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I think I need to start this story about a year ago. Around Christmas last year a tiny seed of a travel idea germinated in my head.

Dodecanese, Greece

Nickjenkins
2003-11-20 16:38:39

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I think I need to start this story about a year ago. Around Christmas last year a tiny seed of a travel idea germinated in my head.

One of the places I'd always wanted to go in Europe but had never managed to reach was Greece and in particular some of the Greek isles. Now I'd always read that the best way to see the islands of Greece was to sail them in your own boat so I put some research in what it would take to achieve.

The short answer is two qualified skippers and a charter company. The longer answer is twelve months hard work, lessons in coastal navigation and a fair amount of chutzpah. There are several ways to charter a yacht, most involving a professional skipper but the quintessential way to do it is what's called a "bareboat" charter.

In a bareboat you rent a boat from the charter company for a period of one to two weeks and are responsible for getting from point A to point B all by yourself, hopefully without crashing into anything at point C. Obviously this requires a fair amount of knowledge and hence the aforementioned twelve months hard work and lessons in coastal navigation.

Once I had worked out it was possible I needed some help so started asking around and found five friends that would be interested in joining me on a cruise in the Greek islands. I then went off and learnt to sail.

I'd sailed before but never really spent much time on the water. During a trip to Sydney at Christmas I tried a bit of an exploratory four day course with Eastsail in Rushcutter's bay and discovered I really did like it. After that I put some time in on the Solent in England and then when I was transferred to Boston joined a yacht club and started sailing enthusiastically. Earlier this year I picked up my "Coastal Skippers" qualification with the Haslar sea school in Gosport.

So, twelve months later we set out ...