3 Days Without Mrs. Captain - Diary of Utter Chaos

Having dropped off Charlotte at the airport in Kos, the crew had to prepare for three days without supervision. Luckily, essentials like starting the afternoon with frozen daiquiris while baking banana bread were a given even without a lot of sailing experience.

When we took off from the nice sheltered harbour towards Nisyros, it took the five tipsy psychologists only several minutes to pull up the sails under very patient instruction by Mr. Captain. After a smooth two hours of sailing we dropped anchor in Nisyros, thrice because we clearly are very keen on learning experiences.

We had an amazing yoga session on the beach brought to us by Vivi and featuring some shooting stars, then headed to bed early to be ready for our big plans the following day. Mr. Captain, the only remaining responsible grown-up, went on deck to calm a restless halyard in the middle of the night and was catcalled by two lovely (and very drunk) middle aged women from the neighboring boat. He sadly declined their invitation for ouzo.

The following morning, Mr. Captain continued his quest to find a welder for our broken winch handle while the children embarked on their adventure to hike to the magic volcano. While four of the children were holding their noses, Crunchy (formerly known as Franci) was getting high on sulfur after giving a lesson on cow anatomy with some archeological remains.

After a heart wrenching singing performance at the bottom of the volcano that would have made Taylor Swift proud, we had to approach a wild Greek at the café by the crater. As the true part time pirates that we are, we quickly solved the riddles of his treasure map to Nikaia. However, we then very confidently proceeded to not follow his instructions and instead take the same way back that we came from. Some snackie breaks, goat sightings and hitchhiking later we safely boarded the Goden Wind again.

Thanks to Dakos and authentic Greek Tzaziki made under supervision of our authentic French-Greek crew member, Fenia, we made it out of the harbour in one piece in spite of the strong meltemi which made putting up the sails a true adventure again. After a bumpy thirty minute tack to Gyali we dropped the anchor in a nice somewhat sheltered bay where we were once more admired by other boats for being a female crew who against all odds managed to sail and anchor successfully once again. Special credits at this point go to our 1st mate Regina who rose to the occasion and coordinated the chaos beautifully.

Pasta and rosé helped us make it through the last night without Charlotte, thanks to Sonja heroically pitting olives for half an hour. The next morning, we got an early start swimming ashore against the waves to do what children do best: giggle while collecting pumice and obsidian rocks on the beach. When we later pulled up the anchor, with the reefed main sail and a small foresail once more, Poseidon was gentle with us, and calmed the seas a bit so that we had a smooth trip back to Kos where we were finally reunited with our one and only Mrs. Captain. All is well again.

The end.