from.  We have been spending time with her family, both her mother’s side and her father’s side.   Surprisingly, neither her mother nor sister recognized her, nor she them.  Having only experienced the relationships of Kali, Lily and [...]

According to legend we have been following many portions of Homer’s epic, The Odyssey, as we sail through this area of the world.   The Ionian Islands are frequently mentioned in The Odyssey.  Ithaca is generally accepted as the homeland of Odysseus, to which he was returning after the Trojan War.  Other areas sited in the [...]

Aphrodite is currently in the body of water which separates Mainland Greece and the Northern Peloponnesus and, via the Corinth Canal, now connects the Aegean Sea with the Ionian Sea.  In nautical terms it is the Gulf of Patras, the western portion to the Corinth Canal, and the Gulf of Corinth being the eastern portion.   [...]

“How can we be off course if we don’t have a destination?”
That’s our motto today. We are going where the wind takes us, heading west toward the northern Peloponnesus which is a large target, and easy enough to hit with just about any wind angle. The last few weeks have provided us with some [...]

 
As I review our sailing log I see that we entered Turkey on 5/30/08 and started sailing eastward towards ancient Olympus and The Chimaera, described by Homer as a fire-breathing monster, part lion, part goat and part snake, shortly after. The legend goes something like this: Bellerophon, riding astride Pegasus, slew the monster Chimaera by [...]

We have been leaving this island for 5 days now, and yet here we sit, still anchored in this tiny harbor on the tiny Greek island of Kastellorizo, just a hop skip and a swim off the Turkish coast.  We stopped here only by accident really, it was late in the day and we did [...]