…. when early-born rosy-fingered Dawn appeared… 

Ἦμος δ᾽ ἠριγένεια φάνη ῥοδοδάκτυλος Ἠώς…. (Ilias, Homer)

…it was a few minutes before 7 am at Astipalea island. The sea was almost completely motionless and there was a salty light breeze. The sunrise was not an explosion of colour, rather a soft mix of orange, yellow and pink paint brushes in a blue sky that slowly was becoming more and more bright. It was a mellow feeling of the world’s gradual awakening…  We needed to travel 82 nm to get to Crete and we only had until 10′ after 7 pm to get there since that was the time of the last day light. 

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Back in school when we were learning Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, all our attention was caught by the fierce fighting scenes described in great thrilling detail or the bloody scenes in Odyssey where Cyclope was being blinded by the clever Odysseus…The many repeated epithets that described the gods and goddesses that enjoyed messing up the lives of mortals and demi gods would go unnoticed…except for one goddess that would be born every day with rosy fingers…Dawn! 

Dawn or Eos (Ηως) Aurora daughter of Titan and sister to the Sun and Selini (the Moon) was cursed by Afroditi because she slept with Aris. Sleeping around was what got everyone in trouble back in those days (…it’s amazing how little some things change through the centuries…speaking as a divorce lawyer). According to Greek mythology, (which is overpacked with sex scandals, abductions and tragedies) Dawn’s curse was to never find satisfaction in love so she spent eternity jumping from one unsatisfactory love affair to the other…mostly kidnapping her lovers! Now that’s a really modern goddess! One of her famous tragic love affairs was with the handsome Tithon. She abducted him alright and kept him in her castle at the “edge of the Ocean” feeding him ambrosia and nectar and while she got Zeus to grant him eternal life, she forgot to ask for eternal youth…so Tithon grew old for ever!

Obviously in Greek mythology this is tragic for Eos (Dawn) who lost her lover to old age…but can you imagine what poor Tithon was going through! One version of the myth is that Eos eventually got Zeus to turn Tithon into a cricket so his torture would be over…now why Zeus was happy to do that  instead of giving him eternal youth is another one of the great mysteries of the universe! In any case, I love Greek mythology and when my daughter was little, as soon as we finished reading all the harmless fairy tales (where no kids were being abandoned, cooked or eaten by witches) I used to read to her Greek myths (avoiding the explicit sex scenes and focusing on the adventures of the heroes). 

For most of the day we had good wind and no significant waves. Around 2 pm the wind got stronger and the waves bigger. We got to Crete around 6:30 pm and we still had enough daylight to anchor safely south of the little Spinaloga island. Today we woke up in a little paradise!