TYW Day 5: Dripping Springs in Greece

We used to have this cove on our lake, Grand Lake, called Dripping Springs. It was a long skinny cove, about a mile long, and on any given weekend in the summertime, you could pull in here to find at least 30 boats tied up together ready for a day of laying out, drinking, pumping out loud rap music and jumping off cliffs. On holiday weekends, especially the Fourth of July, the Drip became daytime resting spot for several hundred boats, tied up to one another. A huge floating night club, operating during the day. So it wasn’t quite that, but same concept. Today we were sailing back to Sex Island, AKA Dokos (Δοκός). There is no town on Dokos...

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TYW Day 4: Sorry, Please, Thank You!

Someone stole our dinghy engine. Well, that’s the story at least. Iggy and Mitch were out late driving around in circles with some boobies and the next thing we know it’s the morning and our dinghy has no engine. We’re blaming it on a boat of dirty Spaniards who hate us. They have this amazingly awesome black wood deck boat and they think they are better than us. Regardless of the fact that they might be, we instantly hate...

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TYW Day 3: The Night I Realized I Could Never Go Lesbo

Our engine broke. I have no idea what actually happened. I think we were leaking oil. Or something. But not at an alarmingly fast rate. So we were required to either sail, or use our engine but to go no faster than 4 knots. Today. It took us a freaking long time to go where we were going. But we left early, so it wasn’t so bad. We also got to sail in and around several Greek islands which made for a bit...

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TYW Day 2: The Day We Learned to Sail

Our boat, the Freja (which for some reason just reminded me of Franzia, I’m not really sure why, but given the amount of “slap the bag” we played on board, I guess it was appropriate) is a 40 ft Bavaria. That’s seriously everything I know about it. It’s a boat, it floats, it has sails, an engine and a place where we can cook, sit and sleep. Yay for people who know nothing about sailing but still...

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TYW Day 1: Sit Around and do Nothing

We planned this day all wrong. Call it a bit of Christmas Eve jitters, but we were awake and out of the hotel as fast as possible on Saturday morning in an attempt to arrive at the port in Lavrio (Λαύριο) and get our trip started off immediately. What we didn’t know, is that the skippers are required to get on your boat, and our skipper wasn’t told to be in Lavrio until 4 PM. Cue 6 hours of sitting on the dock...

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Meet a Gypsy, Love a Gypsy, Pay a Gypsy

Cheeks and the more obvious Abs. Those have pretty much been my consistent nicknames since forever. Cheeks a variant on Chica, coming from an odd encounter with my high school football coach. Interpret that how you will. Abs. Well. If you can’t figure that one out. You’re stupid. Of course there have been others, or people specific names. Emily and Jennifer call me Gabbey or Gabbeygail. My guy friends...

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A Little Yacht Week Disclaimer

Since I will be posting a shit ton of stuff in the next couple weeks. I want to spend a little bit of time thanking the people who made everything so great. First off, I did not take all of the photos in the Yacht Week posts. I have republished them with permission from my dear Yacht Week participants as seen in the following group picture of our crew. From Left to Right: Alisa Greene, Jon Farr, Mitch Hall...

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Yacht Week 2011: Greece Week 31

I will attempt now to explain to you what I willingly subjected myself to for 8 days on my most recent Greece holiday. You know those vacation packages set up for families where you rent a mobile home for a week and you are given a map with several destinations through, say, the Rocky Mountains, that you should visit and each night you meet up with all the other families that are driving around in their rented...

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