It is now too hot to do anything except sailing and swimming. The sea temperature is 34’c and the air temp is between 35-40’c, under the spray good is gets up to over 50’c, so we have to be careful what we leave under there. There is very little wind, and what there is is very hot, so there is no let up from the heat even at night when the temperature does not drop below 30’c. We have taken to swimming and showing just before bedtime so we feel a little fresh and keep the fans going all night to blow the hot air around. Exploring and walking in the countryside is almost impossible, and the threat of wildfires is very high. Even our mobile phones sometimes tell us that they are too hot to charge, and that is down below in the saloon.

Nevertheless, we sail on north. We left the mainland for Paxos and Antipaxos, the love nest of Poseidon and his wife Amphitrite. According to Jefferson (2022) when the time came to take a wife, Poseidon spotted Amphitrite, who was an Oceanis or a nereid, a sort of sea female spirit of the sea. When Poseidon first clapped eyes on her, she was doing some solo dancing, really letting herself go for it. Poseidon was immediately smitten.Amphitrite, however, did not really feel the same at all and the result was that Poseidon had to pursue the unfortunate nymph pretty vigorously. According to myth, she went and hid at the end of the world. Undaunted, Poseidon set out to find and ensnare his new love (none of these gods seem to have been at all averse to using a little force to entrap their potential partners). Showing a solid initiative, Poseidon sent off a dolphin to go to the end of the world and bring her back. This worked because, let’s face it, dolphins have charisma and in this case the dolphin was able to successfully sell the benefits of being married to an omnipotent god to the reluctant nymph and all was well. Out of gratitude, Poseidon immortalised the dolphin in the stars in the form of the constellation Delphinus.