Yesterday we decided to get some use out of some more gear we have been lugging around the world with us, our kayaks. Eric has used his twice and Christi has used hers only once.

We paddled through the canal to the ocean on the west side of the island, and then followed the coast around the island back to the marina. It was a nice day, perfect for a paddle. It was 2.2 nautical miles around the island, so it was a good workout without being too long of a ride. The island looks pretty from the sea. Here is a shot of the fort/castle looking structure on the southern tip of Ortygia that we have mentioned a couple of times.

We returned to Kosmos to find a Nordhavn 47, Bluewater, tied up next to us. The owners, Milt and Judy, are friends of ours and we had been coordinating this rendezvous with them over e-mail for the last few days. It was great to see them. They were one of the many more experienced boaters that helped us with picking options for Kosmos and with understanding what we were getting ourselves into with the full time boating life.

We visited with them for a while, and then Eric and Christi took the bikes back into Ortygia to see a historic building that we had somehow previously missed. It is an ancient Greek temple devoted to the goddess Athena that was converted to a church after the spread of Christianity. From the outside, it looks like your standard baroque church, at first glance, anyway. If you look more closely, though, and try to visually strip away the things that are obviously baroque, you can start to see what the Greek temple underneath must have looked like. The Doric columns still loom large.

Inside, you get an even stronger sense of what the original temple probably looked like. The fat, fluted columns are scarred from the centuries of use. The stone walls in between the columns are filled with little alcoves that probably housed the assorted gods. The ceiling is tall and flat. There are several interior stone walls with a series of arched doors and windows that separated the outer and main sanctuaries. Christi has always wished she could see a Greek temple intact, rather than as a ruin, and this is probably the closest she’ll ever get. What is interesting is that in several small areas of the church, they went to town with the baroque artistry, but in other areas they left it quite plain. Of course, the baroque veneer is spectacular, with painted walls and ceilings, fancy chandeliers, sculpture, stained glass, and so forth. It looks like in the baroque remodel they added a huge, fancy dome over the main altar, and added vaulted ceilings in another room. The marble floors have some beautiful tombstones set into them. The first shot is of a section that is obviously from the original Greek temple, the second is a section that has had the baroque facelift.

In the evening we went out to dinner with Milt and Judy and had a great visit.

We have forgotten to mention that Kosmos is a spectacle. We have never been docked in such an open public place before, and there are a lot of people constantly walking by. Lots of people stop and stare at Kosmos, and if we are on board, stare at us. It is actually kind of disconcerting and we don’t like leaving the back door open anymore since people are always peeping in. Once Bluewater pulled in, the gawking magnified.

Also, we wanted to mention that the tap water here is disgusting. They desalinate and the water has a very strong water softener taste to it. Our seagull water filter normally strains out everything yucky and the filtered water is normally always good, even if the tap water it came from is not. Our seagull filter isn’t doing anything to improve the flavor at all. There isn’t a problem with our filter. The tap water is already filtered via the desalinization process, but they must add some kind of chemical to help the process that is causing the off taste.

Today we planned to leave for Malta at sunset. We went for a short kayak ride and a short bike ride, wanting to get as much use out of our toys as possible before putting them away again. Honestly, the reason they get so little use is because it isn’t worth the effort to take them out unless we will use them multiple times, and we rarely stay in one place long enough for multiple use. We went through our normal get ready to go routine, said our goodbyes to Chad, Milt and Judy, and pulled out of Siracusa shortly after sunset. The trip to Malta took less than 12 hours. Conditions were fabulous. Light winds, calm seas, and excellent speed at 6.8 average at 1700 RPM. We have found that we usually get good speed when the seas are calm. We think the effort of climbing up and down the waves significantly slows us down.