How my vacations became a news story

My story should probably be recounted as a minor incident but is instead a shining example of Seajets’ apparent attitude towards Anafi locals and visitors to the island. I booked my tickets along with a friend to embark on an ‘island-hopping adventure’ through a travel agency on the 23rd of May: Anafi to Folegandros, with Aqua Jewel, departing Sunday 30th of June.

On the 22nd of June, a day before we departed from Crete to Anafi, we received a phone call from our travel agent, who informed us that the (Sunday) 30th of June route from Anafi to Folegandros was canceled. Just like that, a link in the chain of planned island transits was broken, and now the whole trip was in the air. But what’s more important to this story, is the alternative that Seajets offered. We were told we could either cancel the tickets and get a refund (an option which would mean cancelling the whole trip at a great financial loss, since all accommodation and other recreational ferry tickets had been prepaid) or conceding to be transferred a day before (Saturday 29 June) to Santorini and from there to Folegandros on a Seajets catamaran on Sunday morning.

According to our travel agent, the company justified the cancellation by citing ‘ship repair works’. When we called Seajets on the same day, in protest, the employee on the phone avoided giving a clear explanation for the cancellation. The employee blamed it on Port Authorities, claiming that they can also authorize a route cancellation. We replied that Port Authorities would never authorize a cancellation a week before, due to weather restrictions as it is impossible to predict that far ahead. Then the company representative replied with great nerve:

“This is how it is, and if you like it, cancel your tickets.”

As a result, we prepaid an extra night for accommodation in Santorini, which was not included in our itinerary, while we had already prepaid accommodation for the very same night in Folegandros Island. This was the only way to minimize the overall loss, which would be greater if we canceled the whole trip.

On Saturday the 29th of June, while we were now preparing to leave Anafi, we were informed to our surprise that we would board for Santorini on a leisure vessel, called Maistros. To illustrate the reason for our reaction: this is one of the small vessels that take Santorini visitors on day trips around the island. These kinds of boats can be a rocky experience in even relatively tranquil sea, so they do not provide comfort even for a short voyage of an estimated 35 nautical miles like the one between Anafi and Santorini. We didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, or just feel lucky that we hadn’t been asked to jet-ski to Santorini. Funny detail is that Maistros in Greek means Mistral and is considered the most beneficial wind, said to blow only during the daytime. In our case, the beneficial winds were not on our side.

The boat Maistros. Photo: Gianluca Chimenti marinetraffic.com

After an update from Seajets, our travel agent informed us that the boat would depart from Anafi at 19.45. Before long, on the same day, the departure time changed to 12:00 noon, while the local travel agency insisted that it remained 19.45. The 12 o’clock boat proved to be another “ghost-vessel”: it never arrived. After that, our agent told us, Seajets did not pick up the phone to our agent, to give out information about what was really happening and how Seajets intended to get us off the island. The Maistros never came, due to weather restrictions, according to the local travel agency, despite no prohibition of sailing being in effect. However, given the size of these boats, an above 5 Beaufort voyage is said to be potentially risky. Aqua Jewel, instead, would have handled the trip, given its bigger size but not so the Maistros.

So, long gone was the anticipated comfort of our prepaid one-night accommodation in Santorini, which was booked only because Seajets arbitrarily changed our itinerary the previous week. After the no show of vessels on Saturday, we were completely abandoned on the island of Anafi by the company. In search of a way to embark on the rest of our island hopping adventure, we booked extra tickets with another vessel named Prevelis (of different company ownership) to Milos Island and, from there, we finally departed for our destination, Folegandros.

Facts versus Excuses — The deep dive

Among dozens of tourists, we were not the only ones being provocatively abandoned by Seajets in Anafi. According to islanders’ testimonies, in some cases, Greek and foreign visitors even missed flights. We ourselves witnessed a Greek couple, sitting in Liotrivi restaurant on that Saturday night, saying they had missed their flight. As local business owner Efi Kalogeropoulou had said in an interview for Greek national broadcaster ERT on the 11th of June:

“In June, we have tourists from Europe. This means that they have booked their flight tickets months ahead. They cannot even imagine that there is any chance a State to function this way, with [routes] cancellations… They don’t understand it”.

And this is where I started thinking about taking a deep dive into the case. Hopefully, I wouldn’t do it literally, given the risks, but there was definitely something fishy about the Aqua Jewel. It is known that the vessel has a binding contract with the Greek Ministry of Shipping and Islands Policy. According to this contract, the Aqua Jewel is due to carry out the intra-Cyclades island route Syros-Paros-Naxos-Folegandros-Sikinos-Ios-Thirasia-Thira-Anafi and return twice a week, every Tuesday and Saturday, with an overnight stay in the port of Anafi and return back to the island of Syros the next day.

Syros-Paros-Naxos-Folegandros-Sikinos-Ios-Thirasia-Thira-Anafi

In another illustrative example, according to a local business owner who does not wish to be named, as well as the Facebook page of the local travel agency Roussou Travel Anafi, the last time Aqua Jewel was seen in Anafi port this year, apparently on the 11th of June, and only several hours before its arrival, Seajets announced that the ship would not stay there overnight, as it was due, but it would depart immediately. As a result, hotel owners embarked on an Indiana Jones-like mission, trying against the clock to find their Aqua Jewel ticket-holding customers at the beaches to update them. The result was that — due to the impossible task — most of them missed the boat. But why the sudden and unscheduled departure?

Given what Greek website arxipelagos.gr reported, the apparent reason the Aqua Jewel changed its schedule suddenly should be attributed to that on the 12th of June the ship had already “departed for its long voyage to the Azores” while “stopping at Kalamata port for refueling.” For those unfamiliar with Mediterranean and Atlantic waters, Azores is not Greek territory but rather it is the famous islands in the Atlantic, constituting an autonomous region, integrated within the framework of the Portuguese Republic.

When the ship-owner company announced on the 22nd of June that Aqua Jewel would not sail to Anafi from 12 to 28 June this year, “to undergo maintenance”, a number of local business owners from the island wrote the earlier mentioned letter to Seajets, dated 12th of June. “There were many cancellations, without sufficient justification, in the middle of the touristic season,” they wrote.

“You have brought us to despair and we have experienced great anxiety when, with a sudden announcement, you simply canceled our island’s sea route link with civilization and we were called upon to solve a puzzle as to the reason for this cancellation as well as deal with all the inconvenience this caused.” They also requested a written update regarding “the fate of Aqua Jewel itineraries.”

They did not receive a reply. And the story continues.