My ups of boat life

So, hi, Nat here. As well as my ups and downs, I'll catch you up to speed with our journey home. Nice.

Also - everyone from the NZ fam+friends - we're all missing you!

My ups of boat life -

Number one is the places we've been to for me. We've been to the Akropolis, Epidavros theatre... The Akropolis was amazing.

And the theatre of Epidavros was spectacular, but it got quite loud when the tours arrived.

Two for me: visitors and friends. So far, we've had five visitors, and we're about to meet a sixth. We've made friends, specifically a boat called Nikau (not the famous one). On board is skipper Mick, Karen, Liv (11), and Isla (9).

Here's Nikau's crew and Tu Meke's crew posing (Ant taking the photo with the GoPro).

Three is the water (when it's nice). Adele (our first visitor) said she'd swum in every kind of blue she could imagine. The water is amazing. Also very warm. The hottest water temperature we've recorded so far is 28 degrees.

Four are the picture opportunities:

My downs of boat life -

For one thing, the toilets. For the first week we were on the boat, we were in a marina and using the facilities there. But once we left, we were stuck using the boat toilets. At first, I didn't think it was so bad, but if you don't flush them properly, they start to smell like a long drop (a very very smelly communal toilet, for all you non-trampers out there). Oh, and flushing? It's actually a pump. You have to pump it about fifty times in total. Plus, your toilet paper has to go in a bag behind the toilet...

The second is seasickness. Everyone except Ant gets seasick. And what everyone learned from Ant was that seasickness is not a "three-time thing and you're good", it's a "Your body gets used to the motion and prevents you from being seasick, but if you go on land, you start all over again". We're getting okay now, as we haven't been on land for about three days. And, of course, you can't be seasick without waves and chaos.

The third for me is uselessness. I can't do much on the boat. Like, who knew that getting the main sail (which Colette had named 'Myla Main' after a recent visitor) is so hard? Even Ant (who does the majority of the physical and boat work) is out of breath at the end. I only recently learned what the snubbing line is (it's a rope that relieves the anchor chain of stress).

Fourth is time. Time is very important, because of wind levels and rain, meeting someone, fixing something, delivery, etc. Yesterday we had five hours shooting across from Kea to Syros (where we are now) through the waves and wind. It's not awful in this picture:

One more thing for me in the downs is the noises. I could be reading a book or trying to sleep and then something goes WHAM, and it could either be a door slamming open, or the boom swinging in the wind, or Colette has fallen out of bed (which she has done several times). None of these are bad, and the only thing you have to do is close the door that slammed open. Colette would take care of herself. But the possibility something could go wrong has kept me awake sometimes and checking every noise, especially if it's windy.

So - where have we been?

From Mljet, Croatia, we sailed over to Dubrovnik, stayed in the marina there, sheltering from the wind, doing jobs, etc, and went to see the old town (which was pretty cool but very hot).

We then made our way down to Kotor, Montenegro, where we met our first guest, Adele. We hired a car (left Tu Meke in a marina) and went up to the mountains for a Via Ferrata, which was epic.

With Adele we did a thirty-hour crossing to Corfu, Greece, completely skipping Albania.

We had a wonderful International Waters swim.

And got dragged behind the boat (much more fun than it sounds).

We then dropped Adele off in Corfu, after doing day trips to Paxos and Antipaxos (amazing water!).

Then down to Cephalonia, picking up two guests, Cassie and Myla, down to Zakyntos, and back to Cephalonia.

When we sailed over to Ithaca, we listened to a podcast about the Oddessy. We dropped Cassie and Myla off at Vathy, also in Ithaca.

We made our way to Nafpaktos, quite a big day. Then on to the Corinth Canal, sleeping in a bay called Sarandi, before shooting through the Corinth Canal.

Then on to Athens! We did a night there the first time round, and Helen, Colette, and I went to see the Panathenaic Stadium, which was the only thing Ant did do when he visited Athens as a youth (or before present day).

The next day (or the same day, I can't remember) our most recent guests arrived. With Rhys and Sarah, we went to a nice little no-name bay, then to Poros which was packed. Then to Epidavros Theatre.

And back to Athens! We spent a week and a half there fixing stuff/installing stuff (Ant and Mick (Nikau)) and being tourists (Everyone else). We celebrated Liv's (from Nikau) 11th birthday. We went to the Akropolis that day.

We had a really small dingy that couldn't motor, it could only row (Colette called it Teeny Bob), and now we have upgraded to a dingy twice the size as Teeny Bob that can actually go somewhere in less than ten minutes. Colette has named this one Speedy Bob.

We watched Thor: Love and Thunder in an open-air movie theatre in Athens, which was perfect, as there was some greek in the Zeus scene. It also never ceases to amaze me how much Ant loved that scene.

We also got a guitar which has a name: Patrick Alimos (after the marina) or, as a nickname, Pob.

Then we left Athens to get ahead of the Meltemi with some long days of motoring/sailing. We went straight to Kea (not the bird) which was six hours. Then yesterday, we went from Kea to here, Syros. We're spending another night here before leaving to Mykonos to pick up our sixth guest, Alan.

You're all caught up now. Nice. If you click on this link here you will be sent to No Foreign Land, a website for yachties, and you can click show journey to see where we've been. And here's the live tracker.