Another Minoan Monday Surf & Culture Report

 
Lost Boys & Co...

So here is our friend Socrates Bard (#1) and the Professor.  Socrates lives in the Cretan beach town of Chania (Kan-ee-a) where he runs the local beach concession.  He surfs just north of the main beach at Chania at this spot (#3).  Like most of the spots in the Mediterranean that get surf, Chania is on the side of the island (in this case the north side) that faces the longest stretch of open water.  Melissa Mazur clued us in about Socrates and it turned out that he remembered us from his trip some years ago to the South Bay!  He's coming in January and you'll have a chance to meet him and if the surf cooperates, have a session...  As #2 shows, he's got a pretty robust quiver...  Long to short, he's got it covered...

A beautiful morning in which the surf refused to cooperate.  10 miles visibility under clear skies and winds by 8kts out of the NNE.  The sea surface was smooth.  The air temperature was 58.5 and the water is 66.9.  Low tide was at 7:30am +3.3' and high tide will be at 1:52pm +4.5'.  We have a SW swell out of 222º at 3.0' and it was 2' and walled up due to the low tide.  Better tides and offshore winds as the week progresses...

In #4 we have LoLa standing outside the palace at Knossos.  Efforts to reconstruct the site have been revitalized by the new technology that allows archaeologists to reconstruct the site using satellite imagery.  Like many of the ancient buildings, the palace walls and columns were painted and in the case of the Minoans the palette was brilliant...

We bid Socrates and the island of Crete goodbye and headed for Santorini (#5.)  All those photos you see of the Greek isles that feature the whitewashed structures are usually from Santorini or Mykonos.  We would have taken one of those photos if it weren't for the cretin who painted his place yellow!  That was a not so subtle ploy to address the term Cretan and cretin (You can thank Paver for bringing it up.)  Cretans are the natives of Crete and come in various levels of intelligence.  They speak Greek, so as far as we're concerned they're all smarter than we are.  The word "cretin" comes from the French "crétin" which is literally a wretch or innocent victim.  We use it to describe an insensitive, stupid or vulgar person...

✠
"When the surf breaks, we'll fix it"
The Professor!!





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