On board S/Y Bushido
We’re sailing off Fiscardo, Kefalonia, a corruption of the name of Robert Guiscard, the Norman invader who met stiff resistance when he attacked and took Kefalonia in 1082. Guiscard died of the fever on board his ship off the town which bears his name in 1085. Fiscardo is the best-kept secret among the Greek isles. It’s a charming little port, cleaner than a Swiss clinic, friendly and very, very green. It lies among lentisk bushes, cypress and pine trees, and is on the northern tip of the island. In my 50 years of sailing, I have yet to see such clean and isolated beaches and so little tourism. The only stinkpot in the bay belongs to Yianna Angelopoulos, the lady who pulled off the Athens Olympics of 2004, but although I spotted at least three jet-skis in the bowels of her boat, none has emerged to ruin the tranquil evenings once back in the harbour.
Yianna and her husband Theodore asked me not to advertise Fiscardo. But in view of the fact that the Speccie is picking up all my expenses — five crew, eight guests — it would be unfair to the readers. Kefalonia lies just to the north of my grandfather’s birthplace, Zante, Fiore di Levante, as it’s known, but, unlike Zante, which went modern about 20 years ago, the Kefalonians have resisted mass tourism and the hell which comes with it. Mind you, there are tourists, but mainly those who bareboat tiny sailboats and explore the hundreds of creeks and bays that surround this greenest of Greek islands.
What I don’t understand are the Greeks. Mention the Ionian islands and certain people make an onanist gesture, which in the land where onanism was invented means it’s no fun. ‘Mykonos,’ they gush, ‘Paros’, or, as my sainted editor Liz dared to suggest, ‘Andros’. What rubbish. Andros is the most inhospitable island except for Devil’s Island in its heyday. In Andros, foreigners are not welcome and are actively encouraged to move on. I have never set foot on it, despite the fact that the Goulandrises and Embirikoses come from there. I suppose it’s because the Andriotes were always sailors, and, having left their wives and girls back home, the last thing they needed was an old Taki type to sail in and start servicing them.
So Andros has an excuse. But Mykonos? It is windswept, dirty, the natives are terribly rude, crude and dishonest, and the island has a higher rate of full-blown Aids than Fire Island. There are more queens on Mykonos than there are tax avoiders in Monte Carlo, and that’s really understating it. Once upon a time, when I got wrecked every night, Mykonos was the place for action. But it has outlived its use. Too many ghastly types on stinkpots, too many sleazy nightclubs, too many Russians and too many of the wrong Greeks.
But back to the Ionian Isles. Needless to say, they are recently Greek. From 1864, to be exact. We who come from these parts view the rest of the Hellenes as Afro-Greeks, people who spent 400 years under the Turk and missed something called the Renaissance. Which we did not. Under Venice, France and England, we developed a civilised way of life which can still be felt to this day, and it was many Ionians (Taki family included) who made up the Filiki Etairia (Society of Friends), which paved the way for and declared the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence in 1821. William Gladstone himself visited the islands in 1856 to report on the situation — we wanted to join Greece — and the great man tried his best to accommodate us, but Parliament did not want to hear. Finally we got our wish, but, as my father used to say jokingly to other Greeks, never to a foreigner, ‘It was a black day when we left England and joined the Turks.’
So much for history, however. Bushido gives me more pleasure than any other boat I’ve owned, because she’s comfy, beautiful to look at, and has a good feel to her. The only thing I regret is owning her so late in my life. With a boat like Bushido I could have been a contender back in the Sixties, not to mention the Fifties. (I probably woulda died of the clap, but never mind.) Now I sit on her like an aging Buddha, girls in their bikinis come whizzing by and wave, and every night I have a dinner party for eight or more, and that’s it. Two nights ago I ventured out, got drunk, brought some young people back on board, and it only finished when the mother of my children heard us and came up and threw everyone out. Not a very nice way to end an evening, n’est-ce pas?
Next week I will tell you all about a royal scandal which is a real scandal, a travesty of justice, and a vendetta all in one, featuring my friend and Gstaad neighbour Victor Emmanuel of Savoy, the pretender to the Italian throne, who is held under house arrest on an order issued by some crooked little judge from the south of Italy, who obviously saw red when Victor was allowed back to the land of pasta.
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