The overnight winds of 25 knots and the following northeasterly seas were hardly noticeable with Sea Cloud’s stable ride south along the Peloponnesus coast, so that some even asked if we had docked overnight. As we woke to the Aegean sunrise, many of us felt the rumble and shudder of the ship at 0645, which we thought must be the starting of an engine or the cavitation of a propeller. Imagine all of our surprise when we learned during breakfast that we had sailed right over the epicenter of a 5.6 magnitude Aegean earthquake, shaking and shuddering the ship at sea!
That was the main topic of morning conversation until Captain Komakin called the deck crew to sail stations, and the carefully orchestrated setting of sails began. Most of us joined the expedition leader out on the spanker deck—sail diagrams in hand—to start to get familiar with the dizzying and dazzling activity around us; a complex web of lines weaving constellations of sails, with action everywhere and too many images, angles, and compositions to even begin to photograph on this first morning. With a 30-knot wind on a broad reach, we learned that the idea of a square rigger is not to set all the sails at once, but to find the right sail combination for the existing conditions. With such an ideal wind we set did not set the higher square sails, yet we were ripping along at over 9 knots and hardly feeling the motion of the sea! This is what we came for, and words can’t describe the feeling of a square-rigger heeling in the wind.
During our photographic instructor Max Seigal’s talk on photographic techniques, we changed course around the southern island of Kythira and really felt the beam seas as we heeled to port. We were now leaving the Aegean and entering the Ionian Sea, where our expedition leader told us the winds would start to eventually let up. Sure enough, during a beautiful lunch on the lido deck we felt a drop in the wind, so Captain Komakin again called the crew to sail stations and we added a lot of sail in the afternoon. Up went the royals, the sky sails, the topmast staysails, and the largest of Sea Cloud’s sails, the fore-course. The choreography under the watchful eye of the bosun was mesmerizing.
Lindblad Expeditions’ archaeologist Rebecca Ingram gave a talk on the “Sanctuaries of the Gods” on the lido deck, introducing us to Greek architecture and Classical Greek Civilization, and after a custom-made ice-cream sundae station from ship’s baker Luisa, the deck crew was at it again. Hauling on lines, running the downhauls, and scampering up the rigging to take in the sails for a harbor furl at the end of the day. This is often the best time for photography, with the soft afternoon light glowing on the sailors aloft.
What a day. It was with palpable pride that Captain Komakin introduced the ship and his international team of officers during the Welcome Cocktail Party, followed by a 5-star Welcome Dinner. What a start to the voyage. Let’s do it again tomorrow . . .
