Ancient Coasts

On the last day of the Creation God desired to crown His work and thus created Kornati Islands out of tears, stars and breath

George Bernard Shaw

 

The largest part of my trip through the Adriatic, I will be sailing the Kornati Achipel. It is the central part of croatian Adriatic Sea, about 15 Nm to the west from Sibenik town, 7 Nm to the southwest from Murter, or 15 Nm to the south from Zadar town.

The beauty and singularity of the archipelago moved authorities in 1980 to proclaim a bigger part of that area a national park. Since then certain modifications of its borders were made, so that nowadays Kornati National Park occupies the area of about 220 km². There are 89 islands, islets and reefs within the area of Kornati National Park (238 km of the coastline), what makes it the most indented group of islands in the Mediterranean.

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Tags: Croatia, Dalmatia, Empire, George Bernard Shaw, Kornati Archipelago, Krka National Park, Murter, Primosten, Sailing, Sibenik, Split, Trogir, Venice, Waterfalls, Zadar

From May 16 to July 31 I will be sailing the Adriatic Sea and currently I’m quite busy with all the preparations for this trip I will start sailing from Murter, Croatia (somewhere between Zadar and Split) and first go north up to Triest and Venice in Italy. Then I will return to Croatia and going down up to Dubrovnik and Montenegro. See the map below for an impression of the trip.

For this trip I have made another site and you can find all information there and you can find information about the planning. I am still looking for crewmembers – especially experienced ones – for a very special trip (the once in a lifetime opportunity from Dubrovnik to Italy and sailing there the coastline of Puglia and then crossing the Adriatic again back to Split.

For more information see also this post. This site is in Dutch, just twitter me at ancientcoasts if you need information in English

For everything related to the trails of Herodotus and Odysseus and explore the beauty of the Middleterrean just stay close to this weblog

Tags: Adriatic Sea, Croatia, Dubrovnik, Italy, Sailing, Split, Trieste, Venice

OMG OMD

Tags: OMD, Sailing

Today I will continue the log about the sailing trip I made in September 2008.

We sailed from Sivota to Frikes via Vasiliki on the 3rd and 4th day. I’ll combine these trips because the 3rd day we were mainly occupied by finding a good BBQ place for a group of 40 crazy dentists (we were making the trip not alon as you could remember). As we scoured the coastline to find a good spot, we had to it on the engine unfortunately. The next day was a little bit rainy although with excellent wind so we had a good sail but coldish weather. There we sailed from Vasiliki to Frikes, located on the mighty island Ithaca

Day 3: From Sivota to Vasiliki

In the GPS track it is clearly visible ho we traced the every place available. All the landing stages we found in the first bay – called Ormos Afteli – were clearly privately held or not suitable to hold at least 8 yachts of 40 ft or more. The next bay was Ormos Ammousa and there we were more lucky with 3 public beaches. One was to small, the other one was very cosy with a nice restaurant and beach. I really would recommend this plae for lunch for everyone around and I hope I will come back there some time but it was unsuitable for a group BBQ. So we made a hit and run for the third.

The BBQ was made of everything available in Sivota and was a big success. We had bought all the one-off / throw away after use in all the supermarkets of Sivota. For the meat we had made a deal with a local restaurant and we received bags full of meat for a very fair price. I’m still wondering if there was one sheep left in Sivota after we sailed away.

After leaving the small little beach and we rounded a little cape, we got a very good wind (about 20 knots) to sail the last part to Vasiliki. Below an impression of Vasiliki. Note the lightly built of the second floor of the houses as this region suffers sometimes from (light) earthquakes.

Day 4: Vasiliki to Frikes

This was the first day we had excellent wind for the first time in the week, although the sun didn’t favor us today as is was still very chilly (about 18^o C). We had to sail a close-hauled course and it was interesting to sea the different effects of the tactical decisions in navigation made by all the different yachts. Some people decided to tack in an early stage while others decided to wait as long as possible. Other just couldn’t stay on a close-hauled course and I won’t discuss them. We decided to stay on course as long as possible and that was at the end the best strategy. This because of the influence of the island on the wind (to be more specific, the friction of the land forces the wind to back due tot the Coriolis force). At the end we used the engine to round the small cape because we had to arrive first in Frikes and after the cape we could sail further. All this can be seen very clearly in the GPS plot in the map above.

Below an impression of Frikes, next post – about the trip from Frikes to Meganisi – more pictures.

Tags: Coriolis, Frikes, Ionean Sea, Ithaca, Lefkas, Lefkas 2008, Ormos Ammousa, Sivota, Vasiliki

Besides the Golden Fleece, Jason (that Jason from Jason and the Argonauts) took also the beautiful daughter of the king with him, called Medea. The Colchian people had off course to defend the honour of the king and a giant manhunt started. I think you could say the biggest manhunt in ancient times.

This quest went first across the Black Sea to the Danube, through the land currently known as Romania, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. There they found a river going undergrounds ending in the Adriatic Sea close to Trieste (still you will be able to take this route, no myths with that). When the hunters arrived at the point of the peninsula of Istria at the end, they found it so beautiful, that they decided to halt. According to legend, they founded there Pula…

When the Romans arrived in Pula around 177 BC, they put the city firmly on the map with impressive amphitheater, which still can be found today. It is the 6^th largest Amphitheater of the world by the way. Remainings of the Romans can still be found in Pula, as you still have the old Forum and the Temple of Augustus (heritage of the Godenverering van keizers in de periode …).

I visited the city during my Croatian Cruisin’ in 2005. Below are some pictures I then took.

Tags: Amphiteatre, Augustus, Croatia, Jason and the Argonauts, Pula

I have traveled oceans of time to find her, but I finally have found my sailing yacht. (Sorry, stole this opening line from one of my favorite movies: Bram Stokers’ Dracula)

First I did find a good sailingboat in the Lefkas area, agreed on price and the period to rent, and planned a trip around the Peloponnese. Unfortunately I also had to find out the meaning of an agreement and of trust used by some Greek. Off course this is inherent to the playful mind of the Greek gods and the way a good Odyssey should begin.

Luckily, I found another one in Croatia and it has been agreed on today.

It is an Elan 344, built in Slovenia, has 3 cabins and a young one, still in the spring of her life as she is from 2006.

From May 16 until July 31 I will be sailing the Adriatic Sea, I have started looking for my crew and to plan my route

For more pictures, please have a look at my Picasa Album

Tags: Adriatic Sea, Croatia, Elan 344, Odyssey, Sailing

About 2 years ago I found my new hero: Tim Severin

How did that come? As preparation of my different sailing journeys I always like to research the region of the sail trip. So when we were planning to sail cross the Black Sea in 2007, I immediately dived into the deep holes of the Internet, did research on countries like the Crimea, Turkey, Bulgaria and Georgia. I read  about everything related to the myths and the epic stories of the Amazons, the Scythians and other figures greater then life.

And somewhere, I can’t remember exactly where anymore, in a very small footnote some crazy guy was mentioned who made a trip around 1985 in this area. So I Googled a little bit around and found out that he was called Tim Severin and he made a trip similar of that of Jason and the Argonauts some 3,500 years before and bought his books on eBay.

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Tags: Argo, Bosporus, Colchis, Golden Fleece, Herodotus, Homer, Iliad, Jason and the Argonauts, mapmania, Spetses, Tim Severin

Suddenly, I had the plan to migrate my weblog to another server…

And while dreaming how fast my weblog would be then, I started making more plans. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a nice fading color as background of my posts… And I started looking at other sites and more and more ideas came alive and my wishlist for becoming a really, truly beautiful site became bigger and bigger. Combining all the nice things of other weblogs, heaving a clean CSS sheet etc. etc.

So now I am already hacking for a week or so CSS and it is growing far too big. While I should do my research on the best places of the Middle Sea and writing posts about it, I write things like:

#content .div li lu lo la {

   font: xx-larg

   background-image:url(img/greece-blue-sea.gif)

   etcetera: dream-eat-live-and-keep-the-flow

}

Aaaaaaaaarggh

So I hope to be back in a month or so with an excellent site, meanwhile I will post on this soon to be better designed site.

Tags: CSS, Frustrations, website development, Wordpress

Big City Kalamos

Kalamos is just such a very relaxed, low speed, easy island. The name Kalamos is said to be coming from reeds. If you see the stony island, you know for sure there has to be some very distant explanation for that.

Some people argue that the origins from the name of the island came from the inhabitants flewn from the mainland from a more swampy area. But a more mythological explanation might also be true. This story would make the island named to a son of the ancient God Maiandros (God of the Maeander river), this guy was called Kalamos. In my eyes the island therefore being the home of a god.

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Tags: Achilles, Greece, Ionian Sea, Kalamos, Lefkas, Lefkas 2008, Mediterrean, Middle Sea, Port Leone, Sailing, Sivota, Zephyr, Zephyrus

The first day we left Nisos Lefkas (Nisos means island in Greek), Lefkas City or Lefkada to be more specific, with as destination Nisos Kalamos about eleven hour. The weather was cloudy and no wind at all. Therefore we knew we had to use the engine for the biggest part of the trip. The distance is about 20 nautical Miles (1 nM is about 1.852 km) and with a cruising speed of 5 knots of our yacht Yannis it would take us about 4 hours to get there.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="495" caption="View on Nisos Kalamos from the direction of Lefkas"]

First two trivial facts about Lefkas…

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Tags: Greece, Ionian Sea, Kalamos, Lefkas, Lefkas 2008, mapmania, Thucydides