If you stop by a fishing jetty early on a September morning, you'll see the crates fuller than they were in August. On the ice the fish are bright, their eyes clear, their skin firm. There's a salt coolness in the air, a sea smell sharp as iodine. The fisherman tells you without touching a thing: "The water's turned," he says. That's all. He knows the sea has cooled not from a calendar but from the net.
The summer table is often a table of vegetables, of herbs, of cold mezes. The September table turns, quietly, back to fish.
Once the Water Cools
Through the summer the sea's surface grows too warm; the fish seek the cool and go deep, drawing away from the shore. That's why August, for all its name, is a month of light nets. In September the water cools slowly from the top down; the fish come back to the shallows, to the coast, to where the net reaches. Sea bream and sea bass come into their own in these weeks, their flesh firming; later in autumn it's the bluefish's turn. The old fishermen read the season from the wind: "Once the northeasterly starts to blow, the fish gather too," they say. Not a scientific rule, perhaps, but a thing known by someone who has stood in the same sea for years.
The Grill on Deck
At sea the best form of fish is the plain one. One of the most loved evenings aboard is when the fish bought that day comes to the grill on deck. Fish asks for little: salt, a little olive oil, lemon beside it, and that's all. The smell that rises as the coals burn mixes with the evening cool and the sea; no one hurries. A good cook doesn't move the fish about — turns it once, waits until it lifts clean from the bone. A little greenery beside it, bread, perhaps something cold. The table has no show to it; because the show is the fish itself.
There's a way to buy fish, too. Buying it not at the shorefront restaurant but at the jetty, from the fisherman himself, is a different thing; he'll tell you which fish came in that day, which is worth the wait. If you happen upon one, you can buy straight from a fishing boat that comes alongside — in some Aegean coves this still happens. Eating what came in that day, knowing its season; that's what makes a table a table.
For a guest the meaning is this: the best fish isn't the most expensive one, but the one in season and landed that day. In September the sea gives this freely. Choosing by looking at the jetty rather than at a menu — it's one of the small habits that changes a week's sailing most.
As the grill dies down in the evening, the plates are cleared, and only the sea smell and the faint smoke of the fish just eaten stay on deck. No one says much. The water knocks gently against the boat in the dark. The meal is over, but the evening goes on.
DAY CHARTERS →