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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.
Welcome back to MATILDA RADIO. Due to popular demand, I am Sal Balharrie.
Mark:And I'm Mark Chew. And That sounds a bit weird, actually.
Sal:Yeah. Due to popular
Mark:You're Sal Balharrie due to popular demand. Stop.
Sal:Do it again.
Mark:No. We should leave that.
Sal:Oh, should we? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. There you go.
Sal:There's a start. We'll we'll take two, but we'll leave the take one in just to show what idiots about. Welcome back to MATILDA RADIO. We are back due to popular demand after our very first episode. I'm Sal Balharrie
Mark:And I'm Mark Chew. How many people listened to our first episode?
Sal:Wow. We had we had
Mark:I went to triple figures. Triple. Like a 100?
Sal:I can't believe that.... my mom's gonna laugh at that because for a minute, I was like, is 77 triple? Oh, we must
Mark:have a 100 listens by now.
Sal:Oh, definitely. We've got a 100. I definitely got a 100. But I'll tell you what, we might have whatever number we had, I was blown away by the positive comments. They were beautiful.
Sal:Comments from all over the world. And I'll tell you, Mark, where our listeners come from. They come from Australia. They come from New Zealand. They we had a we had a listener from Finland.
Sal:How did somebody find us in Finland? America is lagging. We had a few from The UK, one from Wales. Name yourself. Stand up the whale.
Mark:I reckon that could be Bob. On holiday he's on holiday in Wales. That's my guess. Our friend, Bob. Big shout
Sal:out to Cole Anderson and Michelle. Michelle, who are driving somewhere. Shout out to Molly. Shout out to Amanda, my cousin Amanda, Amanda Mary. We've just had really beautiful feedback.
Sal:So we're coming to you this week from
Mark:I was gonna say that I think I'm quite happy if we don't get a whole lot of American listeners because
Sal:Oh, don't say that. I love Americans.
Mark:Okay. I won't say that.
Sal:They they are
Mark:working I it was gonna explain why.
Sal:Oh, yeah. No. No. Go.
Mark:Because I like to think that the podcast might have a little bit of irony and nuance Ah. That Americans wouldn't get.
Sal:So our American audience won't get it. Yeah. I I see where you're going with that. But maybe we could introduce them. How would you define irony and nuance?
Mark:Oh, I don't know. Just the normal way.
Sal:Just the I'm
Mark:not sure, really.
Sal:Just get on get on Get on board and laugh. Mhmm. So we're coming to you wherever you are, irrespective of whether you're American or from Finland. Hopefully, you're still in Wales. We're coming from to you from Torre Delle Stelle, the Tower Of The Stars.
Sal:A tower that was built in the sixteenth century by the Spanish to make everybody aware of Barbary pirates. It's absolutely stunningly beautiful. When the sun was low this morning, the water was turquoise. It was just like diving into diamonds, little tiny fish at the bottom. There's shadows on the sand.
Sal:What can you tell us about a shore mark?
Mark:So this place is about it's about it's on the East Side Of The Gulf Of Kagayari, about 12 miles from nautical miles from Kagayari, a nautical mile being a bit more than a normal mile for those of you
Sal:who 35 kilometers in a car.
Mark:Yeah. If you drive around the edge. Yeah. And it's a little sort of holiday village that reminds me very much of somewhere like, I don't know, Bounarring or Point Lonsdale. But instead of having Australian architecture in it, it's got Italian architecture with things like stucco houses houses and lots of sort of travertine and but one thing that does remind me of Australia a lot, it's full of gum trees.
Mark:Beautiful big gum trees and smells of gum trees as well.
Sal:Put that into chat to try and find out why.
Mark:Evocative of home for us.
Sal:We're gonna put a photograph on this, on the Instagram page for, the intro to MATILDA RADIO that shows we were the only boat, but in the harbor, but it's really filling up fast, isn't it?
Mark:Yeah. It's not a harbor really as such. It's a bay. A harbor makes it sound like somewhere where you it's just an open bay. Open bay.
Mark:And everybody comes over for some mid morning and sits and swims and has lunch and a few drinks.
Sal:There's not a lot of
Mark:Sunday because obviously people aren't at work and they've got a bit more time. So, yeah, just hop in your rib and whiz across in Cagliari and
Sal:Oh, but what did you learn, Mark, about going ashore?
Mark:You're not allowed to motor within 200 meters of the shore, and there's a channel that you have to row down to get to the beach. They're very worried about you chopping up swimmers with your little propeller on your outboard. I think they're unduly worried about it because we motor to the beach in Australia, and I don't think many people get chopped But
Sal:I do. I like it. I like this thoroughfare. I like these little boys that show you where you should go. Sure.
Sal:I think what I like most, and I don't know if this is gonna ramp up as the summer, is the lack of jet skis. Well, yeah, jet skis seem to be not the fashion here.
Mark:Yeah. And it's all about ribs. It's all about these quite large sort of powerful ribs, a lot of them, and you can obviously rent them without a a skipper for the day. And so you fill them up with people, men in budgie smugglers and women in bikinis and here's one coming in now and they drop down an anchor and sit in the sunshine frying and There's a lot of bum. Don't put a lot of loud music on.
Sal:A lot of bum action. Not not a lot of moodity, but when I say bum action, I'm talking bikinis that, you know, feature bottoms. Not a lot of flamingo here. Full flamingo. We we saw a lot of full flamingo in in Spain.
Sal:Full flamingo being code for nudity because, that's what a few of the men looked like to me represented flamingos in Spain. But no, there's not a lot of flamingo action here. What's your week been like, Mark?
Mark:My week's been sort of quite low key because I've been on board by myself because you've been in London, which we'll talk about in a sec. Yeah. But I've had a big fixing list that I'm working my way through. I haven't managed to fix the water maker yet, but I'm sort of getting deeper into the research of it. I have, I think, touch wood, maybe fix the whiffy smell coming out of the holding tank, which we've been working on for a year now.
Sal:And I'm very grateful because that is under directly under my bunk.
Mark:And a few other things, just boring stuff. Little bits and pieces fitted the fans that we bought so that we can get a bit of draft down below as it gets hotter. Yeah. You know, drainage to the fridge, all those sort of little things I've been working on, and they all take a bit of time. It's fun.
Mark:Well, it's sort of fun. It's rewarding when you can fix things. It's frustrating when you don't know how. Anybody know how to fix a tachometer on a 50 year old diesel engine?
Sal:Shout out for a fifty year.
Mark:It's an electronic one, not a mechanical one. And it was working intermittently. Chat's given me a big list of
Sal:Things to work through.
Mark:Things to work through but I don't really trust it. Chat being. It wasn't chat. It was Claude.
Sal:Chat being way superior to Claude. I wrote, shall I put it into chat for you this afternoon and see what the answer is? There's a chat where I'm team chat. Mark's team Claude. Can't even go into why that that is the case.
Sal:And so what else, Mark, for the week?
Mark:That's about it. Did laundry twice, provisioning,
Sal:Oh, he did the provisioning when I got back.
Mark:Went to sort of explored Cagliari a little bit which it seems like a nice town. I didn't really get to grips with it like I did with other places. I'd I I don't dislike it or anything. I just feel like I the marina was about half an hour walk from the town and it was very hot. So the effort to get in there and explore maybe sort of drained your enthusiasm a little bit once you got there, but that's a bad excuse.
Mark:I think I'd be very keen to go back and spend more time there.
Sal:Actually, we should talk a little bit about Navalie. Because it's it's really how what we're using to find places.
Mark:Yeah.
Sal:Navalie is an app. Who owns Navalie? Who is it designed by that you should know?
Mark:Just called Neveli.
Sal:Because, really, they should be a sponsor of MATILDA RADIO. But we use this app called Neveli, and it's basically the feedback comes from users, doesn't it, really, about, where to anchor, how to anchor. People are telling you all the time what was good, what wasn't so good. And when it comes to marinas, do marinas advertise some
Mark:Some of them do, but you can book some marinas through the app. Not many. Most of them you actually but they give you the contact details so you it.
Sal:Like an Airbnb for Navalea. It's a bit like Airbnb for boats Yeah. With marinas.
Mark:A little bit a little bit like that. But it's really useful. It's got all the information in it, and, you know, you take people's people's comments with a grain of salt, but it it's quite informative about practical stuff like, you know, where the shops are and how much things cost and whether it's gonna be suitable to anchor there in certain wind conditions and things like that. So, yeah, no, it's good. It I it doesn't replace a pilot guide.
Mark:A pilot guide's still fun, and I like to have the pilot guide, but it's sort of a more up to date and sort of customer fed Yeah.
Sal:Information the pilot guide though because we had that wonderful pilot guide for the Balearics. The pilot guide, we've now moved back to Rod Heichel for this particular area.
Mark:Rod and Lucinda.
Sal:Rod is Rod must be 700 years old. I mean, we were using Rod thirty years ago. Rod he's very dry. Oh, sorry, Rod, if you're listening. I love your work, but you're very dry.
Sal:And I think we need a little bit more color. And the the people I've given I'll put the link to the Balearic guide. They were fabulous with that, you know, with that last pilot guide in the Balearics. But I think the thing that I tend to do when we arrive in different countries is I tend to look for blogs of travelers. The particularly found a fabulous blog of travelers who had who had scoured all the beaches of Menorca, and it was an absolutely fantastic guide.
Sal:And they had rated their beaches in three different categories. First category being accessible by car. Second category being five minute walk. Third category being very difficult to get to an over an hour walk from you know, I can't imagine somebody parking and schlepping for an hour. But we tended to go to those beaches, because or those those areas would cross cross reference that with the pilot guide knowing that they wouldn't be particularly busy because it was an hour schlep into the beach, and they ended up being absolutely spectacular.
Mark:I think the the thing about pilot guides is they're deliberately meant to be objective. They're not meant to be subjective. Like, you know, they're not travel blogs. They're meant to give you the facts about places. So especially, especially, you know, I think that it is a pilot guide.
Mark:It's it's not a an opinion piece on what a
Sal:country's like. I think the other other the other one did tend to have a little bit more history. I think, obviously, you're talking about safety and you're talking about, you know, very serious things about where you can anchor and where there are rocks and where it's safe. But I think it's also important to talk about a little bit of history and what's ashore, and I think that's what I enjoyed from that other pilot.
Mark:So
Sal:I've been in London this week talking about enjoying history. Nice little segue there. But and I have to say it was the most spectacular flight. I had a window seat, but I think because I'm so used to flying from Australia to Europe where you were at, you know, I don't know, what are they cruising at? 38,000 feet.
Sal:This was incredibly low, this flight. And so you just kept looking out the windows, and the Alps Swiss Alps were just literally below. But, obviously, we started flying over Sardinia. I had no idea of how much agriculture there is in Sardinia over Corsica where there was still snow in the Central Mountains, which was just spectacular. I could see the glacier lakes and then up to Milan.
Sal:And then from Milan, the Swiss Alps, France, and into England. So there's, there'll be some video of this on the, on the ins on MATILDA RADIO Instagram. Then in London, I had obviously stayed with our gorgeous son in his share house with his partner, Alicia, and with the cool kids, we had dinner, went and saw bands, and had some fantastic meetings with producers that I'm working with in London. And then brilliant dinner at the reform club, Mark, which I have to say you had heard of. I had not.
Sal:Sadly, the name sort of sparks contemporary concern of sort of right wing politics, but it wasn't
Mark:I don't understand that. Why does it do that?
Sal:Well, there a reform party at the moment in The UK? A splintered group.
Mark:Stay clear of UK politics. I'm not sure.
Sal:Yes. Yeah. I think you'll find there is. And, but it was, you know, Cartier Bresson, Ian Forster, all these incredible thinkers of the sort of early twentieth century were, were there, and and I was invited to a dinner to share some brilliant conversation of of I I don't know. Can we call it early twenty first century?
Sal:Probably not anymore. Conversation before coming back to Sardinia, which was really nice to sort of get back here. I think one of the sort of questions that came out of the listeners was what does daylight look like? What does a what does a typical day on MATILDA, you
Mark:and
Sal:I waking up on the boat, what does it look like? What would you say?
Mark:Well, it depends. If we've got like somewhere to go, like if we need to be somewhere, it's very different from a day like today where we're really just at the moment we're in this bay that's how described and we're really waiting for it. We're trying to get to Sicily which is a 100 and I can't remember 110 miles away or something like that and at the moment the problem is that there's no wind to do it.
Sal:And diesel is expensive.
Mark:Well diesel is expensive which is you know consideration but also motoring for twenty hours is just boring and just does your head in a bit motoring motoring motoring. So we were hoping to wait for some wind, but we're actually getting a little bit behind schedule. So I think we'll probably head off tomorrow. So that day sorry. Getting back to it that day will be very different tomorrow.
Mark:But today is a very relaxed day. Just waiting here. We'll do get up, go for a swim, sell some exercises. I went for a walk up the hill, come back. We'll probably do a few hours work this afternoon.
Mark:We've got Internet connection here. We can charge our computers so, you know, we can get some serious work done, and we've got a little bit that we need to get through.
Sal:And regards to provisioning, because that's always sort of, you know, that's interesting because we are, you know, we're not going to a shop today. We are completely and utterly self sufficient. I reckon we'd be self sufficient for sort of ten days at the moment. We we did a big shop yesterday. We went to what was it called?
Sal:Nona Nona. Then we have a few staple favorites for for dinner, and we tend to rotate through those. But we have those on board. And we go in and out of marinas marinas sort sort of of or shopping, you know, trying to sort of just stay on top of that. I make yogurt.
Mark:And I think if we can get be in a marina maybe once every sort of ten days or so is about a nice average, I think.
Sal:Yeah.
Mark:You can get your washing done and you can do a big shop and
Sal:Yeah.
Mark:Fill the boat up with water, especially when the water maker's not working. And do all those sort of things. Give it a hose down. Everything gets very salty. So you keep everything a hose down.
Mark:But once every ten days, getting in is is enough. And also marinas, when it's hot like this, aren't very nice places. You know, because you don't face into the wind, so the air doesn't necessarily go through all the hatches and move through the boat. So
Sal:And so yesterday, we had, some big decisions to make about what the next couple of weeks look like. We had three choices. So we're heading to Sicily. Well, that's not quite right. Yesterday, we're heading to wherever we were planning to pick up Sam and Jim, and we're, basing that on where the wind's blowing, where we're going to get to, we've got that we're picking them up this time next week, next Sunday.
Sal:And so it was more a case of sort of that will shape the rest of our the rest of our month, really, won't it?
Mark:Yeah. I the objective is to get to the Ionian so we can revisit where we were thirty five years ago. That's the first objective. And so we sort of wanna keep moving to do that. But we've sort of got Sicily in the way, so we could go around either side of Sicily.
Mark:And then if you wanted to extend it a little bit, you could go to the Italian island of Pantalera and then onto Gozo and Malta and then up to Syracuse and that way, which is probably a for this time of year, is starting to get busy, might be a bit more interesting because there'd probably be less sort of casual boat traffic. Probably be a little bit more room.
Sal:But we were also looking at Tunisia yesterday.
Mark:We were, but that got a bit harder.
Sal:Well, I think it was more the point that we sort of put three options on the table. Yeah. And then we shared that with Sam and Jim who are in Italy on holiday at the moment. And, I mean, I think it was interesting. We've had some really interesting discussions.
Sal:At first, with with people about Tunisia, at first, I was I'm slightly I'm nervous about the situation of of coming across, people at sea, refugees migrants in in boats. Absolutely not, you know, from a safety point of view, but very much so. There are a couple of things there. A couple of things that make me, you know, feel I feel do feel uncomfortable that here we are cruising in this fabulous life whilst people are, you know, living a life of peril that in this same breathing the same air, that does make me, you know, feel slightly nervous. Not nervous.
Sal:Makes me feel slightly I do you know, I'm very fortunate.
Mark:So what I don't understand your point now.
Sal:My point is that I, at first, had felt concerned about going to Tunisia from that point of view. So we hadn't sort of thought about it.
Mark:No. I still don't quite understand though. So what your concern is that you'll come across these people?
Sal:And that we would have to take them on board. I couldn't sail past them. Yeah. That's that's the point.
Mark:Okay.
Sal:And so then the point is then now we've got a boat with 30 people on board. I couldn't I could not sail past a rib with a sinking rib with people in it. Yeah. That's end up on the Tilda, then we've got, like, what the hell are we doing? So that's, you know, that's a that is a reality to be sailing down in that kind of area.
Sal:But the probability of that is, you know, I don't know, tiny. But then then add to that other people that we've met that Tunisia is not really a cruising ground is what we've heard. Would you agree?
Mark:Yeah. It seems like just a place you go to visit the the town that the marina's in, then you move on to the next marina. It's not somewhere where you can go off and anchor in bays and Yeah. Sort of be So
Sal:it just sounded like it just sounded like a bit of hard work. Yeah. And even though the the winds are quite favorable to for us to go to to Tunisia at this particular point in time. But so we have after consultation with Sam and Jim poolside, what what have we decided?
Mark:So we're going to, think, probably at this stage tomorrow, crossover to near Trapani on the far western corner of Sicily. And that's as I said earlier on in the podcast about just over a 100 miles and I think we'll probably be motoring for about sixteen or eighteen hours. So it's gonna be a bit boring. But and hot and boring. But it doesn't improve.
Mark:It gets worse later on in the week, even less wind. So if we want to keep moving, I think we just have to bite the bullet and do it, there'll be enough sailing later on. We had a lovely sail yesterday, and it just sort of made me think, you never know. There might be more wind than I think. So that's our plan.
Mark:So, Sal, tell us about what you've been reading while you've been on these plays and trades and Well, I things.
Sal:Finished Lazar, which I really I I enjoyed, but
Mark:Tell us a bit about it before you, before you
Sal:tell It's us you think of it's a rolling family history, that spans three generations. German oh, actually, sorry, Austrian family. I think it was written in German and it's translated. I don't find the translation to be particularly good. There are a lot of really troubling passages.
Sal:But more importantly
Mark:Troubling in what way?
Sal:Troubling as in I just didn't quite know who was speaking. And in in literature as a writer, it's called head hopping. You the idea is kind of hopped from head to head. So the book didn't really kind of land with me. But more importantly, I think it's actually my experience of reading on an iPad.
Sal:Just don't enjoy it. Just don't I just I I feel like I've just got this barrier between myself and and the have you ever read of anything on digital? No. I haven't.
Mark:But I did read digitally a a study that was only released recently about how people interpret books differently if they've read them on physical paper or on an iPad. And their actual sort of level of understanding and recall is always better if it's been read physically, not always better, but generally better. Partly because people have a sort of a physical idea of where they are in the book. If you're just scrolling through a book
Sal:I get that. You know,
Mark:every page looks like the next one. Yeah. I think even when you're reading a book, if you glance up at the at the spine and see that you're two thirds of the way through it, you sort of almost have an idea of where you are in the story just purely by the amount of pages you've read. So I think little indications like that might just sort of might inform your understanding of the book better.
Sal:Yeah.
Mark:So I'm probably just justifying why I like reading on paper, but I've I've read a book.
Sal:Look, I had the most amazing experience in London because, obviously, I wanted to find, you know, we're we're plowing through books, and I'm I wanted to top up our supplies. So I went to Daunt Books, and, oh my goodness, it was just incredible. It was just so a, it's so beautiful.
Mark:Where is it?
Sal:It's in Mali Bone, and it's just absolutely an exquisite exquisite bookshop. But actually being able to go into
Mark:Hold on. What what's good about it? So
Sal:Well, it was very it's very old. It's very
Mark:So it's been there a long time?
Sal:Been there a very, very long time. It's based around this formal sort of sitting room with rooms sort of going off at beautiful windows. But more importantly, it's just the way in which the books are actually arranged on on on tables in sort of clusters of ideas, and everyone there was just so willing to help you. And, you know, I was basically saying I want contemporary fiction, particularly about lots of different places, and but I need paper back. So, you know, I walked away with six books, and I am starting Ian McEwen's book, What We Can What We Can Know, which I'm it'll be interesting for you, Mark, to sort of see what you think about this book because it's set in the future, and that's not generally your shtick.
Sal:So I'm not kind of sure that you're gonna enjoy this book. But, yeah, it was absolutely so I was I was pleased to be off my off my, Kindle, off my iPad, and now back into turning pages. I'm gonna have to download a book though to, for an audiobook for for our cruise to our sail to Sicily because I I do like to be listening constantly to a thriller in the wee hours when I'm on watch on my own, and I only allow myself to sort of put those in my ears when, when I am on watch, and I make sure I lift leave at a cliffhanger, which is always a bit of fun. What are you reading?
Mark:Same as last week, I'm afraid. I'm a slow reader, so I'll probably be reading the same again next week and the week after.
Sal:And so that's pretty much us for the week. Tonight for dinner, it's chicken paella or sausage with lentils or could even make my sister's very famous eggplant curry. Wish you were here for actually, I wish you were here to cook for me, Carl. But tomorrow, we're heading to Sicily.
Mark:Yep. In forty eight hours, we should be anchored off the little islands just off Trapani on End Of Sicily. All going well. Weather permitting.
Sal:What do we need to get ready before we ship shape?
Mark:We need to get the dinghy on board and deflated and the outboard on the back, and we need to put the inner four stay on and get the stay still out and fix that to the to the inner four stay. And we need to make sure everything's put away properly and all the lockers are closed and pump the bilges and that's about all.
Sal:I need to charge my headphones, charge my phone, make sure that everything's ready for my ready for my for my audiobook, and we'll be two hours on, two hours off.
Mark:Yeah. Two hours on, two hours off for about twenty four hours. That should get us there. I mean, as long as, I can't see any bad weather coming. I mean, a bit of bad weather would be quite nice because it would blow us somewhere.
Mark:I think we're gonna be doing a lot of motoring.
Sal:Yeah. In this sort of Mediterranean, beautiful sort of haze, gorgeous sunsets, beautiful sunrises, big stars at night. So it's all good. We will have a great week, and so we'll be live next week from Sicily. Yeah.
Sal:Yeah. Have a great week,
Mark:everyone. Bye.