This shot isn't staged at all.
As we sail to another Greek Island
As we sail to Kea, it'll be our 12th destination in 10 days.
It has been a big couple of weeks and to be honest by this point we are all pooped.
We probably should have slowed down a bit and smelt the roses but there are 6 000 islands
here in Greece and life is short.
Visiting all of them for one day, would take 16 years.
No one has time for that especially if your dream is to sail the world.
While we're out here sailing I asked you guys on instagram if you had any questions for us.
One of your question was what was it that pushed us over the edge?
What was it that made us buy a boat and start this sailing life?
Covid like many of us around the world was definitely the tipping point that made us evaluate what was important to us.
Made us realise how short this time on earth really is
and we really should make the most of it because just in an instant just like that things can go horribly wrong
and our worlds can be turned upside down.
So during the covid pandemic in Australia, we were in Melbourne. John wasn't able to
fly as the whole aviation sector ground to a hault. And that was enough to push John and I
over the edge. He was stood down from his job. Yes we were going crazy in lockdown. And I was working
my butt off reporting on some pretty horrific stories. A lot of people weren't fans of the media
in that stage. Morale was pretty low are you from the news you better put that on the news this is xxxx.
Everyone was doing it really tough and you know in that moment, it was like stuff it. So I resigned
from my job. We still contemplated coming to Europe at that stage, but we decided to sail in Australia instead.
Ideally we were looking for a 40 to 45 foot boat.
And our budget was around $150 000 to $200,000AUD.
But stock was so scarce. We ended up spending around a hundred thousand dollars over our budget
just to get into the market. We realized we had to spend more money in order to get a boat that was seaworthy
so that we could get cracking with our adventure.
I'm steering away from the original question a little bit
but I've never shared this next story with you.
The process of buying a boat almost stopped us in our tracks.
Especially when we spent a fortune flying into state to look at this vessel, that ended up being riddled with wood rot.
We were heartbroken because the agent told us it wasn't as bad as it really was
just to get us there to look at the boat in person.
It cost us two days, four flights and a thousand dollars later and we were no closer to buying a boat.
But as you guys know we ended up finding our dream boat, Tucana,
so if you're new here go back and watch all our episodes from the beginning.
Some of you guys might be asking where is Tucana?
We'll be continuing our journey along the Great Barrier Reef from next week onwards,
so make sure you're subscribed and have your alerts on
so you don't miss any of our upcoming episodes.
We cannot wait to take you to some of the most remote islands Down Under.
For now though we're in Greece, so let's explore Kea, before the most epic sail back to Athens
and then we'll end this episode with a Q &A, so stick around for that.
It basically opened our eyes a little bit to what sailing can offer.
We are definitely going to be trying to work out how we can get here sooner or later.
Let's just quickly get our bearings though. We're aiming for Kea and
we've had some decent wind today so we've managed to sail most of the way.
Today was a really big journey. We've done about 35 miles today, and we're just on the northern side of Kea.
We're not sure if the anchorage is going to be a bit rolly because the winds are so strong,
so we're just going to poke our nose in, check it out, see what it's like.
We've chosen Kea because it's on the way back to Athens, where we need to drop our boat back
to Navigare Yachting. And time is also ticking because strong winds are forecast
so we've chosen to Med moor in this protected bay.
Like the other boats here, we're reversing in while dropping the anchor at the same time
which will hold the bow in place.
I'm not sure why my line wasn't sorted out. We were so tired by this point.
Beautiful little place.
Oh wow, that is shallow.
Do you want to have a look?
Like as in put the camera underwater?
Good morning, just had a beautiful sleep. Let's go and see how John's doing.
P.s i'm wearing his shorts.
Good morning, how'd you sleep?
Pretty good
We were Med moored. And it was really smooth last night wasn't it?
And we had the uh shore power plugged in
and the aircon on climate control uh.
I should come in and should shouldn't I? No, it's fine.
I'll show you the thing.
So it comes out of here and you can run the generator if you're not on shore.
It just takes the edge off, doesn't it. Yeah it does.
We've gotta make some plans today, don't we?
So welcome to our intimate team meeting. Um, in the morning it'll be in Northerly. It's north and
then it goes a little bit north west but it's only like 10 knots. We should actually be on a
beam reach going out of here, around the bottom and then we might be like close reach. It's seven hours
back to Athens by the way, back to the marina. We ended up unanimously deciding on the following.
So we'll spent all day here chilling out. Go our for dinner again tonight, whatever. Yep. And then
tomorrow morning we'll get up early maybe depart at 5am. We'll be back in Athens by midday. Perfect.
Kea was cute and quaint but it wasn't my favorite island.
I feel like one day here is perfect.
There are plenty of restaurants to choose from. Nice little shops and beaches.
Gorgeous.
It's convenient too because it is so close to Athens. So let's fast forward to 5am and get cracking to Athens.
So for our very last sail, we've gotten up early. It's not actually a sail because there's
absolutely zero wind, so I think it's going to be more of a motoring sort of morning.
We've just slipped from our Med mooring and we'll see how the day progresses.
Trying to explain what life was like before knowing how to sail feels so,
claustrophobic
It's a really difficult thing to explain how our world has changed over this last 12 months and
this is the only way I can explain it so hear me out.
I feel like I see the world from a whole new perspective.
Not only being able to explore it by land,
by foot, by public transport, or by car.
But now I'm able to explore it by sea.
It's just opened up so many doors, so many avenues of exploration
and that's what blows my mind.
It is a whole nother mode of transport that is right there and it allows us to unlock the keys to the world.
Oh my gosh.
But there is so much fear surrounding it,
so many of my friends and family thought John and I were crazy for pursuing this adventure
for going out and buying a boat with absolutely zero experience and I get it,
I get it.
This actually makes me feel a bit sick.
But had we'd listened to all those people, we would have missed out on this experience.
Can you only imagine?
We didn't think we're going to be out of sail today because
there was essentially no when wind we woke up this morning
but it's come out to play. So good.
Greece you sexy son of a gun.
And the wind just kept on increasing for us.
We were heeling baby.
Oh, nothing's really going anywhere in here. You might just close that knob though.
Oh hang on. Oh crap all my makeup.
Oh my gosh. I think we're getting pushed along this edge and then it'll be all right across there.
Lining up this Greek island adventure on Cascade was all very last minute and we only gave Chris
48 hours notice. Keen as mustard to join the crew though, he tied his boat onto a mooring back in
Australia and he flew halfway around the world on three flights to join us.
Hey! How are you? How you doing?
And had to leave his baby boy Hank with the local coffee shop owner who's been sending constant updates.
Wow no one's caring about the sail right now. It's backed.
On our very last day we got to sail and see dolphins.
Oh my gosh.
Am I recording? So here we are back at Agios Kosmas Marina.
Just out of Athens. We've just finished our 10-day sailing experience.
This is what we wanted to do right at the beginning wasn't it? Yeah.
So when we started with our year off we were supposed to come to Greece and buy a boat and
sail here. Yeah and then covid happened
and then we obviously purchased Tucana in Australia but yeah this was our dream.
And it was amazing hey. Like some concerns I had about sailing in the med were:
Is it going to be expensive to moor the boats?
Am I going to be okay sailing a boat that I'm unfamiliar in given that we'd only sailed Tucana.
That's the only boat that would ever sailed. Also how's it going to go with navigating over here
and the rules and the weather being different and the anchorage has been different
and the med mooring
but actually it is all very very straightforward.
They give you a thorough briefing, the boats are all in really great condition,
which is it makes it really enjoyable because you just all you do is just turn up have an awesome time
and then just hand the boat back and walk away and they take care of everything.
Yeah absolutely and it was way cheaper than what we were anticipating.
Like Med mooring at all these different islands were a few euros some were seven euro others were 12 euro, yeah
and that included power and water. In Australia it is way more expensive and you have to book in advance
whereas here you literally just show up.
It's way more relaxed you just turn up and if there's a spot you're parking yeah anchor
and everything's fine. Some differences between sailing here in Australia in terms of like enjoyment is everything
is so close so like 20..
All the islands are like roughly 15 20 miles apart
so within a couple of hours you're on a completely different island yeah um with different things to see and
and the cool thing is is like you can literally drop your anchor reverse up to a town key
throw the line, step off your boat, walk across the road and you're in a taverna eating amazing Greek food
drinking good wine, seafood and it's and it's very cheap
and then you literally walk a few paces back and you're back on your boat.
Yeah it's so cool and the anchorages here as well are just so calm.
So they're just they're they have Meltemi Winds which we didn't we didn't avoided that yeah
which is amazing. Mostly it was just really calm which is so relaxing because you could anchor in close to
other boats and not be stressed about hitting them because it was just a zero wind
The tides are like non-existent so you. Like 20cm tides as opposed to what four meter tides in Australia.
Depending on where you are yeah, yeah you can have up to 11 meters or something like that so
and which meant there were very little currents, no swell
it was just really really enjoyable. Another thing you're talking about are the distances between
the islands. In 10 days we were able to knock off like eight different spots and it was just so easy
it was so easy and you'd literally you'd wake up you'd have an awesome morning you have something
to eat go have a coffee go to the bakery walk around and you know clean up the boat a little bit
How did you not get fat? Haha! John literally went to a bakery every single day and John didn't get fat.
The food is amazing and it's so cheap.
Really one great thing as well that I enjoyed about this experience is that we did one big provision
at the start of the trip so we you know spent about $500 on groceries
$500 Australian and that lasted us all the way through to the end of the trip so we had breakfast
and lunch covered every single day and then for the evenings we'd go out to tavernas all together
but it wasn't a problem because every single island has pretty much everything there's supermarkets everywhere
you can get fuel everywhere water everywhere
It's just everything's really easy they organize everything here for you too if you need
to do groceries there's a little van that picks you up takes you to the supermarket.
Or you can order online I think they give you a link to a website and it can all just be sitting
here waiting on the dock for you. I thought it would be really complicated and kind of like
i was like i don't want to deal with all that on holidays but it just it's so seamless it's amazing
it was great okay. So i just wanted to say yeah um talking about like who should charter a boat
because we actually had never charted a boat at all um. The reason we didn't do it was because we
didn't have the experience and we thought it was going to be really expensive but what we've since
realized is that even though you do need to have a an ICC which is an international certificate of
competence. It's a mouthful. Yeah. And you've got to have a vhf operator's licence as well to
be able to skipper a boat in the Med. If you don't have that it's cheap to hire a skipper if you want
to sail and you've got a group of mates and you don't have the icc you can still sail they're just
there with a ticket keeping on things whatever and if you split if you had a few mates and you split
it definitely like under a thousand dollars each. But they have so many different boats here like
the whole marina they've got more than 300 around the world by the way. 300? Yeah and I think 11
locations. 11 locations. They also gave us the there's a code discount code yeah so if you guys do want to
take advantage of that, you can get $200 off your next trip. Just used to kind of in the promo code and
yeah. Thanks Navigare for looking after our viewers and looking after you guys. Yeah so.
I just want to talk a little bit more about
Now for the technical side.
I didn't think the charter boats came with this sort of equipment this boat has.
Three zone air conditioner.
A generator.
Bow thruster.
Dishwasher. A really good navigation system.
Yeah like teak decks, in-mast furling,
the sails were new. Like I learned a heap sailing a different boat and
like seeing the design differences between this boat and our boat yeah hopefully you guys can experience
what we just have because it's really changed our...
It's basically opened our eyes a little bit to what what sailing can offer.
Yeah. We had a really great experience and we are definitely going to be trying to work out how we can get here
sooner rather than later.
Time to go. Time to say goodbye.
Purchased too much stuff John? On holiday?
It's all your **** all your makeup in there.
All right. Join us next week as we sail Australia
and a huge thank you to our Patrons for your support always.