But before I head down the way I left hanging in the previous post (I guess I’ll have plenty of time to talk about Sun Sea & Sailing and boats and daysailers and sportsboats and racing and cruising – which, according to my friends and family, once I start it’s almost impossible to stop…), maybe I should “explain” how I got to Greece in the first place…
While in my last year of University, living it up like any other student that encounters himself in the imminent position of stopping being one, I dropped by the coffee shop where some Erasmus friends were hanging around amid a class break and something, or better yet, somebody, caught my eye… That somebody, being Greek and me a Portuguese – having just lost the Euro Cup in our own turf to them – the first conversation I ever had with my nowadays wife was a rather “warm” “exchange of points of view” about football, parking buses in front of the goal letting no-one pass and 20 year old “cry-babies" that should have run a bit more… The rest, as they say, is history…
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
In the Beginning...
So… From where to start? Maybe from the beginning…
It was 5 years ago (February 2005) that I arrived in Greece, having finished my graduation in Marketing in Portugal, set to make a living in this country or, at least, try it. If I would succeed, well, perfect, if not – at least I had tried it! My first “port of call” was the beautiful northern city of Thessaloniki, where I was amazed by the close relationship that their inhabitants have with, although looking like a tame lake, is actually a huge gulf in the Aegean Sea, the Thermaikos, where the city abruptly ends…
Anyway, upon arrival, my main concern was to find a job, but without knowing the language it’d be a “tad” difficult to get into something in the area of my studies, so, while strolling in the local marina I saw a banner of a maintenance company that hung in most of the boats there and thought why not give it a try? I wouldn’t need to speak all that much, since the job was mainly physical or the experience that I didn’t had, could be learned: anti-fouling hulls, cleaning engines and boats, sweeping floors and other jobs. And hey, I’d be around boats all the time. I did get the job and stayed there for almost a year, where I was making a living out of this, some Portuguese private lessons to the locals and some sailboat delivery and touristic trips. All this period I’d spent my free time in a sailing course, although I already knew how to, but it was the way I found to actually navigate the boats that I worked on and insert myself in the environment – it was this that gave me some contacts to make the deliveries and the touristic trips. Back in Portugal I had started my relation with boating around my 14 to 15 years of age, when my father bought a boat and, although being born in seaside Lisbon, I moved very early to a town in the North, which was landlocked from all sides, we still would go regularly to Lisbon or Cascais, where the boat was kept. From that age on, I was hooked…
But eventually I found a job in Athens, in the Marketing area, in a Greek bank with Portuguese capital – to whom I had sent a CV – who called me for a job interview and were willing to give me a chance. And I took it! I had made almost 4.000 km to Thessaloniki, why not 600 more to Athens? I got the news that I had been accepted on a Friday, the following Sunday I had packed all the stuff and on Monday I was entering my new job in Marketing, which until today I still keep.
So, why to form a new company, in these dire times of IMF/EU bailout, dedicated to sailing in general and to daysailers and sportsboats in particular, in a country that is not mine, with all that it implies? Well, I guess I was foundering such idea ever since I was in Portugal, but back then things where still very uncertain to what I wanted to do with my future, the my coming here and the first years were always in adaptation/ survival mode… When I came to Athens I started sailing in the International Lightning class during weekends all year round in NOE (Yacht Club of Greece), with classes once again, with the same objective of getting acquainted and into the environment. But I wanted more, much more and one hot summer day I was leaving work heading home when I thought: it’s still early (around 5-6 pm) and I could go for a sail, if I had a boat, a small one, a dayboat like the Lightning, get out of the suit-and-tie, get into something more comfortable and in half-hour I could be sailing… And slowly-slowly (σιγά-σιγά), the idea started blooming…
It was 5 years ago (February 2005) that I arrived in Greece, having finished my graduation in Marketing in Portugal, set to make a living in this country or, at least, try it. If I would succeed, well, perfect, if not – at least I had tried it! My first “port of call” was the beautiful northern city of Thessaloniki, where I was amazed by the close relationship that their inhabitants have with, although looking like a tame lake, is actually a huge gulf in the Aegean Sea, the Thermaikos, where the city abruptly ends…
Anyway, upon arrival, my main concern was to find a job, but without knowing the language it’d be a “tad” difficult to get into something in the area of my studies, so, while strolling in the local marina I saw a banner of a maintenance company that hung in most of the boats there and thought why not give it a try? I wouldn’t need to speak all that much, since the job was mainly physical or the experience that I didn’t had, could be learned: anti-fouling hulls, cleaning engines and boats, sweeping floors and other jobs. And hey, I’d be around boats all the time. I did get the job and stayed there for almost a year, where I was making a living out of this, some Portuguese private lessons to the locals and some sailboat delivery and touristic trips. All this period I’d spent my free time in a sailing course, although I already knew how to, but it was the way I found to actually navigate the boats that I worked on and insert myself in the environment – it was this that gave me some contacts to make the deliveries and the touristic trips. Back in Portugal I had started my relation with boating around my 14 to 15 years of age, when my father bought a boat and, although being born in seaside Lisbon, I moved very early to a town in the North, which was landlocked from all sides, we still would go regularly to Lisbon or Cascais, where the boat was kept. From that age on, I was hooked…
But eventually I found a job in Athens, in the Marketing area, in a Greek bank with Portuguese capital – to whom I had sent a CV – who called me for a job interview and were willing to give me a chance. And I took it! I had made almost 4.000 km to Thessaloniki, why not 600 more to Athens? I got the news that I had been accepted on a Friday, the following Sunday I had packed all the stuff and on Monday I was entering my new job in Marketing, which until today I still keep.
So, why to form a new company, in these dire times of IMF/EU bailout, dedicated to sailing in general and to daysailers and sportsboats in particular, in a country that is not mine, with all that it implies? Well, I guess I was foundering such idea ever since I was in Portugal, but back then things where still very uncertain to what I wanted to do with my future, the my coming here and the first years were always in adaptation/ survival mode… When I came to Athens I started sailing in the International Lightning class during weekends all year round in NOE (Yacht Club of Greece), with classes once again, with the same objective of getting acquainted and into the environment. But I wanted more, much more and one hot summer day I was leaving work heading home when I thought: it’s still early (around 5-6 pm) and I could go for a sail, if I had a boat, a small one, a dayboat like the Lightning, get out of the suit-and-tie, get into something more comfortable and in half-hour I could be sailing… And slowly-slowly (σιγά-σιγά), the idea started blooming…
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