The Blue Mosque, Istanbul, Turkey

Sailing Faith: The Long

Way Home

Corfu, Greece

The Gregg A Granger

Family Adventure

Tombs carved in the mountain near Dalyan Turkey

Israel

Our visit is about a year and a half after elections that the United States lobbied for.  Palestinians elected Hamas, against Israel’s and the United States’ wishes.  To reward the newly acquired democratic principles of the Palestinian people, the United States helped Israel freeze the flow of goods, services, tourism and especially money into the territory.  It worked, and Bethlehem is sad.

Greece

We’re moored against the quay in the town of Kalymnos.  Five meters from our transom is the main waterfront road and across that is a small kiosk on the sidewalk with bars, and internet cafés and restaurants surrounding it.  Young Greek men like loud motorcycles, trucks service the restaurants and bars; a small ferry next to us is cleaning their hull, and using a noisy compressor to pump air to the diver.  Something in the road is covered by a steel plate that goes chrah-lunk-lunk every time a car drives over it.  The buildings are all three floors by European standards, four by American, and situated facing the harbor, reflecting the noise our way.

A Storm

I never learned to like rain too much, and I like high winds even less, but lightning scares me.  We do the only thing we can think of as this system engulfs us.  We pray, “Dear God.  Save us, save our boat, and don’t let us get hit by lightning.”  He handles it for us on all three accounts.

It’s an interesting storm that wraps its arms around us, and circles us, leaving a deepening blue sky over our heads; a blue patch that diminishes as the rains and lightning close in on us from all sides.  We reduce sails on its approach, and are trying under motor to stay inside this blue patch of sky, and away from the lightning.  I’m hand steering from the helm, in gusts up to 50 knots, with Faith taking a beating from the confused seas, when I feel something in the steering linkage snap, and the wheel simply turns free.  The ability to steer is one of those things that we had really grown to appreciate, and it wasn’t long before we missed it.

I tell Emily and Amanda to get the emergency tiller from below the salon settee, while I try to figure out what to do next.  After playing around for a few minutes with the autopilot, I am able to coax it into steering Faith.

Rome

Gibraltar

Kalymnos, Greece, the sponge diving center of the Mediterranean

Israel's Seperation Wall, here, between Jerusalem and Bethlehem