Mediterraneo

 Like Tell-Tales, this site will contain an eclectic mix to do with things nautical, or nearly so, in the Mediterranean. For sailing outside the Mediterranean go to TELL-TALES. 

There will inevitably be some duplicaton between the two sites with pages that are relevant to sailing within and without the Mediterranean on both sites. These will all have the same page name so don't worry too much.

THIS SITE IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION AND NEW PAGES AND ADDITIONAL INFO TO EXISTING PAGES WILL BE ADDED WHEN AND WHERE I CAN ... 

Mediterraneo is the Italian for this wonderful enclosed sea and is where we get the present day name from. Mediterranean means the 'inland sea' or the 'sea in the middle of the earth' from the Latin medius (middle) and terra (earth). The Romans called it Mare Nostrum, ‘Our Sea’. The Greeks called it Mesogeios from which the Latin name is probably derived. Mesogeios is Meso (middle or half) and geios (land or earth). In the Old Testament it is simply called the ‘Great Sea’ or just the ‘Sea’. In classical Arabic it was the ‘Roman Sea’ while in modern Arabic and Turkish it is the ‘White Sea’.

This web site will record, though not in any structured way, travelling with Skylax in the Mediterranean. Some of you may be familiar with some of the sailing guides I've written for the Mediterranean and other parts of the world and a lot of you will not. This site is not intended to plug those books although I may put up some of the supplements that we do for them and inevitably I will mention things about them. It's what I do. It's what I've done for over 30 years.

It is intended to be a lot looser with descriptions of some of the places we sail, on the joys and sheer graft of fixing and maintaining the good ship Skylax, of things on the fringes of the nautical mainstream, on the bizarre addiction to sailing that many of us have that is detrimental to the wallet and often uncomfortable and scary. Try explaining it to those who dwell on the hard bits they call land and you end up muttering some inanity about freedom and romance and self-sufficiency until you see the eyes glaze over and you can't stand to answer questions like 'What do you do all the time' ...anymore. But I'll try. Especially the romance and the addiction to life under sail.

 Before Lu and I got married I had to tell her that I would always spend more money on a mistress than a wife. The mistress at that time was a previous boat, seven tenths, a Cheoy Lee Pedrick 36. ‘Likewise’, she replied, ‘just as I will always spend money on my lover’. So it was a match made in heaven and the two of us have always put the boat first.

Lu is my muse, my shipmate, the one I bless at three in the morning when she comes up to take her watch. She loves getting the boat set up and sailing at its best and she does it all with that smile and hicuppy laughter. She is also the boat electrician, more patient and knowledgeable than me on marine electrics.

Skylax, our present boat is a Warwick Cardinal 46, designed by fellow kiwi Alan Warwick and built by the Tania Yard in Taiwan. She was designed in the mid-80’s and is medium displacement with a shallow 6’3” wing keel. Its hard to know exactly what to look for when you are buying a boat if it is new to you. A trial sail can’t really tell you very much as the salesman, the surveyor, and anyone else along for the ride ask you questions and are just around. You can’t snuggle down on the wheel and get a real sense of the boat – just a glimpse. On our test sail the rigging was set up so badly I was worried about the mast in 10 knots of wind. But I could sense something there and the rest looked alright.

She had been neglected for three years or more. Her equipment was old and in any case the girl had suffered what must have been a fairly direct lightening strike. The B&G instruments, the black box linking autopilot and instruments, radar, SSB, smart charger, all of them contained gobs of molten PCB’s and were never going to work again. The grounding plate on the outside of the hull had been blown clean away by the strike. Her sail inventory was tired, the rigging needed replacing, her other electrics and the plumbing were a mess. The tender was useless and her liferaft was destined for the rubbish tip.

So we bought her. The price was around 35 to 45 percent less than other Cardinal 46’s on the market. She had beefed up floors and stringers and her construction elsewhere was stout. Her shape looked easily driven and so it has proved. Her layout was an odd one that just happened to suit us.

Lu and I spent two months fixing what we could to get her ready for sea. Rigging, plumbing, instruments, radar, autopilot. The list seemed endless. Our shakedown cruise was from Fort Lauderdale to the BVI's in one hit. That was when we knew she was a sweet boat.

On the northeast corner of Salih Adasi there are a few overgrown ruins of ancient Karyanda. The city was never an important one although Skylax does say it had a harbour, though he may have meant a sheltered anchorage - probably the bay on the east side in the channel. It was not a Lelegian town as many on the Bodrum peninsula were at the time and appears to have been a Carian/Hellenic town from the early Classical period (7^th to 6^th century BC? although pottery found here is dated to 4^th century BC). Skylax of Karyanda is 6^th to possibly 5^th century BC and mentions it as his home. At some time in it’s history, possibly in 300BC, the site of the city was moved to a lake on the mainland, usually identified as that at Golkoy on the coast opposite. Here there is evidence of a Byzantine settlement, under which may be the Mk II version of Karyanda.

I have a personal interest in all this as I have long been interested in Skylax of Karyanda (c. 6^th century BC) who probably wrote the first Periplus or pilot for the Mediterranean and was also appointed by the Persians to explore the eastern boundaries of their empire. Herodotus tells us a little about this extraordinary man after whom my boat is named and for the rest we have to interpolate a bit. The map of his travels is my best guess at where he travelled given that he was to explore the eastern boundaries of the Persian Empire a few decades before it’s expansion to the borders shown for 490BC.

Darius appointed Skylax to make the trip possibly in 519-512 BC. He sailed up the Aegean coast to the Black Sea and then east to what is now Georgia where he trekked overland to the head of the Indus River (Greek Sinthos), probably somewhere around present day Islamabad. From here he travelled down the Indus to the Indian Ocean. It is likely he walked the initial stages as the river is difficult to navigate, but in the Indus Valley it slows and can be navigated. In 1857 the British constructed a 377 foot steamer for the lower reaches of the Indus, although it only drew 2 foot and was  powered by paddle wheels for the shallower sections where propellers would foul the bottom. From here Skylax made his way around the Arabian peninsula and up the Red Sea to Egypt and then home to Karyanda. It is likely he used local craft to make the last part of the voyage as we know this was already a popular sea trading route.

No account by Skylax of this expedition remains and we only know of it from Herodotus and Aristotle. A Periplus of the Mediterranean survives, but this has later additions and so is usually known as the Periplus of Pseudo-Skylax. I and a number of others believe that this pilot is probably from Skylax with later additions, but that is all a matter of conjecture and for the time being Skylax is remembered by a few interested scholars and in the name of my boat.

From my East Aegean go to http://www.imray.com

Karyanda?                                                       Skylax anchored off Salih Adasi (Karyanda?)

For a more exacting view on Skylax see Skylax and Pseudo Skylax

Mediterraneo is a film from 1991 that magically encapsulates the spirit of place. This place is the Mediterranean. For the people, the culture, the coast, for the climate and life around this enclosed sea. There is a magic about it that transcends the tired supermarket cynicism of our globalised life-style. You can describe the plot and the film as naively sentimental and I’ll go with that. Naivety is much under-valued. And sentiment is fine as long as it’s not sloppy nostalgia for an imagined past.

Mediterraneo follows a disparate group of Italian soldiers sent to a remote Greek island to scout and hold it against the British. The island in the film is Kastellorizon which is about as remote a Greek island as you can get even now. Amongst the group is an artist, a farmer, a dedicated army sergeant. All of them are romantics and dreamers of a sort. When they arrive the island seems deserted and not long after there is an explosion on the horizon which is their relief ship being blown up. They are blunderers and romantics and in the confusion of occupying the island one of them destroys the radio and most abandon hope of rescue.

The island comes to life. It has not been depopulated after all, the islanders have been hiding and when they realise the Italian soldiers are not going to harm them, they reappear. Largely they are women and the very young and very old. The Italians settle down to a life that loosely could be called paradise with a hard edge. They have everything they need to eat, drink and amuse themselves. One of them falls in love with the local prostitute. Another two fall for the beautiful shepherdess who believes a ménage a trois is how it all works. The artist starts painting murals in the church. Others fish and help out around the village. Life settles into a rhythm under a sunny Mediterranean sky surrounded by aquamarine water.

It might last forever except for the war over the horizon. And end it must. This is a variation on the Lotus-Eaters theme, on escaping from the harsh reality of war and embracing life and love. Sure it’s naïve, it doesn’t explore the anti-war and embracing life themes except in a marginal way, but this naïve movie touches a chord that others can’t reach. Watch it and see the sun come out.

Mediterraneo   A film by Gabriele Salvatore 1991. And yes... it has sub-titles for the English release.

Rod Heikell's very informal site on sailing in the Mediterranean. FOR SUPPLEMENTS TO MY BOOKS GO TO THE CORRECTIONS PAGE ON THE IMRAY SITE.

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