Winds of Milos

No cliff diving on this day.

Beautiful Waves

We visited the beach at Sarakiniko on a very windy day.  The sea was too rough for cliff diving
but we swam way out to the bigger waves.  Got some pretty good splashes and
mouths full of salt water before I called for enough.

Peaceful Pollonia

Modern Ruins

Think Romeo and Juliet

What we needed, our instructor said, was a calm day to start our wind-surfing lessons.  Our playbook was full.  We had things scheduled.  It was our only day to start.  And it was windy.  We took full responsibility for any difficulties.  And we learned a few things...how to get up on our board, how to lift the sail.

The wind had the upper hand, though.  Everything seemed to be going well as we worked through the step by step instructions, until a gust of wind would grab the sail and take it out of our hands.  We tried again, and found ourselves attempting to sail outside the barrier buoys sooner than we expected.  There was a good bit of drifting taking place while we wrestled with wind and sail.   Interfering with the area for swimming was off limits, so that meant we had to jump off our board and swim back to the marked off area.  It seemed like we got a few chances to see how the sail worked during the quickly passing hour, and then we realized that although we weren't quite at the level of the wind surfers we saw sailing across the Mediterranean Sea, we sure wanted to do it again.  Yes, we signed up for another class.  From the puzzled look on the owner's face, I guess we weren't the typical wind-surfer type, but who knows what he was thinking.  We hoped for a day when the sea was more calm, and got it.  

Lesson two was about learning to turn the sail and it took all of the hour to practice that move.  Wobbling around our boards while we attempted to make the turns meant to our instructors that we needed more instruction, maybe another demonstration.  Fully concentrating, we watched the experts do it slowly and easily, hoping we our turn would come soon, and then in the attempts to perform the task, found ourselves outside the buoys, confused about how to get the wind in our sails.  A young boy about 10 or 11 years old was taking lessons just before us and was on his 10th day.  He was also working within the buoy zone, which seemed rather limited, but it was clear the only way we were going to get out of the buoy zone was to learn how to sail with control. By the end of the second day, the instructor was sure we wouldn't be back.  We signed up for two more hours.  

Lesson three:   Changing directions and handling the sail, how to place the feet, the direction to look - a set of five moves.  We all found these challenging and difficult.  The younger man,  the son, was especially determined that we stay in the buoy zone and each time we got out of it, called us to drop our sail and come to shore.  There we had to explain what happened.  This was somewhat hard to know, but it seemed to help him give us more instruction or do another demonstration.  Our last lesson ended in broad smiles, so we must have managed to meet expectations at last.  Fun and frustrating to get so far - we think we want to do it again somewhere, someday.