greek wooden boats & ships

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About greek wooden boats & ships

A collection of traditional greek wooden boats & ships. vessels of all types, from small caiqes to large fishing boats or even yachts

Why ??
TRADITIONAL LARGE WOODEN BOATS HAVE A STORY TO TELL
There is a picture that still haunts me. I was only a little girl at the end of 70’s, when I saw a huge heavy wooden black Greek boat, being towed early one morning into Corfu with no sails, no mast, just the hull. It was being brought in to be converted and restored, as it had been submerged for some time and had really suffered. I begged the owner to let it me go in and take a look inside. I remember an endless hold, with visible frames, an enormous deck like a town square –or it seemed to my childish eyes. I visualized it fully rigged with alleys and accommodation to sail away like an old pirate’s ship. The owners planned to register it in the fleet of Greek charter boats which, at the time , was 80-90% made up of this kind of wooden boat. It was aid at the time that this would be the largest of all tourist boats to sail in the Greek waters. However it had an unfortunate end and sank in the Corinth gulf- or some where there…-undertow, when the hawser broke in a high wind. Growing up I never managed to find out its name. I was left daydreaming, watching the flocks of traditional wooden ships ailing in our seas in the Aegean and the Ionian Sea. Caiques (Descendants of the Byzantine corvettes) big and small wooden boats that made the Greek Islands & beaches so well Know and popular, these boats that contributed the Lion’s share to what is know as qualitative tourism. This is what happened then… Recalling scattered memories and talking to older people, I was astonished by the number of boats that until recently sailed the Greek waters… Small & big boats with typically Greek names, each one with a story of its own to tell about its deeds and its contribution to tourism. Therefore , just a dry report on the numbers of the existing boats and ships would be no help, or rather it would not remind us or awaken us. So, starting with the ones that are gone for ever, those that lay in the bottom of the sea because of an “unlucky moment” or because of “a human error” or simply because it was just its fatal timing…

read the whole story :http://www.aegeotissa.gr/info.php?catid=23&cat=NAYTICAL%20PRESS