Ferries again!

[Adriana]

To return to the subject...!

ANES has assured us that they will be releasing the November schedule in the next day or so. At the moment the schedule for Dodecanese Seaways only covers the first week or so of November and ANES shows nothing at all so we are being innundated with enquiries from people wanting to come to the Panormitis Festival...

[Richard]

From Kathimerini 10:11:07:

Deputy Merchant Marine Minister Panayiotis Kammenos yesterday pledged to boost coastal shipping connections to remote islands of the Dodecanese following a meeting with mayors from most of the islands. The meeting was also attended by Deputy Foreign Minister Yiannis Valinakis. Local authorities said they were satisfied with the pledges.

Any news locally?

[Adriana]

Not at the moment, Richard. Everyone is still puzzling over the November schedule which is not much use to anyone. :?: It looks like it's going to be empty shops on Symi and enforced overnight stays in Rhodes for the locals. :evil: :(

But at least the sea was calm enough for the Aegli to run this morning. :) Now it is fingers crossed that it makes it back this afternoon as it is pretty stormy out there. :o

The next time an actual boat is scheduled to dock on Symi is the Proteus on Tuesday night, after it completes its there and back run to Kastellorizo which often runs late at this time of the year due to weather delays. And the suppliers in Rhodes won't load at that time of night. :(

[Mille]

Hmmm, that's not a very good way to support infrastucture of the smaller Greek islands

Anything we can do? Write to our EU parliamentarian??

[Adriana]

It is a wild and stormy morning on Symi - as you can see from the webcam - and Greek shipping has ground to a standstill again. Not that anyone in their right minds would want to be out on a boat in this!

There's a rumour doing the rounds that we might just be seeing the venerable Milena again in the not to distant future. A bit old and creaky she used to have trouble docking here in the past (that nasty cross wind in the harbour...)but maybe she's been upgraded since we saw her last!

[Kojak]

It does look wild, wet and windy, Adriana - just like England!

[Tove]

Exactly the same foggy sight out of my window, but at least not windy here today

[bill]

Can the timetable be avalilable for download as a PDF file?

[Richard]

I've managed to convert it to a .pdf file by playing around with some of the column positions. It is very difficult squeezing it all on one page so see if you can still read it. Someone else may well have more luck.

I could do it in .xls (since Adriana doesn't like me using Lotus) but I think you would still have the space/legibility problem. I'll have a go at tidying it up a bit when I have a spare minute or 100

[Tove]

Mike did it last year so it could be in one page

[maziemoo]

Just taken a quick peek Richard, it's fine......thank you for being so thoughtful .

[Richard]

The days are in the wrong columns but I'll change that

[symivisitor]

The original Excel document is online here:http://www.symivisitor.com/winterschedules.xls

Turning xls documents into html is a bit of a nightmare!

I'll try to get it all on to one page for you Tove.

[Richard]

Yet another reason for using Lotus. Only took one minute.

Thanks, Mike, saved me a lot of time. I hadn't though of using html

[maziemoo]

Still looked ok to me.....a little crook may be, but ok.....praps I should take more water with it !

[Tove]

Thanks Mike, but unfortunately I don't need it until the spring but maybe others do.

[bill]

Thanks Richard for the PDF, I managed to get a copy yesterday from another Symi website.
BTW, how did you create the PDF output file?

[Richard]

Worth a try anyway. All good experience. I transferred the original into Lotus, chopped the bits around to fit, Pasted it into PagePlus XII, moved it around a bit more and exported it as .pdf. Then I found I could export .123 files in .pdf anyway.

Why did I bother with html? I later remembered that the original on Adriana's Page was in html anyway. Stupid boy. Yes, I know, i like doing things the complicated way

[Adriana]

8-) Trouble is of course that by the time you've got it into PDF and printed it out in technicolour the ****ed thing will have changed again anyway!

So unless you are all planning to come to Symi for Christmas ( 8-) 8-) it's not really worth the effort. Those of us who live here can get the information we need from the shipping agents (or off lamp-posts :P ) when we want to travel and those who are planning to come out of season usually take it as it comes as the situation can change without notice anyway. Yesterday, for example, I was intending to come back from Rhodes on the Aegli at 2.p.m but because it was rough with a strong northerly wind it was uncertain whether the Aegli would make the trip so we came back on the Proteus at 12. noon instead. The schedules are more a declaration of intent on the part of the shipping companies than gospel!


As we are a travel agent we put the schedules up as a service, particularly as the shipping companies themselves hadn't yet updated their sites yet. This will not prevent people emailing me however to ask what the ANES schedule will be next September!

And to provide you all with something to do to exercise your creative skills :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

[bill]

It's always a good exercise to make sure that you have the ability to create a PDF output.
Also, I have a house on Symi and expect to visit in the new year. So us that live on Symi do indeed need to know, but the tourists can wait...