Pork Chops at Jackie O’s

Skorpios Island, Greece

On our fifth night in Greece, we sat down to dinner in our private cove at Jackie’s favorite beach house. Jackie is Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis and we were anchored off Skorpios, a private island of the Onassis dynasty and the wedding venue of Jackie and Ari. There is no public access to Skorpios, but the view from Berkeley East was lush and lovely. Onassis imported more than 200 varieties of trees and planted the island as a park, requiring full-time staff to maintain it. Our pork chops were from Sicily, the Pinot Noir was from Oregon, with this beautiful setting in Greece’s Ionian Sea, it was quite an elegant pairing.

Every year we make a cruising plan and every year we change it. That’s one of the wonderful things about this lifestyle; it’s flexible. This year, while we are a little behind schedule due to weather, we are in Greece, which was, and still is, “The Plan” for 2013. After a few minutes of excitement without steerage, we cleared BE’s rudder of whatever we had caught, and the two-day passage from Sicily was uneventful, bright with a full moon and very peaceful, minus any boat traffic.

Being settled after a long passage is always nice, but relaxing at anchor in Ormos Sivolta on the island of Lefkada was especially rewarding because we are finally on the path that we have attempted every year since we came to the Med, cruising through Greece to Turkey.

The Greeks are very nice people with, as we discovered, very strict regulations where boaters are concerned. The process to check into the country took over three hours and interactions with nine different people at the Port Authority, Police Station and Customs. While extremely frustrating at times, we walked away feeling good about the experience and very convinced that the Greeks really mean business. It is difficult to understand how a country that seems so meticulous about procedure could fall into in such a dire financial situation.

And as we walked through Lefkada Town it seemed obvious that the crisis was not yet over in Greece. What was once a busy town is now quiet. The same was true of our stops on Meganisi and Ithaca. We thought perhaps the calm was due to the cool weather or the earliness of the season, but boarded-up businesses and empty tables at the many restaurants told another story.

Still, no one can deny the amazing beauty of the Ionian Islands. While earthquakes destroyed most evidence of the history, the islands are famous as the homeland of Homer’s Odysseus and offer great sailing, beautiful beaches and dramatic, mountainous landscape.

As we enjoyed our meal at Jackie O’s, we appreciated the solitude, as we know this paradise will soon once again be bustling with activity.

Greek: So far, most of the people we have encountered in Greece speak some English. Our Greek translation guide says that it is an easy language to pick up – ha ha! The men at the marine store tried to teach us a few words and laughed out loud as we repeated what they said. A woman in the phone store said that she spoke “a little” English. After twenty minutes we realized that she meant she knew two English words – “a” and “little.” Translations are also a bit of a challenge.