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Writer and filmmaker Sal + photographer Mark have a five year plan to sail their Swan 47 MATILDA from Palma, Spain back to Sydney Australia. This weekly podcast shares the wonder and realities of living your dream while maintaining careers and a 50 year old boat.
Any minute now, my ship is coming in. I'll keep checking the
Sal:Welcome back to MATILDA RADIO.
Mark:Day late?
Sal:A day late.
Mark:Why are we a day late? Why are we a day late? Yesterday just got
Sal:completely away from us. It is Monday, August 3. I'm Sal Belhari.
Mark:And I'm Mark Chew.
Sal:And we are two Australians who have rented out their house, bought a boat, MATILDA 47, and we are sailing her back to Australia over a course of a couple of years. Today, we are coming to you from Longos. So for those who have been listening, I've been working in Rome for the last couple of weeks, and Mark's been sailing, and now we're back together on Corfu, where we were
Mark:Except we're not on Corfu.
Sal:Well, we flew
Mark:We're Paxos.
Sal:We're on Paxos, where the taxi taxi will take you wherever you want. I love that. Whoever thought of that is very clever. So we're actually on Longos on Paxos, but we I flew back into Corfu, and you had, after your amazing dramas, dilemmas, your thunderstorms.
Mark:My thunderstorm, which we didn't talk about last week.
Sal:But Give us a quick recap of your
Mark:thunderstorms. In SWS.
Sal:Oh, it's in SWS. So we'll put a link to that article. But, yeah, I have to say, Mark, it was incredible flying back into Corfu. Absolutely extraordinary that it was thirty three years later, and I did have a little moment where my 20 year old self spoke to me as a as an adult now and felt very proud of where she'd been and what she'd done. It was a really strange moment to walk back across that tarmac, and there you were waiting for me, which was so lovely.
Sal:And yeah. So tell me about your reflections of Corfu.
Mark:The thing that I find out is that how little I remember. I don't know whether it's my alcohol addled brain or
Colin Hay sings..:Nothing happened.
Mark:Had over thirty five years. But actually, places we've been, I'm not even getting an inkling of recognition. But what I am getting is serious flashbacks about things like the quality of the light, the silvery light, Yeah. Maybe some smells as well and things like that. But the actual places that we went to thirty five years ago, so far, I haven't really haven't really triggered an accurate memory in my mind.
Sal:The light is so beautiful. And you, as a photographer, that must be something that really it it it is quite unlike anywhere else in the world, isn't it?
Mark:Well, yeah, a problem to that. I I think it's just very specific to this part of this part of Greece in that you've got the mountains on one side and so much water reflecting across and haze in the air. So this you get this sort of silvery light. It's interesting that when it's really hot, if you ask to get kid, you know, what color hot is they tend to go they tend to go reds and oranges. Actually heat is a sort of silvery blue really around here.
Mark:You know, that that indicates it's a hot day. The colors are cool colors, and to me, that sort of almost makes it hotter.
Sal:Yeah. Looking across to Albania from Corfu Town, quite magnificent mountains that just sort of roll for you know, they're just they're almost like waves. They just sort of roll back into the distance. So so beautiful. But I like you.
Sal:I I just don't know if our 20 year old eyes took in the beauty. Or or I wonder if we were so we arrived in Corfu Town, and we were picked up in a
Mark:This is
Sal:this
Mark:is originally.
Sal:Originally, the first time. We were picked up from the airport in a van, which didn't have windows, and we were sort of slid inside and bumped along and dropped off at these apartments. And then for the next sort of few weeks, we were forwards and backwards and forwards and backwards to Man Duqui, a place called Man Duqui where we were preparing the boats for the season. And, yeah, I just wonder if we were just sort of lost in the job.
Mark:Well, think that's absolutely right. I think that's one of the reasons I don't really remember the towns is because I would have been obsessing about boats and making sure that all the customers had their everything they wanted and and their boats were working and they were happy. And so I probably didn't concentrate on the actual environment around me as much as I should have well, as I did.
Sal:I can't believe they put us in charge of people's expensive holidays. That's what I
Mark:All lives, you know?
Sal:All lives. Like, that's what's so extraordinary. I think the so we met in Corfu Town, and you were anchored off Corfu Town, which on honestly, I've never it it it was a vision of boating world. I mean, if you if you did a quick calculation of the cost of the boats in that harbor on that first night, we're talking tens of billions of dollars.
Mark:Yeah. It's a lot of very expensive, huge motorboats anchored off there. But it's sort of added to the fun of it. It was they're not all packed in crowd. It's a huge anchorage.
Mark:So it's quite nice to sit there. It gets a bit rolly with all the boats moving around. But you can sit there and watch the comings and goings and look at the huge super yachts. And there's a magnificent magnificent when I say classic yachts. There were a couple of classic yachts.
Mark:Rainbow the j class motor past, but there's also some I guess you call them modern classics, sort of aluminium. There was a couple of aluminium boats built by built in New Zealand in the 2000s. So, you know, beautiful long overhangs. One was a schooner and the other was a sloop, immaculate condition with sort of timber superstructure looking quite spectacular. Think there was one called Huckle berry or it's now called Huckleberry.
Mark:Was called something else before, which I was very coveted covetous of. And then there's just hundreds and hundreds of year average, you know, $10,000,000 super yacht.
Sal:Yeah. You're 10,000,000 a dollar a 1,000,000 for every meter it was long. I think that that's, you know, if we're talking about sort of changes, that's been a very visible change. The sort of the industry, the crews, the support networks that are supporting all of those boats out on the water. And we, from Corfu Town, went around to Guvier Marina.
Sal:And that was that was interesting because Guvier Marina is now sort of when we were there it was Put
Mark:in the swamp. A bit of a
Sal:rundown swamp. It still is a little bit swampy, but it's very, glossy and schmick and, a big sort of Mediterranean sort of marina. But the disappointment was, and this is the constant issue that we've got now, is water. Because our water maker is still not working, what what's the what's the issue with the with the water?
Mark:Oh, what? The town water? Yeah. It just doesn't taste very nice. It's perfectly safe.
Sal:It doesn't taste very Well, is it safe? Yeah.
Mark:Well, I've been drinking it. I'm still here. So yeah.
Sal:No. You're not you haven't been drinking
Mark:it. Yes. I have.
Sal:No. You haven't.
Mark:Yes. I have. No. Think I should know what I've been doing.
Sal:I think the thing is that, like, you know, you can't make a cup of tea with it. It's just this.
Mark:You can. You can, but it's not
Sal:drinkable. Mean, you're just you're doing just doing it because out of of of sheer you're not going to die, but it's incredibly salty, and I'm doing eyes at you because it's the bane of our existence at the moment, the amount of, bottled water that we need to buy at market, it's not drinkable. Okay.
Mark:It's actually quite depressing when you go into town and you see people walking down the quay with six large bottles of water in one hand and six large bottles of water in the other, all in plastic, and heading off to their day on a boat or their apartment or whatever. It feels to me like that it's a sort of environmental feedback loop in that all the plastic required to manufacture the bottles to put the water in, to sell them and transport them and all that sort of thing. And wouldn't it be easier actually just to fix the problem of the water supply? I'm no engineer, but surely on an island like Paxos, which is only small, the cost of supplying drinkable water would be recuperated quite quickly environmentally if you could fix it rather than this sort of great feeding frenzy of plastic.
Sal:Yeah. The plastic the plastic seriously remains an ongoing issue. It is I mean, you know, if you if you read the news at the moment, and if you're following, you know, the fires in France and Spain and In Greece. And Greece, and what's going on in Morocco, and Italy shutting shutting down Spanish access and, you know, the thing that strikes you when we're traveling is that there are a lot of people who are just getting on with their day. The is the world is a good place.
Mark:Yeah. And I think, you know, like, there's a lot of tolerant people who are trying to be helpful. In fact, I was reading about what's happening in Souta at the moment. It's in the last couple of days is that the local community has been incredibly supportive of the Moroccans who've come across the border. They're providing them with water and food and accommodation.
Mark:And actually, you know, if if you're a person on the street and you meet somebody in crisis, I think that the first reaction is to help them, which is not newsworthy, and the second reaction might be to vilify them, and that gets into the newspapers. I think there's a lot of that going on. And one of my favorite weekly newsletters that I advocate for everybody is called fix the news. Look it up. We'll put a link in it.
Mark:Fix the news. It's a really intelligent rundown of the good stories of the week, and it's not like, fireman saves cat in tree. It's it's long term
Sal:Statistical, factual
Mark:term solutions to problems and how well the world is doing. And it's not saying that the world is fixed, but what it is saying is that our our news bias is incredibly negative, as it always has been, because nobody want nobody really enjoys reading bad good news. It doesn't sort of make you feel good. But I think that's very the case of what's happening
Sal:in the
Mark:I don't think it's a fact
Sal:you don't you don't want to read the good news. I think that there's an aspect of, well, if if if I just believe that everything's good, that complacency sets in, and there's no change, and we put our heads in the sand, and we don't look at what's bad. That's the sort of but I think it's the balance. I just think that, you know, good news stories don't sell, well, the olden days, sell newspapers, and now I think it's even in the day of Clickbait,
Mark:yeah.
Sal:It's even it's even worse. It was interesting that what's happened in Ceuta, because my first reaction was, what the hell is Spain even doing there? But then that's pretty tough for an Australian to say that, because, you know, we're talking about the long term implications of colonialism. So it's very difficult for an Australian to sort of assert that. But I I think it's particularly unhelpful that boundaries get drawn now from a European perspective that Italy says, this is a 100 your problem, Spain.
Sal:And I do feel that these issues need to be addressed by Europe as a whole.
Mark:It really is a minor, minor problem there, you know, in terms of actual factual numbers. Now that, you know, there's there's a few 100 people left in in Suta who, you know, will be applying for some sort of some sort of access to to Spain. Mhmm. But the the outcry from
Sal:right wing Right wing.
Mark:Yeah. Right wing politic politicians in Italy and and Britain as well.
Sal:And Trump signed to Spain.
Mark:I told you so. That's why you're Moving on,
Sal:I just wanted to reflect positives, not to be sort of Pollyanna, but the positives of Corfu, the positives of here we are in Longos, and as we went took the dinghy into the the quay last night and again this morning. The water the water is just so crystal crystal clear, it's so much healthier than I remember it being, but the biggest change is that we used to be allowed to tie flotilla boats up to the doesn't seem to be the case anymore. The quays seem to be filled with these little sort of day hire boats for holiday makers.
Mark:Yeah. I mean, we haven't really done a proper assessment of lots of ports, but the few we have been into, it does seem like anchoring off is the common way to do things, and
Sal:I think
Mark:that's probably good. Yeah. It sort of frees the town up. It makes it less frantic rather than people battling to find a place on the quay. You know, you gotta be able to anchor.
Mark:You gotta be able to get your dinghy in, and it just keeps the town a bit sort of more relaxed.
Sal:It's very peaceful, isn't it?
Mark:I'm not sure when we get south of South of Levkastown into the Southern Ionian. I suspect there might be boats still going onto the quay down there.
Sal:Well, we had a very interesting evening night the other night on Paxos. We anchored around. I'd always wanted to go because I I don't once again, I don't think we went to the Blue Caves.
Mark:No. Didn't. We didn't.
Sal:We We went to the West Side. So the West Side Of Corfu Paxos. Sorry. The West Side Of Paxos, thanks to Scott Kaufman, who sent us an email and pointed out the beauty. Scott Kaufman being the designer of MATILDA, and who is a long term listener and constant correspondent.
Sal:But we went to the the Western Side Of Paxos to the Blue Caves, and what an incredible night. We were in a bay with these three or four enormous caves and they were enormous because I'll tell you what happened the next morning. Overnight there were three boats?
Mark:Three boats in there, yeah.
Sal:Three boats and by 10:00 the next morning there would have been 40 boats and huge day trippers, like massive kaikis. When I say massive, with sort of four or 500 people slowly motoring into the bay and then inside the cave and then blaring music, just phenomenal, listening to a song, and then coming out again, and that was people's sort of visit to the cave. How special was it to be there overnight and to have that opportunity to swim into the cave without
Mark:the only one there.
Sal:And be the the only only people there. So much so that we sort of thought, wow, this is a highly unvisited place.
Mark:Which makes me think that, like, there's a a good rule of thumb in heavily touristed areas that you don't have to try very hard to get away from it. You know, the the great throng of tourists don't don't push the boundaries of what they can do, really. They stick to the the places they're meant to go. They eat at the places they're meant to go. For instance, the other day on on Corfu, on Southern Corfu, I went for a walk and I walked up and found this little track that went up through the olive groves.
Mark:And it was it was a decent climb, probably about three or four kilometers up the hill to a tiny little church at the top. Mhmm. And then it wandered on through the path. Been there for thousands of years, I guess, this path or hundreds at least, through the olive Groves Village. And this was all within a few miles of where, you know, charter boats are anchored and Mhmm.
Mark:And, you know, people are eating at tavernas and all that sort of thing. You don't have to try too hard to get away from the thong. And I guess that's the same in cities as well. Did you find that in Rome that you could get away from it?
Sal:Totally. 100%. And I think Rome is very much one of those places because there are the the big ticket items that people must see. So if you get out and, you know, get up the parks or into the outskirts of Rome early in the morning, you are on your own. You know, it's really very much very much so.
Sal:They're very sort of small small circles. So that was Petrati, the olive groves above Petriti. And we'll put, obviously, put some photographs on SWS, but also on Instagram because they were really spectacular, absolutely spectacular. And we're going to be putting a whole lot of Mark's images on his website in coming weeks for sale, which will be as a sort of an ongoing little gallery because they are so beautiful and such a such a wonderful thing to be able to share.
Mark:Oh, I did
Sal:wanna talk about It's just a joke. That really was mind blowing, and that was the fact that there was another boat beside us the other evening in that tiny Bay where all the day once the day trippers had left and there were four of us, and it too was called MATILDA, but it
Mark:was It wasn't. It was called OMATILDA with an OMATILDA. M a t h I l d e.
Sal:The letter? Was it from it was
Mark:Yes. It was
Sal:a Greek boat, but registered.
Mark:It was registered in in Malta. Yeah.
Sal:Tell us about that boat.
Mark:It was how long was it?
Sal:Six Sixty meters? 60 meters, I think.
Mark:And it was built in Greece for a shipping family, and the shipping family started a shipyard to build these boats. And it was pretty ugly. It wasn't a very good example of that, and it looked like it had a slightly dodgy paint job. But I think that might have been the way the light was catching it.
Sal:I mean, was massive.
Mark:With a lot of these boats, it's very easy. You just whack the name into well, you first you can look on you can look on, what's it called, marine traffic and see the Yeah. Ship tracker. And and find the name of the boat, and then you just put into a Google search, and you can generally find out quite a lot about them. We'll put a link.
Mark:This one, as I said, was owned by a Greek shipping family. And it's for charter for about 500,000 Australian dollars a week.
Sal:500,000 Australian dollars
Mark:a week. Really? It's not that special.
Sal:It's quite I mean, you know, well It's vegan. 12 crew takes how many guests? 20 guests? No. No?
Sal:Nowhere near that.
Mark:Oh. It's like
Sal:12 guests? Something like crew.
Mark:Yeah. Something like that.
Sal:But what was interesting, and I think what we remarked on was whoever was dropping their 500,000 500,000 Australian dollars, which just I
Mark:just For a week.
Sal:A week. And that didn't include food and beverage. For a didn't include fuel. Like, what the hell? But what we did really admire and what we did comment upon was how much the people were enjoying it.
Sal:There were it seemed to be two families. There were so many children, so maybe grandparents and kids and then grandchildren. But they had every single toy going, and yet they were very calm and very quiet and, you know, but they water skied until the
Mark:sun They went jumped off the bridge, but the high up They
Sal:jumped off and kids were yelling, watch me, and it was really lovely. So it was nice to see rich people enjoying themselves.
Mark:It was because you certainly see enough people sitting on the backs of their Looking uncomfortable and snarling. Snarling into their chardonnay. Sort of thinking, is this it? So it was fun to see them having
Sal:fun Like the family the other day when we were getting fuel in Goovier Marina, and we we got there very we'd been told that on Saturdays, they're it was very, very busy. So we got there at 06:30 in the morning for an 08:30 start. And a cashmere, a huge cashmere came in and tied up beside us also waiting for fuel. And there was this young, gorgeous young English couple, the skipper and the I don't know what they I used to be called a hostess. I'm not sure that that would be appropriate anymore, but the skipper and the female skipper, whatever, she was preparing breakfast, laying out a table, and out came the five grumpiest humans, the a mom and a either a dad and three adult children, and either they were all post argument, or they were just didn't want to be there and didn't wanna be there together, and boy, they letting the world know.
Sal:We just watched them and laughed. It was maybe the coffee machine wasn't working. But, no, it's it there's some very good people watching to be had.
Mark:So what what were we moving on to? We're moving on to
Sal:Highlight of the week.
Mark:Highlight of the week. What was your highlight?
Sal:What what was
Mark:your highlight? You go first.
Sal:I'll go first. Well, my highlight of the week is after twelve weeks of icy doco lab, we, on Thursday, had the pitch for 20,000 Australian dollars. And we had a project from Chile, a project from Colombia, and a project from China. And gosh, it was, you know, to be able to do that from down below on MATILDA and host the Zoom call and have judges from Australia and England, and it was just so fantastic. We have a winner, a clear winner.
Sal:I can't share that information because it's being officially shared on social media.
Mark:So When's it being shared on Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Well, then you can
Sal:share it. Tuesday.
Mark:Oh, no.
Sal:Maybe. No. This is gonna go live Monday. I can't because they even the winner doesn't know yet. Right.
Sal:But it's pretty exciting. And so that's been that's been a real sort of you know, I conceived of that idea on MATILDA last summer. And so to see it go full circle is is is is pretty special. And that's always been the thing is to be able to work and sail. And so, you know, as I'm editing now and doing that, it's it's it's pretty good.
Mark:How about you? Interesting that no. Hold on. Just comment on that first. It's interesting that so this lab's been fantastic because I've listened to bits of it as it come along, and I've been really quite enjoying the sort of the process that you've gone through with it.
Mark:And at the end of the day, somebody gets $20,000 for free. You know, they've done a bit of work, but it's not like
Sal:Well, their project that they had is better.
Mark:Yeah. And their project's better, and get they $20,000 to kick start it. And the next one's coming up, and I cannot find people. That's what I was gonna say. That that it's difficult to find people with a very sort of they don't have to have achieved a whole lot with a project.
Mark:They have to have a clear idea and be willing to learn and come on board and spend a few hours over twelve weeks as part of an online group. And then at the end, if they've done a good job, there's a really good chance. In fact, there's a one in six chance that they get $20,000.
Sal:There
Mark:is a $20,000, they get masses of knowledge. And yet, they you know, in this world of where everything is content and people wanna make stuff, there just doesn't seem to be people willing to put themselves out there for a few weeks to actually have that opportunity.
Sal:Well, odd. I'm just truly struggling to find them, which means I mean, they've gotta be out there. So it just means that I'm not talking to the right people. Well, know. But
Mark:I'm just You've been talking to Documentary Australia. You've been
Sal:Yeah. Advertising Screen Australia, advertising on Instagram. Paid ads on Instagram.
Mark:And who's that who's
Sal:that Filming. Now. Filming. We're working with Filming. We are I'm, you know, if I can't find the people, I can't give the money away.
Sal:And it's, you know, it's there's a philanthropist behind it, so it's it's I, you know, it's I sort of feel it's fledgling days, but at the same time, it's huge hugely frustrating. Hugely frustrating.
Mark:Yeah. I'm just sort of not sure why considering we're meant to be living in this era where, you know, everybody wants content and content about, you know, sort of interesting things. That there just isn't more people who have a small amount of time to actually give themselves that opportunity. Anyway, enough
Sal:of that. Yeah. Yeah. Enough of that. Highlight for you, MATILDA?
Mark:Yes. So my highlight, probably a little more low key than yours, it's more just as touched on it earlier, the sort of the idea of trying to find some sort of authenticity and something outside of the three month tourist period where people come to the island and pump money into the economy to keep it going through the year and try and find something a little bit more consistent and sort of long term about what makes this place tick. And so walking inland from Patruti on Corfu and, you know, sort of decent, I think it's like a 12 kilometer walk up through the hills and the olive groves and that sort of thing, taking pictures and maybe saying hello to a few people if I can. For me, it's sort of a part of what this trip is about. We're just looking around and trying to understand a little bit more authenticity of the place that we're living in for the moment.
Sal:Yeah. Yeah. I I had a lovely little moment this morning where, you know, we we have no Greek, so to speak. We're, you know, we're basically saying being polite.
Mark:I reckon we could do a few words. I can do calamera.
Sal:Calamera. Well, and this morning, Tecanis came back when I heard somebody say, Tecanis, which is how are you? Not gonna get you very far these days. We need to be posikani ing our gyros. Pozikani Yorro.
Sal:Pozikani Yorro.
Mark:And then you can do food types. Satsiki. Saganaki. Well, the restaurant we're going
Sal:to tonight, it has an
Mark:Oh, no.
Sal:I read about that on You shouldn't you shouldn't Which means I think they whipped their feta.
Mark:You shouldn't innovate. You can't classic. Innovate
Sal:You can't innovate. K. So to what we're reading, Mark, what are you reading?
Mark:Well, you're right back with a whole lot of books. So I'm having trouble choosing one at the moment. I've sampled a few of them, but I think I'm gonna read that book that you read, Stranger Ink or Food, which I've already started, which begins in Albania.
Sal:Yeah. I I think it's wonderful to read a book of, you know, the location
Mark:you're Yeah. Important to read about where you're in.
Sal:It's funny. Last night, you actually said to me, because I wondered if the island in it was fictitious, but you've that you've just got decided that it is that island opposite
Mark:Well, that's what it's called. Yeah. Yeah. It's the same
Sal:name. Oh, is it the name?
Mark:Yeah. Yeah.
Sal:Because in the book, they just call it Spy Land or Right. So I I wasn't sure if it was actually real.
Mark:And what are you reading?
Sal:Yeah. Well, I've got you know, I always have an audiobook on the go and and a book that I'm reading. So I am continuing on in the EM Forster camp, and I'm listening to a passage to India, which is so beautiful. And I'm really sort of I've only just really started that. I'm about an hour and a half in.
Sal:But I'm I'm continuing Dark Is The Morning by Rupert Thompson, which is about, two young kids in Italy falling in love, which is, kind of dark and beautiful. But I do have a great date out there, Mark, August 17, 7PM Melbourne time for the very first ever, the very first ever MATILDA RADIO book club. It's going to be on Zoom, and for anyone who's read yesteryear, there's going to be an open invite to that to that Zoom link on on MATILDA RADIO. So that's a bit of fun. Seventeenth?
Sal:August 17.
Mark:What happens if we're in the middle of the passage
Sal:from? RADIO: Well, might. We just won't be. We'll have to we'll have to to we'll have to get Elon onto the job or we'll have to just make it happen, but it will be 7PM August 7PM Melbourne time, August 17, the Yesteryear Book Club.
Mark:And how do people sign up for that?
Sal:Well, it would just be an open link. It'll be an open link on MATILDA RADIO, which I'll put on the over the next couple of weeks on it'll be a link in the show notes for for, see let's let's see how let's see how many people we can get who have read Yesteryear. I've never been part of a book club, book group. Is I? Yep.
Sal:Oh, the one that we broke. Yes. What sadness there is there. So I'm not very good at it, clearly. So I'm gonna need some help.
Sal:I might have to appoint. I think, Anna Mesger is gonna be official book club captain. She's, part of 15 book groups, so she clearly knows how they work. We're going to get her to help. This week we are heading to over to the mainland.
Mark:To Prevaza, where we're going to
Sal:do a crew change. A bit of a crew change.
Mark:And from arrival, we'll try and find some water that we can that Sal can drink.
Sal:Water that I can drink.
Mark:And and then we'll head down to the Southern Ionian, which was really the heartland of of our flotillas thirty five years ago. Yes. And hopefully catch up with a few people down there.
Sal:So next next Sunday, we we might even try and do the podcast from one of the tavernas. That'd be a bit of fun.
Mark:That would be fun.
Sal:I'm really looking forward to this week. It's lovely to be back on MATILDA. I have missed her seventh swim day ahead. Thanks for listening.
Mark:Thank you, everybody. Bye.