Some two thousand six hundred years ago, the illiterate poet Homer told a long tale to avid listeners about a boat voyage. His central character, Odysseus, was returning from the Trojan War to Greece after nearly ten years away from his beautiful wife and only son. His journey back was fraught with life-threatening dangers on the Aegean Sea and punctuated by unforeseen long delays on land.
As a new boat owner some ten years ago, upon re-reading The Odyssey I was tempted to say ‘Pwah, that’s nothing!’ I had some legitimate claim to make this pronouncement as my journey towing a boat from Wales to my other house in the Greek Islands was life-threatening and peppered with delays, legal problems and a legal idea which saw me make a profit on the whole journey.
But before relaying tales of the second love of my life, there is another, earlier tale to tell. A romantic story with a happy ending full of naïve enthusiasm and that other feeling so well known to the young: Desire. So it’s from that harbour where we shall cast off.
We’d built the house on the outskirts of a quiet, small Greek village overlooking that part of The Med where Alexander the Great stopped his Fleet overnight on his way to Epidavros on the Peloponnese mountains where he would engage his second tutor Diogenes. From our balconies the 100 mile around views of sea, mountains and sky are to die for. The local fisherman sell their catch on the harbour wall and their wives sell delicious garden produce. They’re always happy to offer recipes to my wife whose faltering Greek has gotten better every year. We’d eat and drink on our broad dining terrace or in a local taverna and watch the sun going down. ‘Ah, what bliss’ you may say. But for me, there was a looming problem: I was looking at this way of life, I wasn’t living it. I very soon realised that to do that, I had to go to sea.
And because I wasn’t being careful, that’s when the desire crept in. I started asking men in the harbour about their boats. What kind of engine suited which kind of boat? Why did they build some this way and not that? All of this fed the desire to go out to sea with them until the point where, maybe not even consciously, I wanted a boat of my own. Now I’m a man who can drive cranes, bulldozers, tractors and lorries; I can also fly private aeroplanes, ride motorcycles and fix just about anything. I learned all that as a young man. But what was to serve me best on my fateful journey was that I was a Barrister for twenty odd years. However, more of that later.
When I mentioned that I was thinking about getting a boat, my Greek friends insisted that: ‘At no time, under any circumstances, for any reason, should you buy a boat in a Greek boatyard. Not without one of us with you.’ It was sage advice and I took it. Now, senior management and I were to-ing and fro-ing to the UK so I was in Edinburgh some of the time: with the internet, money in the bank and at the back of my mind, that nagging desire. So I started looking at boats. I swithered and swayed until I had a flash of brilliance: As I become more capable and experienced, which means I’ll want a bigger boat, don’t be in the buying and selling boats business in Greece. I can afford it. Buy the boat I ultimately want and grow as a captain into my one perfect boat.
What could possibly go wrong?
Well you’ve guessed it. Everything which could go wrong, did go wrong.
However, in my own defence, there was a honeymoon period of less than a year. A local man called Kyriakos who was proud of having the biggest boat in our small harbour, in typical Greek fashion of having to be top dog, offered to find me the ideal boat. And … eventually … he did. But not before many trips by boat, train, bus, cart et al to see boats which were promised to be seaworthy but which turned out to be rubbish. One had its rotten wooden hull badly covered in fibreglass. Another was a ‘cut and shut’ job which didn’t line up straight and yet another was owned by two brothers; one of whom, having discovered I was British, had jacked his price well up since our phone conversation. This search for the perfect ‘once and for all’ boat wasn’t going well. And then things took a turn for the worse. On our way back from seeing the sixth or seventh boat I took a call from my Chambers Clerk. That was unusual as we were in what we call the ‘Long Summer Vac.’
‘I’m sorry to bother you sir, but we have something of an emergency.’
‘So? What’s that got to do with me? Handle it or send it to the Admin Committee. I’m in Greece looking for a boat.’
‘Have you lost this boat, sir?’
‘No. Of course not. Never mind. Please. Get to the point.’
‘Yes, sir. I need you in the Court of Appeal on Tuesday. Ten thirty in the forenoon, sir. Fully prepared. I’ve sent a Junior to open your house and collect everything you’ll need.’
‘What? None of my cases are scheduled for a Summer Roll Hearing. What’s all this about?’
The long and the short of it was that I didn’t get back to our delightful little island that night. Instead I left Kyriakos to go home alone and made for Athens airport. On arrival in London late on a wet Thursday night, a Junior Clerk was waiting at International Arrivals with a bag containing two suits, seven shirts, underwear, three pairs of black Oxford shoes and all my court kit. We got into a taxi where she explained that the taxi behind us was loaded to the gunwales with the papers I should read before Tuesday morning. I was not looking forward to getting stuck into this case but the emergency fee was astronomical, so that was some consolation.
In my hotel room with the shower running I wasn’t even undressed when my phone rang:
‘Yassou Mister John. It’s Kyriakos. I’ve found you the perfect boat. You must come and see her. She’s beautiful. A Trexantiri. I will get her at a good price. You must come.’
Well I confess, the thought of this boat only crossed my mind once or twice during the two-day Court of Appeal Hearing, but the minute the after-court Consultation was over, I left the Junior Clerk to deal with my luggage and headed straight back to the Aegean Sea to clap eyes on this perfect boat.
