The Odyssey: Kirikos on Ikaria

Not where you (or we) expected. The winds have been blowing hard out of the north so we have been unable to make much comfortable headway in that direction. Instead we have been heading east. So from Mykonos, where we spent last night, today we sailed further east and are now in Kirikos on the island of Ikaria, named after Icarus, the character from mythology who flew too close to the sun, melted the wax that held his wings together and fell into the sea.

I picked up a wireless connection from the harbor because the Internet cafes are closed. Today is Easter in the Greek Orthodox religion, and we just witnessed the local people hanging and burning Judas in effigy. They take Easter very seriously here.

Tomorrow we hope to clear out of Greece in Samos, the next island to the east and then clear in to Turkey in Kusadasi. We will be too far south of Troy to even attempt an overland journey to the ruins, which would probably be about twelve hours by car or bus, so we may go to one of Turkey's more famous sites, Ephesus.

By the way, the GPS satellite coverage in this area is weak, so we have been unable to send the SPOT beacon messages or to even secure our latitude and longitude using the GPS at times. We hope this will improve later in the voyage as we move toward Crete and Ithaca.

Next update: Kusadasi (if there's Internet access)