That forbidden peninsula (where time stood still)

An unusual navigation, from which a beautiful book was born. “The Odessa Sail” by Luciano Piazza. (a 50-year-old Roman who quit his job a few years ago to devote himself to sailing and writing) recounts a sailing trip (for the record, a Bavaria 350 Lagoon, 11 m long) to one of the seas less frequented by yachtsmen: the Black Sea. “I started from Poros, a small island not far from Athens,” Piazza says, “and sailed along the Aegean Sea, the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara and the Bosporus, before arriving in the Black Sea.

I have tried to recount both the preparation for the trip and the stages to get to Odessa, with all the excitement that such a long route can offer, including going up the Danube for a short distance. Then, slowly homeward, traveling back the long way to return to Rome.” The book is having great success and was awarded the Carlo Marincovich Prize for Sea Literature. We publish the last of three excerpts that Luciano selected for us (the first can be found HERE, the second HERE).

THE FORBIDDEN PENINSULA

It smells of parched earth the determined breeze that invades Piazza Grande from the south and swells its weary sails. The meltemi, the raging wind that sweeps across Greece in the summer months marinating the sea in white, dies down before it reaches this far northeastern corner of the Aegean and gives way to fiery, dry air.

The sun burns on the skin-although already decidedly tanned-and its rays radiate such intense heat that it is impossible to walk barefoot on the red-hot teak deck. Below deck, the sweltering heat takes your breath away, and the decisive lapping of the waves on the hull, enhanced by the boat acting as a sounding board, gives an illusory and frustrating feeling of coolness.

The meltemi is the bogeyman that keeps many sailors away from the Aegean but is actually more of an easing than a difficulty. True, it blows hard, but averaging around twenty to twenty-five knots, thirty knots at the most, an intensity that sailors must be able to cope with and handle calmly. The times it blows the hardest is always announced a few days in advance by all weather forecast sites. Surprises are therefore very rare, provided, of course, that one knows in advance where a mountain or strait causes a cathabatic effect or acceleration due to the Venturi effect.

Conversely, knowing that the wind is coming from the same direction every day is a certainty that makes it much easier to plan a sail or locate a safe anchorage on the chart. The distances between the islands, then, are modest, which means that in case of difficulty you always have a close quarters within a few hours of sailing. And the sea, given the small size of the Aegean, never rises abruptly in a really worrisome way, thus leaving time to find shelter.

To appreciate the meltemi, which is certainly annoying when you are at anchor or have to moor in a crowded harbor, just take a trip to the Cyclades on a windless day: the mugginess is terrible and gives no escape, the air is still, and everything turns into a giant quagmire.

I am really exhausted from the sun when we finally drop anchor in the wonderful setting of Ormos Platy, a wide, deserted and very sheltered bay on the Akti Peninsula, the easternmost of the three “fingers” that make up Chalkidiki.

The warm-tone light of the sunset and the still surface of the sea make for an enchanted atmosphere, lighting up the heart as well as the rocks on the shore, and fully repaying the effort made to get here. A plate of linguine with mussels, which Roberto patiently picked from the bottom of the roadstead, and a bottle of frozen Müller-Thurgau that had been lying in the refrigerator for weeks were a fitting end to the day.

Ormos Platy is within the Gulf of Ierissos, where the Persians, during the 5th century B.C. wars against the Greeks, dug a channel -known as the Xerxes Canal, after the name of their king-that cut through the isthmus of the peninsula and prevented them from sailing around Mount Athos.

Having previously lost about three hundred ships in that stormy sea, they preferred to spend three years digging it out rather than face it again. In the following centuries the canal was closed again-in fact, until recently archaeologists even doubted that it ever existed-but today there really is no reason to fear that route; and it is precisely to travel it that we are here. I turn on the fonda light and go to sleep.

Mount Athos is perhaps the place of highest spirituality for Orthodox Christianity in its various confessions. On this promontory of about three hundred square kilometers are twenty secular monasteries where about two thousand monks of the Greek, Serbian, Russian, Romanian, and Bulgarian faiths reside, living distinctly apart from each other because each of these churches (in the sense of a religious entity, not a house of worship) is autocephalous, that is, it does not refer to any authority outside itself and in common with the others.

It is a place out of time, a shred of the Byzantine empire that has survived to the present day and rejects any form of modernity, whether material or social, preserving itself as a place devoted exclusively to prayer and meditation.

There are no roads, no electricity, there are only a few telephone lines, and no land connections with the rest of Greece; one gets there exclusively by sea, by a small ferry that leaves from Ouranopoli, subject to written permission from the archbishop of Athens or Thessaloniki and the prior availability of a monastery to receive the guest. Because, needless to say, there are no hotels.

Time is also different here: unlike the rest of the Orthodox world, which adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1923, albeit five hundred years late, the Julian calendar, now thirteen days behind the solar cycle, still applies on this peninsula. The days are marked with the ancient “Byzantine hour,” varying in length according to the seasons.

In addition to monks, many hermits live on the Mount Athos peninsula, perched in caves and huts perched on the cliffs overlooking the sea. They live off the leftovers thrown to them from the monasteries, which they have to contend with the seagulls, risking starvation if the birds are quicker than they are. Finally, there are some wandering monks who permanently wander the paths around the nearly two-thousand-meter-high mountain, begging for food and spending the night in makeshift shelters.

Those who go to Mount Athos generally do so because they are attracted by its aura of asceticism, because they are in search of a spirituality that has disappeared in the hectic Western society, which is increasingly focused on money and consumption. The same reasons that lead some to become infatuated with Eastern religions and philosophies, perhaps revisiting them to suit their own taste, just as Chinese cuisine has been adapted to the European palate in restaurants in Europe.

This is not my case. It is not because spirituality does not appeal to me, but because when it is tied in double-strand to religion it has the irrational flavor of mysticism or, even worse, liturgy. I could cheat and say that I am here because it is just another waypoint along the route, but the truth is that a place that has remained unchanged, identical to the way it was a thousand years ago, is a must-see attraction for me.

EXTRACT FROM.
The Odessa Sail
by Luciano Piazza
196 pages

SYNOPSIS: An unusual destination, a little-navigated and little-known sea, yet rich in history and culture. A journey of discovery, a search for an elsewhere beyond the planetary standardization of tourist destinations. A long sea voyage aboard a small sailboat, confronting the daily difficulties of navigation and border bureaucracy and continually processing the thousands of stimuli and questions that such a journey brings. Six months and three thousand miles told in a lively, literate and often humorous style. Rich in historical insights, reflections, and sea life. Preface by Simone Perotti.

YOU CAN PURCHASE IT HERE