Just like a sailboat

Today we had a private sailboat charter for the afternoon/sunset tour in Oia.  This is a big deal as some of the broads are very motion sensitive and some just plain don’t want to be that close to the water, much less in it.  But they were all troopers and went along with this idea.

We met up with the transportation guy and even though we were assured that they would take our credit card payment, they didn’t.  That maybe should have been our first clue that this wasn’t necessarily going to be what was advertised.  This adventure included going to the Black, Red, and White beaches, visit the hot springs, enjoy unlimited beverages, snacks, and dinner and then finally we would watch the sunset in Oia.

It started off okay, all the broads were settled and we set sail, except we didn’t sail, this was a motor only tour.  After a few requests, we were each given a bottle of water.  We cruised right past the Red Beach and the captain said “That’s the red beach.”  Um, okay.

We “sailed” around another point, where the 400 or so year old lighthouse is located, and ended up in a small cove.  The captain told us this is where we could get off and swim, sadly this wasn’t at any of the beaches, it was just a random cove.  The good news is that everyone, I mean everyone got into the sea to float around for a bit.

Once back on board we were given a 6 oz beer or 2 oz of wine and two small bowls of snacks.  A couple of the broads were able to get one more beverage and then we were told that we couldn’t have any more because we would be drunk and they don’t have insurance. What?!?!?!

We left the cove and headed back the way we came, we asked about the Hot Springs and were told we couldn’t go there because it was too dirty and we would have to burn our swimsuits if we went into them.  Huh???

They brought us to a another cove that had several other catamarans and sailboats in it and were told we could get back into the water and that they would be preparing us dinner.  Thirty minutes later dinner was ready, basically it was pasta and some salad.  There were no beverages with dinner, not even water.

Once the sun started to set we started to head back to port and would constantly zig zag further out so that we could see the sun as it set, unfortunately this made several of the broads feel less than well.  The sunset, as they almost always are, was beautiful.

As we approached the pier the captain and crew had repeated shouting matches with other vessels as they tried to find a place to tie up.  We ended up tied off on the other side of a catamaran.  So the first hurdle was to get from the sailboat which was almost 3 feet below the deck of the catamaran.  We all managed to make that transition and then we had to get from the catamaran to the pier.   The catamaran sat about two feet below the pier and about 3 feet away from the pier.  Did I forget to mention that they had taken all of our shoes prior to getting on the sailboat and that the pier was basically all broken rock?  Again, we all managed to safely make it onto the pier, we got our shoes back and then we were off to find the shuttle back to Oia to the villa.  It may not have been what we expected, but we still made some great memories.

The epilogue to this story is the following day, some of the broads went back to the place where we booked this adventure. The sales people were very excited to hear about our trip, that is until we started to tell them what happened.  They immediately called the captain who told him that we had consumed 48 beers and 6 liters of wine. At which point Heidi said, we are a bunch of 55 year old women, if we had drank all of that we wouldn’t even be able to be here to talk to you today.  It would appear that the captain and the crew are just taking all of the alcohol for themselves, not to mention a significant amount of money and not working for it at all.

We may like each other even more...

Ta La’me peeps!