Off-gasing in Agia Napa

Sunday 11.9.2016

On my 3rd and last off-gas day I went to Agia Napa with Ray. We used public transportation, and it took a while. A local bus 407 took us to Larnaca, and it took almost an hour. We had a 90 minute layover in Larnaca, and we went for coffee. Then an Intercity bus took us to Agia Napa, and it took another hour. We got hungry and spotted a Hard Rock Cafe close to the bus station.

While eating our hamburgers we browsed the net, and found out that the Thalassa museum opens only at 15:00. Smart people would have checked that earlier, but what you play with cards you have. Another two hours to await. So we strolled down to the beach, had coffee in some nice beach cafe, and admired beachgoers in their normal habitat. That is a different species.

Kyrenia II is clearly the main attraction in Thalassa. It is experimental archaeology, because it is built with ancient methods and tools. How do they know about the ancient ship building tools and methods so much? I do not know, but maybe they did. Either way, it is interesting to us, because there is strong likelyhood that the original Kyrenia ship and our Mazotos ship would have had many things in common.

Kyrenia II

We saw the modern copy of Kyrenia II, the Kyrenia Liberty, in Limassol earlier, and I was pondering that how do the turn those steering oars. Well - it turned out that they were not steering oars, but rudders!

Kyrenia II main rudder. The rudder rotates in its place on the side of the ship. There is copper plating underneath to protect the railing. The other rudder is set clearly higher. water Maybe it is a back up, to be used in case the main rudder is damaged due to shallow water. 

The exhibit had also piles of amphora copies imitating how they may have looked on the wreckage site on the sea bed. The piles look amazingly realistic - it really looks like this at the Mazotos wreck site! Except that the amphorae in sea are not so clean at all.

Amphora copies at Kyrenia II exhibit.

Robert does not believe, that the Kyrenia II builders got the upper structures of the ship correct at all. They had made copies of all some 400 amphorae  found at the site, and then tried to load them all up in Kyrenia II. It did not go well - they did not fit at all. Maybe Robert is right, and the ship's hull should be much wider on top?

I was looking closely at the joints to the keel at the bow. Would Mazotos keel have similar joints?

Kyrenia II keel at bow.

But wait - there is more. The exhibit also had a smaller scale copy if the original Kyrenia wreck site (once all the amphorae and lots of the sediment were removed). It was build under a glass floor, and you could walk on it and admire it just like you would be diving there! Novel. I was too embarrassed to lie down on the floor to get better view...

Kyrenia wreck site model

I must admire those experimental archeologists who somehow deduced from this wreckage all details needed to build Kyrenia II. It would be very interesting to some day visit the Kyrenia Castle in Northern Cyprus and see the original Kyrenia there. It was painstakingly documented, one small part at a time, all pieces lifted up, conserved for years, and then finally rebuilt just the same as it originally was on the sea bed.

In the excavation the original Kyrenia wreck site was totally destroyed. Everything was raised. That is the dilemma in all excavations - is your work important enough to destroy the site today? Do you collect enough data while excavating the site?

Kyrenia wreck site model, detail. Would there be such side planking still remaining in the Mazotos site under all those hundreds of amphorae still remaining. We do not know.

The glass floor over the Kyrenia wreck site model is neat, but it was very difficult for my camera. It really did not like to focus through glass. And then sometimes it just did. Go figure...

Kytrenia wreck site model, detail. What is that round metal "pipe" on top of the keel in stern?

We took another Intercity bus from Agia Napa back to Larnaca, had a small break at the Meeting Place Cafe by the beach, and took a taxi home. No local buses on Sunday evenings. We must be getting better at negotiation, because now the taxi was only 20€, when just 2 days ago we paid 25€ for us and 30€ for the key to ride alone.