Well, Mr Know-it-all, here you are on a very skinny foredeck belonging to 'Athena', a gorgeous racing 8-Metre yacht, owned by a Peer of the Realm, Lord Jonathan of Cork, who has assumed from your Australian accent that you are the very bee's-knee's of foredeck hands, (despite being the oldest person on the boat), and miracles of calm efficiency are expected ! Oh, and did I mention I am nursing a shoulder cuff injury from a previous attempt at biting off more than I could chew.

Thomas is a "seascraper," or "shanker," earning a meagre living by using a horse-drawn cart to trawl for shrimp on the beach, which he then sells to a local distributer for a meagre return. He is only twenty years old, but endures the physically demanding work to support himself and his mother, continuing the craft he learned from his grandfather. Although he respects this hard, repetitive life, Thomas’s secret passion is for making folk music — a dream he hides from the his mother for fear of being ridiculed.

A wooden boat documentary, J Class heros, a WA fishing boat, a Sydney Gaff Cutter, and cables to Tonga.

This week we’re sailing from Scilla,in Calabria to Sardinia via the Aeolian Islands. We talk about cruising apps, connectivity and what makes a good charter destination, and much more.

By the time I’m 10 years old, I can keep a 2 hour watch, trim sail as needed, track our knotmeter (a glass tube I dangle over the stern on my belly, watching the little red ball bubble up–until I can just stay right side up and guess it pretty accurately based on a number of things i can’t even enumerate) and my printing is disciplined enough to keep decent log entries if anything changes

CYAA News, Barrier reef positivity, Jukungs in Indonesia and the Cocus Islands, Sydney Hobart anecdotes and more

This reel covers some of the preparation of Margaret Pearl for the trip. As we were on board recording the footage that follows, I moved a sail bag on the deck which bumped a bucket which knocked over the tripod on which my mobile phone was mounted which fell onto the rail of Margaret Pearl and ejected my mobile phone from its Mount into about 4 m of water in the berth at St Kilda. The whole scene was very reminiscent of the game of mousetrap

This week we’re sailing from Scilla, Calabria to Sardinia via the Aeolian Islands and have we mentioned, Carlton Football Club?

But all this is no excuse for the STAR CLIPPER to pump clouds of toxic black exhaust fumes into the sky above the bay for hours on end. They steamed into the anchorage around 0700 with a particularliy nasty belch of fumes and then settled down to emit the steady stream you see in the picture, until we left around mid day. (and who thought it was a good idea to rum the exhaust pipe up the mast!)

A legend for sale, a London wooden boat show, managing the boats at the AWBF, ferries, gaffers and big tall (wooden) buildings

My mother wears a silk scarf as we sail, to keep her hair from blowing everywhere or into her eyes. Her dark glasses hide her smiling eyes. But I see that she’s thrilled to bits. We serve up sardines and tinned fish and cheese and biscuits and soup and hot strong tea and Daddy always gets “a tot” when the sun is over the yardarms and again at “elevenses” and then after that, whenever he wants one.

It’s July in Melbourne. Middle of winter. I’m my office in the Melbourne CBD trying to make a quid but increasingly thinking about our next adventure on Margaret Pearl. My definition of adventure is “an activity with more than a modicum of uncertainty in the outcome”. Almost any activity can be an adventure if the right mindset is engaged. For me, it’s not always about danger and physical risk. A trip to city by train can be an adventure………The higher the level of uncertainty - the bigger the adventure. And by any measure our 2027 cruise in Margaret Pearl has the makings of a big adventure.

This episode comes to you from SIRACUSA, SICILY this week we crossed back from Greece to mainland Italy and now in Sicily.
SONG OF THE WEEK - DRAFT DAUGHTERS BLUES by BE GOOD TANYAS
Links to stuff we discussed:
- FISKARDO - LIVE WEBCAM
- TIM & PAULINE CARR WORLD SAILORS
- LIN & LARRY PARDY WORLD SAILORS
- KATABATIC WIND EXPLAINED
- ROCELLA IONICA DETENTION FACILITY
- ROLEX SWAN CUP
- KAKUMA REFUGE CAMP
- ANNIE'S EASTER MIX // PLAYLIST
- I SEE DOCO LAB

This week we have upcoming Melbourne and Sydney major events, a moving documentary portrait of Jon Wilson, more orca trouble, Viking sailing, Easter Island good news and the happy by-product of offshore wind farms.

Wealth would have given him freedom to be his most creative self. As it was he had to make do with what he had, or indeed what he could beg and borrow from other people. There were times he and his first wife, Alma, had to live off rabbit, sour blackberries and whatever else they could hunt and gather; her teacher's income was often used to pay the workmen.

Over four decades, he wrote or edited somewhere between 30 and nearly 40 books, depending how you count the editions, and a few of which became dog-eared, salt-stained volumes sitting beside the chart table on FAIR WINDS and now MATILDA

This episode comes to you from FRIKES, ITHACA

Links to stuff we discussed:
- LEVAKAS CANAL
- SPARTAHORI / SPILIA TAVERNA
- SKORPIOS - JACKIE'S ISLAND
- PERSEIDS 2026 COMETS IN GREECE
- SOUTHERN IONIAN

I urge you to slow things down a little and notice the kids playing soccer with a ball made from scrunched up newspaper taped together, and then notice the big smiles on their faces. One thing that I have learned along the way is how little we need to be happy; not how much.

In the spring of 1900, sponge divers working off the small Greek island of Antikythera located a Roman-era shipwreck at a depth of roughly 45 meters. The ship, dated to around 70–60 BC, had been carrying a cargo of luxury goods likely bound for Rome. Among the recovered items was a corroded lump of bronze, broken into several pieces, that initially drew little attention. It sat in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens for years, cataloged but not understood.

An Orca sinking story from the Pacific, a new Bruce King boat for sale, why you should go small, why you should go simple, holidaying on a Thames barge in Essex…. and much more!