The Odyssey: Route

In the earlier post The Odyssey: Preview, I outlined the route we would be sailing in general terms. Here is a map from Tim Severin's 1987 book, The Ulysses Voyage: Sea Search for the Odyssey, that shows it in detail. If you right-click on the image and choose "Open Link in New Window", you will be able to view the map in its full size while reading this post in a separate window.

Athens is not shown on the map but it is located at the shallow harbor immediately below the "H" in the caption that reads "Burial of Phrontis The Helmsman" near the center of the map. We will start the voyage near there, at the Alimos Marina in Kalamaki, about five miles south of the Acropolis. Capt. John Kretschmer will have his Kaufman 47 cutter-rigged sailboat, Quetzal, waiting there for us and the other crew members for our April 23 departure.

After rounding Cape Sounion and sailing through the Doro Channel, which is marked on the map with the caption "Several of Agamemnon's ships lost", we will continue northeast on an overnight passage to Turkey, landing in Ayvalik, on the mainland due east of the island of Lesbos. We will then sail north along Turkey's coast to the ruins of ancient Troy. At this point, our route should closely match the solid line on the map that depicts the route of Ulysses' squadron through the Aegean and Cretan Seas, until we reach the leg marked "Prolonged defensive drift". We will not be sailing to Africa to explore the Land of the Lotus Eaters. As Capt. John has said, "I am searching for the spirit of Odysseus as much as anything." So we will detour to the south coast of Crete, the large island between Greece and Africa, and pick up the route again there. We will explore the land of the Cyclops and then sail northwest to the Peloponnese peninsula of Greece, following it north into the Ionian Sea and on toward Ithaca, Ulysses' home. The voyage does not end there because Ulysses was unsuccessful in reaching Ithaca on his first attempt and was blown all the way to Circe's island of Aeaea, which we will also not be visiting. Instead we will explore the islands north of Ithaca, which figure into the Ionian Tales section of Homer's Odyssey, and finish the voyage at Corfu, the island below the "Phaeacia" caption on the map.

Captain John has installed a SPOT beacon on Quetzal which will relay our position every day to a service that sends out email notices with links to Google Maps. If you would like to receive those notices and follow our voyage as it happens, please send me a quick email message at johnlichty@bresnan.net and I will put you on the list. Thank you for sharing your interest.

The Odyssey: Research

To prepare for our upcoming Odyssey sailing trip, I thought it would be a good idea to refamiliarize myself with Homer's epic tale. I already knew that the Odyssey was the second of Homer's two epic tales, the first being the Iliad, his story of the Trojan War, as symbolized by the Trojan horse.

Tim Severin's book The Ulysses Voyage: Sea Search for the Odyssey provided excellent background, much of it based on E. V. Rieu's translation of the Odyssey, which was first published by Penguin Books in 1946. But at 448 pages, I wasn't prepared to spend the time it would take to even muddle through what is considered the most accessible of the translations. Heck, it took me almost a year to read Moby-Dick. I gave the Cliff Notes version a thought, but that seemed like cheating, just like it did in high school and college.

Then I remembered that when we were growing up, my brother Stuart and I used to have a copy of the Classics Illustrated comic book The Odyssey by Homer. I jumped on eBay and there it was. Of course, it's a collector's item now, so I paid quite a bit more for it than its 15-cent cover price. I think the copy Stuart and I had dated from the mid-1960s. The version that arrived in the mail had a copyright of 1951. Fortunately, it was packaged in a cellophane envelope with a cardboard backing, which made me hesitant to take it out and actually read it. It seemed like it might crumble into dust if I dared to turn the pages.

I sat down one evening a few weeks after the Odyssey comic book arrived and read it straight through, which only took about a half-hour. It was just the way I remembered it: rough artwork, primary colors, and stilted dialogue, but it touched on all the high points of the original story and held my interest to the end. To the right are the panels telling the story of Ulysses's encounter with the Sirens. Click the image for a larger view.

What became evident to me in reading the Odyssey story as an adult was how the mix of adventure and fantasy, real-life situations and purely imaginary ones, could be linked together in the context of a journey home from war to create a story that would hold up through the ages, from the time of Homer almost 2700 years ago to the present.

When I returned to reading the Severin book, it was with renewed interest, as I visualized the story as it may have taken place in the locations Tim Severin determined to be the most logical real-world landings for an actual sailing journey home from Troy to Ithaca.

The Odyssey: Preview

In a little over nine weeks, on April 23, Nan and I will begin the sailing adventure of a lifetime, a re-creation of The Odyssey, Homer's epic tale of Ulysses's journey from the Trojan War to his home in Ithaca, Greece. We will join John Kretschmer, with whom I sailed from Fort Lauderdale to the Bahamas in January 2007, and three other crew members, including Harry and Velinda from that same sailing trip, to sail John's boat Quetzal along the same route taken by author and explorer Tim Severin in his historic 1985 voyage in the replica Greek galley Argo. Mr. Severin documented the voyage in his 1987 book The Ulysses Voyage: Sea Search for the Odyssey, an excellent account filled with photographs, drawings and maps, which will serve as the guidebook for our own voyage.

The plan calls for us to rendez-vous in Athens, where John has kept Quetzal, a 47-foot Kaufman cutter, for the last few months getting her ready for the voyage. We will then sail across the Aegean Sea to the ruins of ancient Troy, on the northwest coast of Turkey, to begin our Odyssey. About two weeks later, we will arrive at Ithaca, a small island on Greece's west coast. Along the way, we will sail counter-clockwise around the Aegean, then south and east to the southern coast of Crete, and then back north and west to the west coast of Greece before returning to Athens, a round-trip voyage of almost a thousand nautical miles.

John has contracted with the Miami Herald and Cruising World to write articles about the trip, and he has graciously given me his permission to write an article for Latitudes & Attitudes magazine. I pitched the idea to Editor Sue a few months ago in an email message thanking her for publishing my water spout photo, and she was enthusiastic. In addition, the Travel Channel will have a film crew on board for much of the trip producing a documentary for broadcast on TV and elsewhere. It is all very exciting for both of us, and it offers me the opportunity to start a travel writing sideline.

Additional details will be posted here as they become available. And of course, I will have a laptop and a digital camera with me throughout the trip for posting updates as time and Internet access allow.

Correction 3/3/08: I received an email update from John Kretschmer. It turns out that our voyage will end in Corfu, an island off the west coast of Greece at its border with Albania. We will be flying back to Athens instead of sailing. This will knock about 250 nautical miles off the trip, making for a total of about 750 nautical miles.