"Time and tide weather the Body's vessel, but it is our own choice that decides whether we set sail for adventure or lie at anchor watching life from the harbour"

Our trip back to the UK to support my Dad was a whirlwind, a masterclass in British emotional repression squeezed between the sterile scent of hospital corridors, a fleeting hug with Pookie’s sister, and trying to remember the precise alchemy required to work our own kettle. The universe, ever the capricious trickster, decided our emotional load wasn’t heavy enough. Our car, left pristine and patient in our garage, had transformed in our absence into a living terrarium.

We returned to find it cultivating a bold new ecosystem of greens and greys. The mould and mildew were so prolific, so artistically arranged across the seats, I was half-tempted to market it as a self-sustaining mushroom farm. It was less a vehicle, more a profound science experiment with wheels, —a poignant lesson in entropy for which we had no time.

Amidst the chaos, Pookie, our serene Tripitaka, continued her divine work, creating food prep videos with the calm of a saint while I was dispatched on a quest for a technological relic: a fax machine. Don’t ask.

This back-and-forth travel does have one benefit: the ability to engage in light arbitrage. My purchase? A backup hard drive. This was prompted by what can only be described as the digital equivalent of a guard locking the entire castle inside the dungeon. You’ll recall the 2024 CrowdStrike outage? A single flawed software update that told 8.5 million computers to have a simultaneous existential crisis, famously known as the "Blue Screen of Death." My unease at this global digital heartburn forced my worrisome self to buy an extra 4TB backup drive. Just in case the digital sky should fall again. One must have a life-raft for their ones and zeroes.

We returned to Greece, hearts lighter with the knowledge my Dad was over the worst. We spent little time in the rock-and-roll harbour of Agios Nikolaos and pointed our bow south towards Keri Beach, hoping to see turtles. We spent a whole day looking. We saw islands, we saw turtle sanctuaries (which felt like cheating), and we even saw our friends' catamaran, Nova Jean. But of the actual, flippered celebrities? Not a single one. It was like a wildlife-themed Waiting for Godot, all anticipation and no payoff. The sea kept its secrets.

We did however manage to discover some fabulous coves, we imagined we were smugglers of olde and revelled in the echoes from our "whoops" and howls.. life was very enjoyable.

Our turtle-(ra) dar finally pinged in Argostoli, after a stop in Kefalonia where Pookie, as always, worked culinary magic. Fuelled by her food and the encouragement of friends, we felt ready for our next big leap: Italy.

In hindsight, our departure timing was… ambitious. The wind was clearly auditioning for a role in a disaster movie. But it was August! How bad could it be?

The answer, delivered with meteorological glee, was "very." We lifted anchor as dusk painted the sky, and the wind, a 25-knot bully from the north, immediately tried to shove us back into the bay like an unwelcome guest. As we fought our way out into the deepening indigo, a surreal spectacle unfolded to our starboard. There, lit up like a floating Vegas casino, was the luxury superyacht Ethos. We didn't know it then, but we were witnessing a multi-million-dollar maritime face-palm unfolding in real time. A crew member had, apparently, left a side door or hatch open. The weather had "turned," and the sea was pouring in. The captain, in a move of desperate genius, had deliberately run the vessel aground on a sandbar to prevent a total capsize. The $16 million masterpiece was fast becoming a very expensive, temporary artificial reef - a stark, gleaming reminder that on the water, fortune favours no one, and everyone, from a novice on a catamaran to a professional on a palace, is just one unlocked door from a very bad day at the office. Blissfully ignorant of the specific drama, we sailed on, nervously, straight into the same storm system that had authored that misfortune.

Rounding the point of the island, the wind redoubled its efforts, not just to oppose us, but to scare the living daylights out of us. The waves took on a steep, unpleasant chop. Sawasdeekat shuddered and pounded. We looked at each other, a silent conversation passing between us in the dark cockpit, and decided with admirable British understatement that "now was not the night for a 216-mile voyage." We turned tail, engines groaning, and scuttled back to a sheltered bay like a pair of startled, oversized crabs, our pride slightly dented but our hull intact.

But resilience, like a bad penny, always turns up. In the calm, rose-gold light of morning, we bounced back with grim determination and set off once more for Italy. This, our longest crossing to date, was less a sail and more an ordeal to be endured. It was gusty, relentlessly bumpy, and Pookie spent most of it in a state of heroic, green-faced misery, venturing out from the cabin only to bring me water or a sandwich like a beautiful, seasick angel of mercy. In a vain attempt to lift spirits with the promise of fresh, self-caught sushi, I deployed my new €200 fishing rod, a trophy of optimistic consumerism. The sea, ever the comedian, played its part. I hooked a fish! A sleek, silver demon from the deep that looked at my 35kg line, gave a piscine shrug, and snapped it like rotten cotton. The rod was returned to its holder.. The sea, it seemed, was still firmly in charge of the punchlines.

Our new longest voyage yet record set we finally reached Italy. Then we promptly changed our anchorage plans last minute, and headed to Bova Marina (a grand name for a beach). The next day, we shot up the Messina Strait, dodging coast guards on the radio who seemed hell bent on keeping us where we were (I just answered with short responses and in the silence drove away quickly). We finally allowed ourselves to relax in the impossibly lovely town of Scilla, its castle guarding a harbour of colourful, stacked houses.

Our plan was a scenic cruise along Sicily’s north coast. Our reality was a continuing saga with our rebellious fridge. After a brief stop in beautiful Cefalù, where our dinghy anchor was either stolen by a light-fingered swimmer or staged its own desperate escape; we found a fridge engineer in Isola Delle Femmine. His diagnosis was delivered with a weary sigh that transcended language: a small leak. We braced for the inevitable invoice, the universal language of boat ownership.

The next day delivered its promised calamity with impeccable timing. First, our Code Zero sail’s sheet rope staged a full mutiny, wrapping itself around a winch with the tensile tenacity of a python. Freeing it involved a perilous, acrobatic nautical dance that would have looked certifiably insane to any distant onlooker. Later, as we sailed with regained confidence into a new anchorage, a sudden, cheeky 22-knot gust decided to join the party uninvited. The Code Zero, now in full, flapping rebellion, refused to roll away. What followed was a frantic, deck-based wrestling match, a battle of man against synthetic cloth and physics. The whole incident left us breathless and Pookie, who had been drafted into the fray, thoroughly and justifiably unamused. We have instituted a new, iron-clad rule: if it scares Pookie, we don’t do it. The universe has been notified.

After a final comedy of errors involving a rocky bay that tried to eat our anchor and a picturesque town with literally no space for us, we finally limped into the vast, forgiving harbour of Trapani. We were exhausted. We had escaped Greece, survived the storm that sunk a superyacht’s reputation, and outrun the Italian coast guard’s gaze, only to be ultimately defeated by a stubborn sail and a chronic lack of parking.

Join us next time as we point our bruised but unbowed bow across the Tyrrhenian Sea, where our good friend Kenet awaits. He arrives not just with his familiar smile, but with his toolbox and a very knowledgeable engineer in tow, ready for… what else? Even more repairs. The adventure, it seems, is just another word for maintenance.

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