harry @sysop.ooo · 26/09/2026exploring Göran Schildt's chora house, high on the hill over Panteli bay 1917-2009, Finn (Swede minority) author, philosopher, classicist, sailor. Memoirs of the Med in his mahogany ketch Daphne brought Greece to post-war Scandinavia (a la Durells & Anglosphere) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6... 100
harry @sysop.ooo · 23/09/2026Indigo and I got the Leros Regatta spirit of the race award ⛵️ first time I’ve ever gotten award for coming in last 😳🙂 271
harry @sysop.ooo · 22/09/2026the pleasure of sailing a character boat in a (semi-serious) regatta 🙃 Leros, end of summer - the 16th Göran Schildt Regatta 140
harry @sysop.ooo · 21/08/2026The art of the Minoans at Akrotiri is exceptional. Verisimilitude and feeling not to be replicated in the area for a millenium. My favorite is the single-stoke plant leaves. 2110
harry @sysop.ooo · 21/08/2026at anchor off Akrotiri / Akrotiri at dusk / ancient harbor of Thera, dawn / the view from the acropolis of Thera 2142
harry @sysop.ooo · 19/08/2026Saw the last surviving J-Class here in Greece last month - Shamrock IV 112
harry @sysop.ooo · 16/08/2026That makes more sense to me, at least for slips and med-style moorings. The actual space used is the beam, not length. Only when your yacht needs an especially long slip, or when the harbor is very small, does length matter. I liked that many marinas in DK had self-service payment machines. 110
harry @sysop.ooo · 15/08/2026tbh I dislike reefing it, has a bad cut/angle when partially furled. I think this problem is worse with furled yankee v genoa. I do have an old 1/2 size yankee... which is hank-on, stuck on the bench. With staysail Indy would have been a little slower & harder to steer down those following seas 000
harry @sysop.ooo · 13/08/2026Making seven knots broad on the Meltemi. Two reefs, full yankee, between Sifnos and Ios ⛵️ 3143
harry @sysop.ooo · 06/08/2026speak to them sternly but sensibly about birth control. its always worked for me. fruit flies are easily embarrassed 210
harry @sysop.ooo · 04/08/2026Two pretty yachts in Porto Cheli - the second is Shamrock V, last surviving America’s Cup J-Class; a sign in modern and Tsakonian Greek, the latter the last surviving Doric dialect; a sign while walking the route of the first marathon towards the Lyceum. 080
Reposted by harryAlexandra Sills @belovedofoizys.bsky.social · 29/07/2026Idly imagining dozens of Athenians loudly reciting their think pieces in the agora and tearing each other to shreds because a Euripides play riffing on the Trojan cycle didn't please every single citizen simultaneously. 411816
harry @sysop.ooo · 23/07/2026Anyways, I’m now officially in the Aegean - also, interestingly, the original “archipelago.” Let’s celebrate with a cat. 060
harry @sysop.ooo · 23/07/2026Got a little karma for mocking an English sailor nearly exactly one year ago at the Scottish border. Sailing for Eyemouth, he put into Burnmouth (and ran aground). They’re 2nm apart! …& today I lazily ran downwind into Plaka, moored, & found myself in Sabatiki, 2nm north. (No grounding though 😮💨) 170
harry @sysop.ooo · 23/07/2026Excellent! I'm still studying! ...very slowly. Here's my latest texts, excerpts in this article: antigonejournal.com/2026/07/nola... Right this moment I'm on the way to Leonidio, where I hope I can find at least one person still speaking Tsakonian - a true fossil, descended from the Doric dialect.antigonejournal.comApocalypse Troy: Nolan's Odyssey and the End of CivilizationTHEODORE NASH Did Homer know the Sea People? 110
harry @sysop.ooo · 22/07/2026antigonejournal.com/2026/07/in-s... New paper!antigonejournal.comWas Homer’s Ithaca an Island?JAMES DIGGLE & JOHN UNDERHILL In search of the real Ithaca 040
harry @sysop.ooo · 18/07/2026I think it may be hank-on and built to be reefed. The second set of blue patches are the clew and tack reinforcement for the first reef. ‘Course if it has a firler (can’t make one out) I’m wrong. 200
harry @sysop.ooo · 17/07/2026I had a replacement gearbox for my windlass shipped here. The old gearbox’s worm & wormwheel teeth fully sheared off - because, so far as I can tell, a previous owner ‘upgraded’ the sacricifcial drive pin, preventing it from failing on a jam & so protecting the worm as intended 🙃 🪱 050
harry @sysop.ooo · 17/07/2026In Monemvasia, ‘Gibraltar of the East,’ whence Malmsey wine was once shipped and for which it is named 🍷⛵️🇬🇷 2130
harry @sysop.ooo · 08/07/2026Also on the island: the so-called cave of Nestor, a pretty spot, and one inhabited from the stone age onwards. 080
harry @sysop.ooo · 08/07/2026This is not the only noteworthy battle in the area. Modern 🇬🇷’s independence was won when a 🇬🇧/🇫🇷/🇷🇺 fleet brazenly sailed into the roadstead & sank a larger & better-positioned Turkish fleet. The Greeks maintain memorials to the allies. The Brit’s is on an islet in the center of the bay, seen here. 241
harry @sysop.ooo · 08/07/2026The Spartans then landed across this narrow channel, on Sphacteria, a comical mistake - when the Athenian fleet arrived in force, they were stranded. The soldiers’ eventual surrender and captivity was a tremendous blow to Spartan prestige. Thucydides can tell you more! 150
harry @sysop.ooo · 08/07/2026fended off a sea assault here, on the southwestern tip, per Thucydides - an assault in which Brasidas first distinguished himself! (He is said to exhorted the Spartans to wreck their ships on the rocks to land, which… not great advice, Brasidas. Not great. But certainly brave.) 140
harry @sysop.ooo · 08/07/2026I climbed to the top of the once-island, now peninsula, called Pylos, which is some miles north of modern Pylos town across the bay of Navarino. It’s here Demosthenes & Cleon accidentally laid a trap which caught ~200 Spartans on the island of Sphacteria, just south. They fortified Pylos, and… 181
harry @sysop.ooo · 08/07/2026Spent some days in sandy Pylos last week. Visited the tholos (Mycenaean) tomb called Thrasymedes’. (A son of ‘wise’ Nestor, wanax of Pylos and giver of mostly bad advice in the Illiad. His reputed palace in the nearby hinterland I visited some years ago.) 290
harry @sysop.ooo · 08/07/2026Oooh I have a strong sailors/amateaur classicist perspective on this! First, per Strabo, was it not tin “islands” not “island”? Second, the only viable place to anchor that also has island(s) around there is Scilly. All other options not viable havens. Let’s see what the article has to say… 000
harry @sysop.ooo · 07/07/2026Its worth a visit, but if its just to meet Indigo and I, don’t fret - I’m south to Kythera and Chania next, and thence along the Cretan north coast. 100
Reposted by harryJoseph Rezek @rezekjoe.bsky.social · 29/06/2026Persuasion is basically the second half of a much longer novel. Austen just decided not to write the first part. This is why it is her best novel 314511
harry @sysop.ooo · 27/06/2026it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golfo_d...it.wikipedia.orgGolfo di Gioia Tauro - Wikipedia 130
harry @sysop.ooo · 27/06/2026My friend you must be unfamiliar with the most sublime irreality television show ever made, MXC. Plus toddlers going on errands. 000
harry @sysop.ooo · 22/06/2026Mandatory yacht inspection by the harbormaster of Sami, Kefalonia. Frankly she was embarrassingly easy to bribe. 090
harry @sysop.ooo · 22/06/2026Which would mean that my passages from Scylla & Charybdis to Corfu to the north of Palliki, anchoring below Arethousa’s spring, well matches the poem’s homecoming narrative :). I was not required to complete any archery-related tests of skill, however. #sailing #odyssey #archaelogy #history⛵️🏺 0121
harry @sysop.ooo · 22/06/2026Zakynthos is the southernmost of the Ionians. Kefalonia was once (probably) called Samos or Same. Both would be of Odysseus’ kingdom. To the east of Kefa lies so-called Ithaca; I am convinced the real Ithaca is now Kefa’s westernmost peninsula, Palliki (www.odysseus-unbound.org/evidence/) 4100
harry @sysop.ooo · 22/06/2026Reaching between Κεφαλονιά and Ζάκυνθος. 5-6 knots in 10-12 knots of wind. 1181
