Flight from Greece

Peter and his wife Jude were going to visit us last August but it was not to be. We had met them in Porto di Roma the previous winter and after leaving Rome they did some cruising around Corsica then headed south. Peter had previously had a brain tumour and was ever conscious that it could recur. They set off from Northern Sicily for Puglia and then Peter starting having fits. Jude sailed the boat on her own for two or three days and ended up in Preveza on the mainland of Greece, basically because that is where the wind took her. She sent us text messages of her progress which confused us, not being aware at the time of the depth of the crisis on their boat. 

They left Preveza in a hurry to get back to the States and to medical treatment. Peter was fined for having an out of date visa and Jude was told that their boat “Flight”, must be out of Greek waters within six months. It was only later, talking to Jude that I understood the full trauma of these events, with Jude having to do what she could to tidy up “Flight” and Peter desperate, knowing in his heart that he would never return to the boat that had been their home for much of the last thirty years and into which he had invested an enormous amount of his personality.

 As Brindisi is only 150 odd miles from Preveza we offered to give Jude what help we could and she decided to come over this August to bring “Flight” to Italy. Peter had only died in February and in an ideal world Jude might have left her for a year or so, but “Flight” was in trouble with the Greek authorities and the boatyard which had effectively hidden her for several months wanted her off the premises. So Jude arrived in August and after a week or so staying at the house headed off for Greece with Sue on the ferry, while I finished off some commitments in Puglia. Jude and Sue spent a week in Preveza sorting out the boat before I swapped with Sue, meeting her for a few hours in Brindisi. Some other friends from Porto di Roma were also there – Graham and Nicola, to provide welcome help and distraction for the pair of them.

After I arrived in Preveza it was agreed that I would crew “Flight” with an acquaintance, Trevor, who lives in Greece and had been a great help taxiing us all by car from the nearest ferry port at Igoumenitza, 50 miles up the coast. So the day after I arrived we launched “Flight” then had a sail around escorted by Nicola and Graham in their yacht “Never Moody”. Next day we made an unsuccessful attempt to leave Preveza, but the day after we set off in the early morning of a flat calm day. “Flight” is a small yacht, just 9 metres long, with only a 10 horse power engine which pushes her along at about four miles an hour. But the weather was kind and we motored up past Paxos and Antipaxos then round the South of Corfu before heading straight for Otranto on the Italian coast. I will always remember bobbing along the Southern tip of Corfu on a beautiful sunny evening while Jude played traditional tunes on her violin with an air of deep concentration and melancholy.

 Next morning we picked up a following breeze which “Flight” enjoyed, riding up and down the following seas towards Otranto. In Greek waters we sailed without a flag, knowing that “Flight” wasn’t meant to be there. When we reached international waters we put out the US flag painted on “Flight’s” wind vane, which we left up for the rest of the trip, knowing that in Italy no one would give a sh**t about her status. That evening we motored into Otranto, one and a half days after leaving Preveza, tired and immensely relieved. The day after we sailed up the coast to Brindisi, where subsequently “Flight” would be craned onto her new home next to “La Fulica”.