High life
Story of a ship
Taki
WAthens henever I think of Aristotle So- crates Onassis — which mind you is not often these days — I always picture him on his boat, the Christina, named after his only daughter. The old Turk loved the Christina, and kept her until his death. There are those who insist that if he had done the same with his women, a lot of bad things would not have come to pass, but that is not the point of my story.
The Christina was a great boat. She was launched during the war as a frigate; a Canadian frigate that saw limited action and never got hit. Onassis bought her in 1952 and converted her into the most luxurious private yacht in the world. Although Ari's taste was not the best in the world — there were elements of Khashoggi — he nevertheless knew enough to let people with more experience in such mat- ters decorate for him. On deck, at least,
`Omit "obey" and "for poorer".'
the Christina was perfect. So was her outside appearance. And her crew — like most Greek crews — was absolute perfec- tion.
Onassis died in 1975 and left the Chris- tina to Christina. In his will he had speci- fied that Jackie would get $250,000 per annum, and not a penny more. All the rest went to his daughter, with provision made for the Onassis Foundation. But as every- one who has ever heard of the name Kennedy knows, Jackie contested the will. Her only ace in the hole was the right to use the boat whenever Christina Onassis, Bolker, Andreadis, Kauzov, Roussel was not on board. That small provision, howev- er, proved to be worth a fortune. Christina gave her 26 big ones to gain peace, but before that, while her lawyers were still ironing out the details of the deal, Chris- tina, on a whim, gave the boat to the Greek government. It was a gesture that has come back to haunt a lot of us who used to admire the brave ship, and even had good times on board.
Onassis had been thick with the Col- onels, and there was a lot of bad publicity about him just before his death. Perhaps Christina thought that a present of such magnitude would appease the politicians who had been put out to pasture for seven years. It did nothing of the kind. The first thing Karamanlis did was to change the name to Argo, perhaps more historic than Christina, but an insult of sorts to the donor. Then he proceeded to use the boat as a presidential yacht, not unlike the way Tito did with his, or better yet, President Kennedy. By this I mean he used it sparingly, mostly for entertainment of foreign dignitaries.
After 1981, when the socialists came to power, the Argo's fortunes took a turn for the worse. The Argo has always been an expensive boat to run. Onassis could afford her, as can the present Greek government, but not while the latter is asking every Greek to make sacrifices in order to recoup the billions that have been lost while Andreas Papandreou tried socialist experi- ments with the economy. Yet the ship has never been busier.
The President of Greece is a man by the name of Christos Sartzetakis, an ex-judge who was the examining prosecutor in the Lambrakis case, made famous by the film Z back in 1967. After Papandreou fired Karamanlis he asked Sartzetakis to be- come President, thinking that he would have a pliable straw man backing him up while he led Greece out of the middle ages and the West, and towards the stone age of the Middle East. There, the flim-flam man was wrong. For one, Sartzetakis took his position extremely seriously, and held up legislation. Then he began using the boat for his leisure moments, disappearing for days on end.
Papandreou was not best pleased, and rumours flew. Last week, during the holy day of the Virgin Mary, Sartzetakis took off for Tinos, the holy island of the Aegean, to pay his respects to the Mother of Jesus, and ask for divine guidance on how he could keep the Argo after his presidency is over. The trouble was that another 300 pilgrims to Tinos had the same idea (for divine guidance that is, not anything concerning the yacht). They had chartered a large cruising liner, the Con- stellation, which also carried other passen- gers to different destinations. Once the Constellation arrived in the small island of Tinos, her captain saw that the Argo had taken over the tiny island harbour, and there was no way for him to discharge his passengers. Oh yes, there were winds of 8 Beaufort blowing at the time. The Argo's captain refused to move the presidential yacht. The First Family did not feel like getting buffeted outside the port for however brief a time. After three hours of pleading, the rest of the passengers began to complain. The pilgrims never made it to Tinos, but got discharged in Mykonos, where 3,000 gays were waiting for them. Instead of a two-day pilgrimage on a sacred isle, they got two days of nudity and homosexual shenanigans on the randiest island in the Med. And it's all Christina Onassis's fault. She should have sunk the boat rather than give it to the politicians who have bled this country and yours truly dry all these years.
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