Kalymnos (07-May-2009)

We had a smooth ride to Kalymnos and great food at the local tavern of Manolis. Over night we stayed at a small port there.

Here is the map.

Lakki Marina/Leros (06-May-2009)

After a smooth ride from Patmos we arrived at Leros/Lakki Marina where I enjoy the wireless LAN. 

Here is the map.

Trip to and Over night stay in Patmos (05-May-2009)

From Fournoi to Patmos was quite a bit a bit of wind ... 

... pushing the ship to top speeds of over 10 knots. 

Here is the map.

Trip to and Over night stay in Fournoi (04-May-2009)

The trip to Fournoi was fun with a little wind, as you can see on the left. (5 Beaufort)

We ankered before Fournoi, but what you can not see on the photo below are the 7 Beaufort, which turned the ship in circles all night long.

The map is here.

Kusadasi, Turkey (03-May-2009)

The exit log is 50 Euro! (3,5 is the fee in case you would be allowed to make it yourself, which is not the case anymore, and the rest is service fee) At least this is better than in Turgutreis. We are planning to go for Fournoi today (a long trip) and waiting for our papers to return from the Marina.

Here is the map.

Please watch the difference in clothing between our skipper (Austrian) on the right and me (Austrian after living 12 years in Greece). 

If you go to Kusadasi and you are not as ignorant as I am you should probably visit Ephesos. Please have a look at those ergonomic toilets!

Over night in the bay of Ormos Mourtias, Samos - (02-May-2009)

This is the beach where we stayed over night.

Here is the map.

Screwing around on the boat!

The boat

 

Screwing around on the boat

Turgutreis - New laws and agencies in Turkey suck - (01-May-2009)

You might want, like us, to enjoy some food in one of the many restaurants, but beware !!! 

If you come by boat from Greece to Turkey you need to pay some money for the paperwork to enter the country. With the old laws you would pay something like 50 Euro in case you would spend some hours running around yourself and trying to figure out to whom to pay extra money to speed up the process or 100 Euro if you would like to have some agency doing this for you. NOW there are new laws and if the boat is more than 10 tons there is no way to run around yourself, which I would not do anyhow in my holidays, but the agency (in our case AHS Yatailik-Yachting) charges 220 Euro. BTW in Kucatasi the service fee for the agency (and the Maria is an agency as well) would be 50 Euro.

DON'T GO TO TURKEY/TURKUTREIS WITH YOUT SAILING BOAT THEY ARE RIPPING YOU OFF THERE! 

The map is here.

Getting ready for Turkey (30-April-2009)

That's the crew!
From right to left: Istvan, Sushi, Fedl, Michi, and me.

Today, after some breakfast, we plan to go from Kos to Turgutreis or even more north.

Here is the map.

Preparing for my sailing trip

I'm getting slowly ready for my sailing trip. Today at 22.40 the plane leaves from Athens to Kos (so the schedule says so far...)

Just got my mobile internet to work!


No - that's not the boat we'll be using!

Jobs: Has the Meltdown Hit Us Yet?

The article I commented on is here.

My comment:

My 5 year old son still wants to do what his father does (besides being a cook) so he can write games for his Nintendo DS.
Let's see how long this trend will last.

Over here is Europe I don't see any special measures to help the embedded industry except for bailing out some big bankrupt semiconductor manufacturers maybe. In Asia companies seem to cut resources and focus their efforts on high priority customers.

I see people being fired and companies closing, but I'm not too much surprised. Many of them do things in a suboptimal ways for many years and don't even want to listen to different ways. Darwin's law of evolution by natural selection is going to get them sooner than later and that's global.
As Peter Drucker said: “However low its wages, a business […] is unlikely to survive, let alone prosper, unless it measures up to the standards set by the leaders in the field, anyplace in the world.”

There are no magic tools for this. It's experience, discipline and learning from research/mistakes of others. You just don't have the luxury/time anymore to learn by making all those mistakes yourself.