a Dodecanese chronicle
Day Five
Symi → Pserimos · the Dodecanese
8.18am · “Mark takes on the Instagram steps” — Beck’s pick for the day’s hero
Forty-one photographs and the longest run of the trip: Symi at eight in the morning, Pserimos by four in the afternoon, fifty-odd miles of the Dodecanese in between. Before the lines came off, Mark took on the white staircase that Beck has been calling the Instagram steps, Maria photographed breakfast in three courses, and the custard-and-cinnamon pastries came aboard from a bakery counter on the quay. Then the day went to sea: backgammon lessons on the aft deck, a sunbed on the bow, the lighthouse on the tip of the Turkish peninsula going past at 12.40, lunch at three, and an anchorage under a bare brown hill with a paddleboard on the beach. By nine the glasses were up. Beck filed Symi twice more in the Black Book, and, for the octopus, Chalki.
Mark’s 8.16 is one of the women beside the sponge-diver mannequin outside the shop on the quay, arms out, the brass helmet beside her. A minute later Beck had him on the staircase — a white run of steps straight up the rock between two stone walls, a figure two-thirds of the way to the top — and at 8.18 she took it again from the bottom while Mark, at the same minute, turned round and photographed the harbour from where he stood: the yellow houses, the moored boats, a fig tree over the wall. His 8.19 is the whole basin from up there, terracotta and ochre stacked to the ridge, the masts in a row below. Mark takes on the Instagram steps, Beck wrote at eleven, and put the 8.18 frame in the Hero folder.
Maria did the table at 8.29 in three frames — eggs sunny-side up on a white platter, smoked salmon on the blue-and-white plate, and a stack of pancakes under a spoonful of sauce with a bowl of apricots and grapes behind — and Mandy took the whole spread at 8.32, everything laid out on the grey cloth. At 8.49 Maria went back for the diver in his helmet, and at 8.51 she was at the bakery counter across the quay: a woman in orange with a bag over her arm and the baker in his gloves at the tray of loaves, then the cabinet itself, swirls and slabs of pastry with the prices on cards. The sign on the counter says Akoumi — the Symian traditional product. By 8.58 there were four at the saloon table, seen from the stern, and at 9.19 Maria’s last frame of Symi is the town going small behind the transom.
The morning at sea belongs to Beck. At 10.43 a backgammon board is held up to the camera, pink and green triangles and the checkers set; at 10.47 the pastries from the quay are on a plate on the saloon table with a starfish beside them — the best pastries (custard & cinnamon donuts) from Symi, she wrote, and made it a hero pick; and at 10.51 there are three frames of the lesson itself, four of them round the aft-deck table with the flowers in the middle, the board between the two women, Rod and Craig in the saloon. Backgammon lessons on our long sailing day back to Kos. Sheila’s two are the middle of the passage: the sunbed on the bow at 12.29 with a pair of white trousers stretched out on it and the sea going to the horizon, and at 12.40 the lighthouse on its crag — the light at Knidos, on the very tip of the Turkish peninsula, which the boat passed on its starboard side about an hour out. Mandy’s 2.34 and 2.36 are one of the crew in a headset on the transom step, at work over the side.
Everything written on Day Five, in the order it arrived. The log has added nothing.
Lunch came at 3.05, in Maria’s two frames: a square of baked pasta under its crust, a Greek salad heavy with tomato and red onion, and a bowl of tzatziki. At 3.52 Mandy caught Mark at the saloon table with the phone to his ear and his head back laughing, twice, once with Craig across from him — listening to Craig’s funny nicknames youtube, she explained, and made both frames hero picks. By 4.12 the boat was in: Maria’s frame is one of the men at the bow rail with the anchor line running down to a cove of clear water and red rock, and at 4.16 another sits at the stern with a bare brown hillside behind him. The island is Pserimos, the small one between Kos and Kalymnos, and this was its western bay.
Maria’s 5.02 is the low sun laid across the water in a silver road with a swimmer’s head in it. Mark went ashore: at 5.07 the paddleboard lies on a shingle beach with someone swimming off it, then the same beach with the board alone; at 5.10 he had climbed the hill behind and photographed Serenissima at anchor in the cove from above, and at 5.24 the whole bay from higher still, three boats on the water and the hills of Kalymnos beyond. Maria’s 5.54 and Mandy’s 5.55 are the paddleboarder coming back in, upright, in a green cap. At 8.10 Beck screenshotted the chart — the blue dot on Pserimos, the Turkish coast across the strait — and at 8.57 Mandy took the two evening frames: four in a row with their glasses raised, then three, Rod in the cap, everyone lit from the side.
