It is amazing how quickly we organize our lives to become predictable and routine. A boat is kind of a miniature island on which a society of two people live, leaving it only occasionally for cross-cultural experiences in port. Every morning now, when the sunlight starts shining through the plexiglass hatch above our berth, about …
Volos is beautiful. Janet and I have come to realize that, if you need to fix up a boat, wait on Greek and American paperwork, and prepare for a Mediterranean voyage, this is probably the best place you could possibly be. Volos is due north of Athens about 300 kilometers. A small city of 112,000, …
Another week in Volos, Greece, on the boat that someday soon will be christened “SailingActs.” Mike Hostetler, worn out and limping after four intense days of desperately sanding, scrubbing, sweating, fixing, cleaning, in order to get the boat in the kind of shape that Janet’s first impression would be positive, left on Monday, May 17. …
One week of First Century working conditions (no hot showers for instance, and a 5 minute walk to the nearest toilet) here in Volos, Greece on the “Aldebaran,” the boat which is to take us on the routes of Paul. This transition from “Aldebaran” to “SailingActs” is full of surprises (finding arcane instruction manuals for …
On May 6 I will be flying to Athens, then hopping a bus to Volos where the “Aldebaran” – soon to be rechristened “SailingActs” – is floating on the waterfront. For 10 days I will be working on the boat: fixing, oiling, scrubbing, replacing, cleaning out years of accumulation from the previous owner. Hopefully when …