The island of Skorpios across from the bay is primarily known as the private island of the late Greek shipping billionaire Aristotle Onassis. It was bought in 1963 and believed to have cost him the equivalent of about €11,000 of today’s money (2015). Numerous high profile parties were hosted during the time of Aristotle Onassis. Skorpios was also the site of his wedding to former United States First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy on October 20, 1968. In 1971, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was photographed nude by an Italian paparazzo on a Skorpios beach. Upon Onassis’s death the island was passed to his daughter Christina, and then in turn to her daughter Athina Onassis, the only surviving heir. Onassis, his son Alexander, and his daughter Christina are all buried on the island.

Interestingly Sarah and I off the Belize coast have sailed on one of Aristotles wedding gifts, the 4 masted schooner ‘Fantome’. The Fantome was built in 1927 for the Duke of Westminster and later sold to the Guinness brewing family and then to Onassis. The Greek shipping tycoon bought it as a wedding present for Princess Grace and Prince Rainier; bit when he didn’t receive a invitation to the wedding, he decided to keep the four-masted schooner for himself. In 1969, Windjammer owner and founder Michael Burke flew to Greece to purchase the schooner directly from Aristotle Onassis. He bought her, sight unseen, in exchange for a freighter and made her the flagship of the windjammer fleet.