Welcome to the Idaho Odyssey blog. Somewhere, somehow, I got the idea that my second major project after I retired – cleaning out the garage was supposed to be the first – would be to try to re-trace the voyage of history’s worst navigator, Ulysses, the hero of the Odyssey, that 3000 year old epic poem that you were supposed to read back in high school.
It took Ulysses ten years to sail about 1000 miles, or at least that’s what he told his wife when he finally got home from sacking Troy, no doubt skipping over the seven years he spent hanging out with a sea nymph named Calypso, and another year sharing a bed with the goddess Circe. And it doesn’t help that Ulysses’ story was told 400 years after his death by a blind poet named Homer. Directions, dates and geographical descriptions are a bit fuzzy to say the least.
But I guess I am an optimist. It probably helps that we live in Idaho. When we get on the water here, we are usually floating down a river. It’s really hard to get lost on a river. Here’s Stephani demonstrating how easy it is to navigate in Idaho:
So, initially at least, my approach will be to think of the Mediterranean as just a really, really big river.
We will start our Idaho Odyssey by chartering a sailboat in Lefkas, a small island on the west coast of Greece just north of Ulysses’ home island of Ithaca, from which he left with a fleet of twelve galleys to fight in the Trojan War. When Ulysses finally returned home all those years later, he had lost all twelve of his ships, and every one of his crew had either been killed in the war, eaten by the Cyclops or other monsters, sucked into a whirlpool, crushed by rocks thrown by big nasty dudes on cliffs, or drowned in storms by vengeful gods. In fact, the only misadventure he and his crew escaped without injury was a terrifying assault by three young ladies (approximation of assault by the Sirens below):
https://goo.gl/images/hj8RbJ
What I like most about this project is that Ulysses set a very low bar. The way I see it, if we make it back to Lefkas reasonably promptly, with roughly the same number of crew and the same or similar boat, I will feel like our expedition did just fine by historical standards.
So, for the next two months, give or take, I will be sharing the adventures of the Idaho Odyssey. And, when we finally get home to our beloved Idaho, I promise I will clean out the garage.
