SAILING IN GREECE Matt's Trip Fellow Travellers The Boat The Islands The Cost

Matt Barrett: To Sail in Greece In June of 2001 my friend Dave and his family came to visit me on the island of Kea on a chartered GPSC yacht. He has been away from Greece for more than 20 years and was using the trip to get to know the country again while fulfilling the last wishes of his mother, to have her ashes scattered in various places in the Greek islands. When I went down to meet the boat he told me that I knew the skipper Billy Joe, and indeed I remembered him from a visit to the island of Hydra some twenty years earlier when we had hung out, played guitar and talked of our lives, loves and losses. I had lost contact with BJ but not before I had given him a couple cassettes and records of my music. When we met again on the boat in Kea he told me he had been listening to my songs for the last twenty years. I was quite flattered. BJ is one of the most well known skippers in the Mediterranean. After graduating from Kingsland Public School (England), he went on to the Plymouth College of Art and Design. Dealing with a lot of sailors and yachts, he developed a tremendous urge to learn more about sailing and navigation, completed a 3 year course and received the Yacht Master diploma in Southampton. BJ moved to Greece 20 years ago where he took a job as an Interior Designer for private sailing yachts. Having 5 years experience in the branch, he then decided to move on to what really interested him. He took off for a couple of years, delivering yachts from one continent to the other and working on many different private world renown sailing yachts such as S/Y Zolana owned by the famous S. Niarchos of Greece, S/Y Yanbu owned by Emir Fahdi of Oman and many more. In 1998 he began working for GPSC as a professional Skipper and has over a hundred thousand miles experience, fifty thousand miles of which he sailed in Greek waters. We spent the two days they were in Kea swimming, exploring and of course doing what most boaters enjoy doing the most when they come into port, eating and drinking. In Kea there were several fish tavernas in the yacht harbor known as Voukari and all the yachters were crammed into two of them. But BJ informed us that these were not the best, just the most popular and we found ourselves in a small Ouzerie called Thalia that was empty but had the best mezedes I have ever had in an ouzerie, and we hung out until late, talking about sailing and the Greek Islands. My wife Andrea, daughter Amarandi, and I had planned to go with David and his family with BJ and sail on to Kythnos and Kea, but because a relative was coming to the island to see us that day we could not leave. We met up with Dave again in Syros. We were in the main town of Hermoupolis while they had left BJ on the sailboat on the other side of the island. The Meltemi winds had picked up and BJ had to stay with the boat to keep an eye on the lines and also to help sailors with less experience guide their boats into the harbor. David raved about BJ and his ability not only as a skipper but as a teacher. "I bet I could skipper a boat right now after my week with him", he told me. But the best thing about sailing with BJ was not his knowledge of the sea but of the land. They went to the best restaurants and met very interesting people with BJ acting as host and translator. They found hidden springs that BJ knew about on the islands and beautiful coves that were sheltered and clean. "You need to sail with BJ", Dave told me. Soon, I would get my chance.... Want to find out more about chartering a yacht in the Mediterranean?