After a peaceful night upon the calm sea, we awoke to a beautiful sunny day. After breakfast we eagerly awaited the setting of the sails on the lido deck while we attempted to memorize the names of each of the four masts, 29 sails, and their functions. As Tom announced that the captain had cleared the 18 sailors to prep the sails, a silence fell over the crowd as we watched in anticipation. Suddenly, like a scene out of movie, the sailors began to climb the masts up to 140 feet high. We listened in awe while Tom narrated what each crewmember was doing as the impressive square sails were rigged high above us. We were lucky enough to climb up to the foc’scle at the bow if the ship to finish the lesson and watch the sailors set the last sail.
After cruising though the bright and crystal clear turquoise waters of the Aegean Sea, we arrived to the Cycladic island of Sifnos. This island was quite prosperous during the Archaic period (750-490 B.C.) as its mountainsides were rich with gold and silver. The people of the island were accustomed to giving a golden egg as a gift to the shrine of Apollo at Delphi each year. In the 5th century, however, one leader decided that they had given enough of their riches to Apollo and devised a plan to send a gilded rock. In return they suffered Apollo’s curse; the gold mines were mysteriously flooded and the island got its name, which means empty in ancient Greek. This event greatly affected the wealth of the island, and by the classical times, the people were forced to rely mostly on pottery production to earn a living. To this day Sifnos is known for its high quality pottery made from the vast amounts of clay found here.
We disembarked the Zodiacs at the popular beach town of Kamares where we boarded buses and began our journey, twisting and turning as we ventured further uphill through the terraced canyon until we finally arrived in the medieval capital (until 1836) of Sifnos, Kastro, which means “castle” in Venetian. We meandered through the flower-covered, white-washed houses, with their colorful doors in this walled city atop a hill over-looking the sea as we listened to Ellie and Effie’s fascinating stories of this areas 4,000-year history. We finished our tour by visiting the most popular church of the island, Seven Martyrs, which is known for its beauty and location; a small peninsula jutting into the sea below Kastro. To finish off the day of impressive scenery and history, we were introduced to the captain and the crew over drinks at our welcome cocktail party on the lido deck.
