It was early September and I had visited some friends who had bought a lovely house in the old section of Rhodes town. I’m generally centered in the Leros area, an island about 100 miles north of Rhodes. The joy of the Aegean is that you’re never far from the next island.
I had gone from Rhodes to Nissiros, an island with an active volcano, in a few day-hops. My next stop would be an anchorage on the southwestern side of Kos. It’s a large bay called Kamarai and is known to be a windy place as the north wind accelerates over the mountain ridge running east-west that is Kos, and comes down hard on the back of the island. While it may be windy, when you anchor a hundred meters from the beach in sand, there are no waves and the bottom is ‘Velcro’; the anchor never drags.
Going north in the Aegean usually means going dead into the wind and a sailboat requires at least a 45 degree angle to the wind to move. So you can either zig-zag, called tacking, or you can motor. I stopped being a purist long ago and when I can’t sail I generally turn on the motor. Especially when I’m alone, which is most of the time.
By the time I was three miles from my anchorage, the wind was blowing twenty-five knots, spray was flying over almost the whole length of the boat and I was hiding under the dodger. The sea was mostly white and I was the only fool out there. Unlike macho sailors, I don’t enjoy big winds or big seas. Bragging rights “...the seas were four meters and the wind hit fifty knots, I was surfing at ten knots...” is blah-blah to me. I like bobbing at anchor in warm, clear water off a sandy beach, having a sundowner with an intimate friend best. None of those conditions looked likely at this point.
I scanned the horizon for obstructions or traffic and I spotted what looked like flotsam about a half mile ahead of me. Sometimes the wind blows good stuff off the beach. A kayak would be a nice addition to my toy collection. I grabbed the binoculars. It looked like a windsurfing board. Probably a rental, this bay was a windsurfer’s mecca. I would return it to it’s owner if it was marked. I changed course a bit to point to the board. As I got closer, I saw that it wasn’t just a board, but that there was a person holding onto it waving at me. Someone who undoubtedly wasn’t good at it, and got picked up by the wind as it increased away from the beach. I slowed the boat down and positioned it so that the surfer was at the stern where I have swim platform. A mass of blonde hair indicated that I was about to rescue a female tourist.
“Do you speak English?” I yelled.
“Yes,” she replied.
One hurdle crossed. No surprise; the world speaks our language, we rarely speak anything but our language. I threw her a floating rope I had prepared and told her to tie it to the board. She was shivering as she made an insecure knot. Skip it, I told myself, it’ll hold.
I lowered the swim ladder. She grabbed it and tried to pull herself up without success. I was worried that the boat would hit her as we bounced in the waves. I told her to put her feet in the bottom rung when the bouncing ladder hit a low point in the water and hold on tight. I grabbed under her arms and landed her on the platform like a beached whale. She was crying. I let her recover for a few moments and helped her to crawl into the safe cockpit. She lay still on the floor.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I am tired,” she said with a strong accent that I guessed to be Russian.
“You must be cold, take off your wetsuit. Are you OK to do that?”
She nodded.
I reached back to the swim platform and got my deck shower hose, setting it to warm water. She was now in a bikini and I managed to suppress my usual lecherous thoughts. I handed her the shower, told her to rinse off while I went below to get a towel and some dry clothes. I gave her the towel, pair of shorts and a t-shirt and went back to driving the boat to the anchorage, pretending not to look at her as she removed her bikini top and then the bottom to dry off and put on the clothes. She had lovely round and firm breasts with small nipples that were pointing up. Breasts are definitely my thing. Her pussy was shaved except for a narrow V of dense hair that proved her to be a natural blonde. Her pussy lips seemed to pout, definitely another weakness of mine. I’m a weak man.
She didn’t seem particularly modest, and I’m sure she saw that I was pretending not to look. When she was dressed I turned to her. “My name is Fred, what’s yours?” I asked.
“Anya. Thank you for saving me.”
“I am very happy to have been there. Go below and warm up. We’ll talk when we are anchored.”
The boat had been completely closed up; when spray flies, the hatches are battened down. The motor had warmed the cabin and I thought she’d be okay after a few minutes. She had probably suffered a mild case of hypothermia, but she seemed fully lucid and the shivering had eased.
I anchored closer in than I normally would, figuring on having to dinghy in to return Anya to whomever she was with on Kos.
When I was happy that Comfortably Numb – I know it doesn’t flow and that nobody native to the Mediterranean rim can pronounce it, but I still like my boat’s name - was secure, I went below to find the girl curled up on a settee with a blanket she had pulled from the shelf over my berth.
“Sorry I took blanket, I’m cold,” she said.
“Relax. Dr. Fred has just what you need.”
I put enough milk for two hot chocolates on the stove and prepared the cups. Five minutes later Anya sat up and cradled the hot cup. She took a sip and smiled for the first time.
“Thank you very, very much, you are nice.”
She had large white teeth and a wonderful smile as the cloud of blond hair flowed around her pretty face. I doubted that she was much more than eighteen and, as a rule, I try to behave with any woman under thirty – unless, as once happened, I get stalked, then the minimum age drops to whatever the legal age is; I’m willing to round up. I have no shame.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I’m not very good at this and I fell off my board. Could not get back on in the waves and pushed off by the wind. Very scared, I thought I’m dead. Can I use your phone? I want to call my mother, she is probably worried.”
I got my phone and handed it to her.
“It’s an expensive call. I make short. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
She dialed a number and after a few seconds I could hear the female voice on the other line was agitated. After less than a minute, she disconnected.
“My mother just found out I am not home and she very worried.”
“I can understand that. What did you tell her?”
“That I would call her when you take me ashore so she can pick me up with car.”
“You live here?” I asked.
“No, we’re on vacation, but we stay at friends with car.”
“Where are you from?” I asked.
“Odessa,” she said.
“Lovely city.”
“You know?” she said.
“I was there five years ago for a few weeks, in the marina, near the Potemkin Steps.”
There I decided that in my next life I would go to the Ukraine to find my partner. The percentage of beautiful young women was completely disproportionate. I still don’t know why. Anya was no exception.
“Are you here with your parents?”
“Just my friend and my mother, my father, he gone.”
“Gone? He died?” I asked indiscreetly.
“No, gone. Woman.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Why are you on a boat?” she asked, “where is your woman?”
I told her my tale. She was surprised that I had no ‘woman’. She thought it would be lonely without company and expressed sympathy that I was living a celibate life. I assured her that occasionally I met ladies that provided temporary celibacy relief. At this point she was clearly recovered and I felt free to return to my lecherous thoughts. I should have given her one of my semi-Emanuelle t-shirts, with the big armpits suitable for boob-watching, that I keep just for these situations. She hadn’t seemed inhibited in the cockpit, but those were extenuating circumstances.
I couldn’t resist: “How old are you, Anya?” I asked matter-of-factly.
“Nineteen,” she replied.
“Are you in school?”
“I’m studying to be an architect, like my mother,” she replied.
“Who’s your friend?” I asked.
“Her name is Tatiana, she was a student with me, just finished, her parents own the house,” she replied.
We finished our hot chocolates and I wanted to get her ashore and resettled before it got dark.
She asked to see the boat. I gave her the full tour. I love my boat and am a sucker for anyone that compliments her or that knows about sailboats. She told me that she had grown up on a lake not too far from Kiev, and that her family had a couple of small boats. Then her father left her mother with a twelve-year old Anya for a svelte young woman. There wasn’t enough money for the house on the water and they moved into a nice rental apartment in Kiev. She missed her sailing dinghy, windsurfing was a diversion. Then she came over, put her arms around me and hugged me. I thought that it was more a gesture of relief than one of intimacy. I held her and gave her a hug. I could feel her firm breasts against my chest. This was a position I was happy to hold for a while, but not a good one for discretion! I’m sure she felt my cock stirring.
“Call your mom,” I said, hoping to defuse the situation before it became too awkward, “tell her you’ll be at the harbor cafe in fifteen minutes.”
She gave me a little smile; it felt as though she intentionally quickly pressed her crotch against mine and then walked over to the table to pick up the phone.
She called her mother who said she’d be there. I gave her a windbreaker. I had purposely not told her to ask her mother to bring a change of clothing so I could have the clothes I’d loaned her back, figuring that would be an excuse to see her again. I was a bit ashamed; Anya could be my granddaughter if I’d started early. Desperate times...
I pulled the dinghy close to the stern so she could step in. She turned to me, took my head in her hands and kissed me deeply on the lips.
“Thank you for saving me, Fred,” she said, “I wish I could do something more for you.”
Aghh. What does that mean? And how do I, renowned pillar of morality, respond?
“That kiss was the second best thing that happened to me today,” I said.
“What was best thing?”
“Meeting you, beautiful Anya,” I thought that was about as forward as I could be without being a total tool. She looked at me, her big blue eyes opened wide and she smiled broadly. She held that look for a second and stepped into the dinghy.
The cafe was a small wooden flat-roofed building along the small basin where locals kept a dozen little wooden fishing boats. It oozed with character.
We entered the café, and Anya’s mom was sitting at a corner table with a young woman who must have been Tatiana. They both jumped up, and Anya’s mom ran up to her daughter and hugged her. Anya gave them the thirty-second account in Ukranian of how I saved her life. Then all three cried.
“My name is Marina and I don’t know how to thank you,” Anya’s mother said extending her hand. Then she started crying again and hugged me instead.
“I’m happy to meet you, Marina; my name is Fred. You don’t need to thank me, I feel great about having met your daughter at sea. I rarely get to rescue a fair maiden,” I said wondering if there are people who really talk like that and if Marina would even understand what I said.
Marina was around forty, I guessed. It was obvious where Anya got her blond hair and her awesome good looks that I was just now relaxed enough to appreciate. She had been a wet, shivering rat on the boat; now she was a dry, relaxed, lovely young lady. While having sex with a nineteen-year old is definitely a fantasy for most males in my circumstances, the reality is that it just doesn’t happen. Anya and Tatiana ran off to the toilets. I wondered why women visit bathrooms in company.
“Let’s have something to drink and talk for a few minutes, then I’ll let you go,” I said.
We sat down at Marina’s table, had drinks and Anya told the tale of her ordeal in English with full orchestration. I was Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mother Theresa combined. A good reaction from Tatiana and Marina, lots of ooh’s and ah’s. Nothing about what a sexy guy I am. Disappointing.
Marina asked me to talk about myself and I told her about my retired life as a social pariah. Anya and Tatiana were clearly fascinated by my Bohemian lifestyle; Marina probably also, but she was more reserved, sort of an upper-class attitude – but in a nice, non-condescending way. I probably overdid the romantic aspect of my life. The bit about being at anchor off a white sand beach in calm, clear water enjoying a nice glass of cold white wine as the sun goes down. The scene that sailboat charter companies want you to think you will be enjoying every day if you charter with them. Those conditions occur, just not often at the same time. I may have insinuated that I was a love doctor, despite the limited opportunities to practice. I figured impress them while they still see me walking on water.
Marina told me about their house on the lake and how her daughter had enjoyed sailing their dinghy. Anya said that she really missed sailing her little boat, and Tatiana said that she’d never been on a sailboat. That was the pretext I was looking for to invite them for a day out on my boat. The forecast for the next day was for moderate winds and I proposed that they join me and we would sail down to an uninhabited island eleven miles south of Kos called Yiali, where we’d have lunch, swim and sun. We‘d be back before dark. I told Anya she should bring her windsurfer for supervised practice.
Anya and Tatiana were very excited to accept my offer. Marina thanked me but said that she was terrified of water and wouldn’t even think of going out. But she said that I would have to agree to spend the day after with them at their house, where I could use the pool, the washing machine and Marina would treat me to some Ukrainian cooking. Just as I was getting bored, two days of things to do, places to go, people to meet.
My rule is that day trip guests have to bring lunch. That relieves me from having to do something’s that’s at the edge of my skill set and makes my guests enjoy the day more as the probability of a gastronomic mishap is eliminated.
The following morning I met my two new girlfriends at the dinghy pier. I loaded up the inflatable and took the board in tow. Two hours later we had the hook down off the Yiali beach. There was another boat anchored a half mile away. I believe in anti-social anchoring.
Underway the two girls and I had had enjoyable conversations about a myriad of subjects. Unlike most of their contemporaries, Anya and Tatiana were more interested in meaningful subjects than in celebrity gossip. They seemed much more mature than their age. Maybe being from a country that has suffered helps make for a more serious attitude. I have always enjoyed the company of women more than that of men, and these girls were no exception. They seemed to be relaxed in my company, and by the time we were moored it felt as though we had known each other a long time.