Remember that game you played as a kid, “Red Light, Green Light”—the one where you ran as fast as you could until someone stopped you by shouting “Red Light!” It seems we’re playing a little game of it out here the in Med with Mother Nature.
But when she shouts “Red Light” it sounds more like she’s shouting “Meltemi”
Instead of explaining what a meltemi is, we decided to just put the photos up for you to see—it’ll be perfectly clear why that’s a sailing red light…
That’s us, the green little dot right there, hiding out from the Meltemi.
A picture worth a thousand words, right? And some of them not very nice words.
Those white arrows on the photo at the top of our post, that’s our sailing route across. Yep, through that “red stuff.”
And yes moms, we made it safely over!
Mother Nature’s Green Lights are those postcard perfect days that make people want to buy a sailboat. Fair winds, warm sun, and calm seas. Luckily we’ve seen a sporadic handful of those days too.
But lately, we’ve been doing the “Meltemi Mambo” over here.
As we made our way eastward crossing the Aegean, this little game with Mother Nature has been keeping us busy. It’s like she’s had her back turned on us and whenever it suits her, she shouts “Red Light!” and throws us a meltemi. Quickly we stop, crouch for cover in a bay with a good hold, and hang on. Then a few days later she shouts “Green Light!” and the sun comes out, the wind subsides, and “mambo” our way to the next hold before she shouts “Red Light!” again.
Some days we have beautiful sails and get pretty far, other days we sit and wait and pout like children who want all green lights.
We find it hilarious that our movement at the moment feels a lot like the silly little game we used to play as kids—good thing we got good and stealthy at it when we were young—it seems Mother Nature will not let us outgrow it.