Having spent a some time on Santorini a few years ago on a couple of
occasions (a favorite among the Greek islands) we noted two locations for
ships to encounter trouble. One is the landing at the base of the cliff
leading to the village at the top. (The donkey ride up is a must!). The
water depth drops off here dramatically with only a small shelf, as I
recall, to the east of the concrete ship's dock. I'm only guessing, but a
ship might ground on this shelf if allowing itself to come too close to the
cliff. However, a better location to strike ground is on the south side of
the caldera where there are active volcanic cones just below the surface.
This is a favorite location for tours ships/boats to hover over and let
passengers swim in the Vulcan heated waters. Yes, I have. There are places
here shoal enough to bump bottom--I believe. I do not know where Sea Diamond
grounded, so these are guesses only and I haven't seen a chart for many
years. All this is based on a fading memory.

While speaking of volcanoes and calderas: One scary night I encountered what
I believed was the reemergence of Krakatoa. We were sailing west into the
Indian Ocean through the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra. During the
lonely watch in the cockpit I began wondering where the former island
volcano of Krakatoa existed, I remembered from school geography it was
nearby, and began looking for evidence on the charts when suddenly the seas
all about me began boiling vigorously with water surging up--like boiling--a
couple of feet above the surface all round for as far as I could see in the
brightness of the night. For a couple of hours, it was a fearful bumpy ride
atop, I thought, a reemerging volcano. Rationalization soon took over and I
concluded it was the same phenomena we experience here in the northwest when
passing over suddenly uprising shoals with a strong current running between
islands being suddenly sent the surface. And the former Krakatoa was still a
few miles to the northwest of my position.

Tom
MOONSHADOW

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Received on Sun Apr 8 10:38:27 2007