We used to have this cove on our lake, Grand Lake, called Dripping Springs. It was a long skinny cove, about a mile long, and on any given weekend in the summertime, you could pull in here to find at least 30 boats tied up together ready for a day of laying out, drinking, pumping out loud rap music and jumping off cliffs. On holiday weekends, especially the Fourth of July, the Drip became daytime resting spot for several hundred boats, tied up to one another. A huge floating night club, operating during the day.
So it wasn’t quite that, but same concept. Today we were sailing back to Sex Island, AKA Dokos (Δοκός). There is no town on Dokos, no port, no marina. We were going to find a cove, park our boats and party.
Today was a fantastic sailing day. We were finally getting the hang of it, tacking back and forth to help optimize our speed. At one point, we got a bit too cocky tho. We needed to pull the main sail up a bit higher if we REALLY wanted to go as fast as we could. It was only about a 6 inch adjustment, but we were up for the challenge. We found the right rope, wrapped it around the wench and released the lock only to realize that the angle was bad and the way that the rope was on the wench, when the lock was released and the pressure of the 30 mph wind on the sail had wrenched the rope into a knot around the wench. It was all hands on deck at this point, with several people assigned to rope holding, wenching and me on the steering, while Louise tried to figure how the frack we were going to get this unstuck. She called in a mayday to Phillip and we spent the next 20 or so minutes trying everything.
Finally, we got it. Without Phillip’s help. And we realized we had just passed our first test. Something went wrong, and we fixed it.
Sailors.
We arrived in Dokos full of pride, one of the first 5 boats and tied up to the cliffs. I began preparation of the big Gypsy feast to be had on the boat that night. I was cooking bangers and mash with lentils and macaroni and cheese. It was literally all we could find in the tiny corner store before we left Plaka and was going to require that I make macaroni and cheese from scratch without a recipe, come up with some recipe for lentils and make instant mashed potatoes with instructions in Greek (honestly have never made instant potatoes before).
The party on the boats began just after dinner as the sun started to set. We started ours off with a couple games of Asshole playing with whatever we could find at this point as we’d almost run out of beer. A dance party was moved over to the Sweaty Swea (coz that’s where all things sweaty happen). At this point, Jon came back from a little swimming excursion to try and find our dinghy engine and informed us all that there’s something weird going on in the water. Apparently we were at the site for this certain type of bioluminescent algae called Noctiluca scintillans. Basically, it’s this microorganism that lives in shallow coastal waters in certain places that lights up when you disturb it in any way. That could be driving a boat through it, swimming in it or simply reaching into the water and moving your hand through it.
Naturally, for the next 5 hours, in between the shots and the beer bongs, we swam and swam taking turns with the snorkeling mask so you could watch the algae from underwater.
Literally, one of the coolest things I have ever seen in my life.
