Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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.
It's 07/19/2026, and I'm Sal Balharrie.
MARK:And where are you?
SAL:I well, who are you?
MARK:No. I was gonna say where are you first?
SAL:Oh, where am I? Okay. I am in Trastevere in Rome.
MARK:And I'm Mark Chew, and I'm sitting on MATILDA in Orthonoy and the northern end Orthonoy, an island at the Northern End of the Ionian in Greece.
SAL:Tell me about Orthonoy. What can you see?
MARK:I can see a beautiful big wide bay with absolutely crystal clear water. We're anchored in six meters and I can see every detail on the bottom. There is no wind, it's very hot, and the shore is lined with sort of Greek pine trees and low scrubby bright green bushes and there's one track leading up to the tiny settlement on this island that I'm going to explore tonight.
SAL:There are people living there?
MARK:I think there's a couple. Yeah. I don't think there's very many. And there is a ferry that comes here occasionally. There must be a few people here.
MARK:But on this side of the island, there's a couple of tiny little tumbled down fishermen's huts and they're derelict wooden boats and not much else.
SAL:And on the ranking of Odysseus and Calypso, did he go there?
MARK:Well, it's under debate. Some people think this is an island that Calypso and Odysseus went to. Other people think it's mistaken for an island nearest Syracuse.
SAL:Well, as we know, Mark, all roads and all seas lead to Rome. No. I am we made a decision last week that this edit that I'm working on at the moment, which is I am so close. And, I mean, what's what's fantastic is I began this novel, writing this novel in 2016 in Tuscany in Baga when we were staying there outside of Luca. And that was where the idea of this story came from.
SAL:I haven't said this to you, Mark, but it was rather fantastic. The other day I was describing so basically I'm at the very, very, very pointy end of this book. And what that means is that I'm working
MARK:I can very count the number of times you repeat a word three times. That was very, very, very. That's the first one.
SAL:Okay, great, great. Oh, there's two. Yeah, no, do. Keep on me on work. And I'm not allowed to say extraordinary at all today.
SAL:But it's an incredible sort of situation that I find myself in working very closely with an editor. Gosh, editors are incredible people. They are so giving of themselves and their time to It's such a selfless task. You're trying to make somebody else's work as You
MARK:do realise they're getting paid for it, don't you?
SAL:Yeah. Yeah. That's true. That's true. That's true.
MARK:Anyway selfless. It's a job.
SAL:Well, yeah. But still, it's kind of like, I guess, as a creative person, have such a strong vision. I mean, you like to direct somebody else to take photographs? It's kind of a weird thing, isn't it? Anyway, I digress.
SAL:I'm working with this fantastic editor and her wonderful notes. And the other day she gave me
MARK:Which is the word that you shouldn't use too much?
SAL:I can't say it because I've already said it once. Is fantastic? No. Listen, I'm going to find some more adjectives in my I'm running out of words in my vocabulary. Anyway, so great notes, really great notes.
SAL:But one of the things she wanted me to do was to really describe what this young woman was feeling at this moment in time in this story. And what she's feeling is, you know, she's 16 and she's just feeling that her emotions no longer fit inside her body. Anyway, so I started writing and I was looking for ways describing. And I started writing just a little tiny sentence, but about the Medusa and how she felt like she'd swallowed the Medusa, like emotions felt like snakes on the inside. And so here I am in Rome going for these very early morning walks.
SAL:And what do I find? I find myself walking down this street of extraordinary and up, of incredible up, brilliant up antique shops and there is a Medusa. So I'm exactly where I need to be to finish this book. So she began in Italy and she'll end in Italy. So here I am for two weeks whilst you sail the boat to Corfu, which you have done.
SAL:But tell us about your incredible
MARK:Haven't quite got to Corfu yet. We parted ways in Crotone on the sole of Italy. What day was that?
SAL:Thursday.
MARK:And today's Sunday, so that's four days ago. And I dropped you off very early in the morning to go to taxi to the airport. And then that night at midnight, because that was the time we were going to get a little bit of breeze, I left we, that being MATILDA and I sailed the 76 miles over to a place called Maria De Luca, which is right on the point of the stiletto heel that is Italy. We left it at midnight and got in before midday, so we did 76 miles in twelve hours, which concerning there wasn't a lot of wind was wonderful hardly any motoring, just a little bit of motoring at the end, which was to charge the batteries. Then I spent the day in Maria De Luca, which is a little tourist town, right on the point of Italy, and anchored just off the marina there, and summer was really kicking off in Italian style, lots of music and people in launches visiting and a few jet skis people in
SAL:Tell me about that place, what's it like? Are there beaches? Or what what's it who's going
MARK:to There's a few sort of a few rocky beaches. I think there's these famous grottoes that people go and see which you sort of swim in the cave. And I'm not quite sure why people go there. They can swim and there's a few. Yeah, I'm not really sure.
MARK:And it's all Italian tourists. It's not really sort of international European tourists. But one night was quite enough there. It was fun. I enjoyed it.
MARK:I had my last proper Italian pizza, a pizza Pugliese.
SAL:What's a Pugliese? Has a
MARK:delicious sort of pancetta, and then it had a mozz no. Mozzarella. A, buccasini in the middle of it, one in the middle of it, which he cut and it all sort of oozed out all over the pizza, which is very nice.
SAL:Not burrata, not a burrata.
MARK:Oh no, so it wasn't a burrata, it was a burrata. Amazing! Incredible! So that was my pizza and then the next morning I went to the supermarket at 08:00, stocked up on all the good things that I like to eat that you don't like to eat. Because I probably won't go to a town for a week or so now, ten days maybe.
SAL:What did you buy?
MARK:Headed off to Greece. I said, you carry on by the food? I'm not in Pittsburgh. No, didn't know.
SAL:But I'm just curious to know what did you buy that I don't like to eat? Like lots of sausage and pasta?
MARK:So with the sailing left from Maria De Luca at about 09:00 and 55 miles over to this little island, Orthonoy, which is Greek, and had the most wonderful sail between about twelve and fourteen knots on the beam, or just forward of the beam, which is just where MATILDA likes it. So we're honing along at six and a half, seven knots just comfortably. Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh. I didn't think the Autohelm was working at one stage because it wasn't moving at all and I was worried that it might have broken, but I just realised the boat's so beautifully balanced that the Autohelm didn't need to do anything. Occasionally it would just give a tiny little one degree, open up one way or another, and it was the most magnificent sail.
MARK:Had arrived in Orphanouy in this bay on the North Side. Did you have
SAL:the keel up or down during that passage?
MARK:I had it up because we weren't quite on the wind. I think unless you're absolutely on the wind there's not much point. Since arriving in this bay, because it's so still and there's just a gentle rolling swell, I've let it down just to keep the boat stable on the anchor. And the bay is gorgeous. I described it earlier on, but, one thing I did have a bit of a minor, very minor panic attack about was on the way here I suddenly realised there was changing countries and so you need to change your Fertilian flag from Italian to Greek and I thought, oh my God, have I got a Greek flag on board?' Which I certainly haven't purchased, but friends, Peter and Nelly, who've been German, are very organized.
SAL:No surprises there. Surprises there to have an organized German. But did Peter ever hoist a Greek flag?
MARK:Well, must admit I got it out of the flag bag. It's probably a nautical term for a flag bag. Jim Woods will let us know what the nautical term for a
SAL:flag bag is.
MARK:Sure. And I got out the flag back and it looks pretty virginal. So anyway, I found it and it's hoisted and the Italian flag was lowered to the sounds of the Italian national anthem, which I don't know no, just made that bit up And the Greek folk was hoisted to the sounds of the Greek national anthem, which I also don't know. And now it's flying proudly from the starboard cross trees. And white stripes, blue and white cross in the top left hand corner.
SAL:Talking about national anthems, this morning on my So I get up super early
MARK:because What was incredible?
SAL:Super hot. I'll let that one go through to this keeper. Absolutely stunning walk this morning. 5AM. So I get up and I walk from about 5AM till about 07:30 to find a coffee and then come back and have a shower because it's bloody hot by that stage.
SAL:Get going. But this morning, I went to look at some of the monuments to Garibaldi who was obviously instrumental in the unification of Italy. And
MARK:creation of the squashed fire biscuit.
SAL:Yes. And the creation of the squashed fire biscuit. But what I hadn't known was this morning and I'm sadly, I'll do some research and find out his name because I've forgotten. But what was interesting was at the sort of mausoleum in the park above Rome, there was a young man who was 22. He was a poet and he was sort of travelling with Garibaldi.
SAL:And this was the battle of Rome against the French. Garibaldi, they actually had to retreat but obviously got his act together and eventually won. But there was this young kid who wrote this poem and he was only 22 and it was to go on to become still the national anthem of Italy today. He died of gangrene, this kid, and he is in this sort of mausoleum. Now what's interesting in the mausoleum is there's actually the sort of, I don't know, the ashes or the remains or what have you of quite a few people who were instrumental in the unification.
SAL:And there is a whole avenue of busts, of marble busts that sort of goes up to the ultimate sort of monument that looks over the whole of Rome. What's interesting Mark is that there were no women in any of those battles. There were no women that were of any importance in the unification of Italy. It was men. Women played absolutely no role if one is to take the immortalisation of the physiognomies of the marble statues that line the roads that lead to Rome and Garibaldi's tombs and statues, so to speak.
SAL:So that was just a fun fact. In fact, numerous fun facts there. Over to you.
MARK:So the good news or not the good news, it's well actually no, maybe it is good news that a large part of the population of Venice must have read 'SWS' last week, because we read a little article about Mr Tillman Fertitta, the American ambassador to Italy and his huge, horrible motor yacht. He took it to Venice on his Italian tour this week, and the protesters were out in force. So they must have been inspired by my article in SWS and they've taken up the cause and the protesting about this rather not very nice man and his huge boat in Venice because they don't even let cruise ships into Venice. Here he was parked in the lagoon in Venice, right in front of the fireworks for some ancient celebration. He certainly would have known that people weren't happy with him and his boat and his attitude.
MARK:I thought that was good news for the week that we're not the only ones who think he's a bit of a dickhead. So what's been your frustration this week, Sel?
SAL:So my frustration is something that we're actually contributing to as well. It's tourism, which is sort of an ongoing bugbear for both you and I. And it is that That's what they're protesting about in Venice. They're protesting about actually, you know what? I don't actually think it is just tourism.
SAL:I think it's I think it's Trumpism, isn't it? The the Venice the Venice protests with this.
MARK:Yeah. I think it's
SAL:just a
MARK:bit of everybody, isn't it?
SAL:Yeah. A bit of everything. But let's just say this morning, and I'm probably inspired after going I I walked to Vatican City this morning and went and hung out with the the pope. Actually, just in saying that, did you see that beautiful video that I sent to you this morning?
MARK:Yes, I did. I didn't quite know what it was though.
SAL:Okay. So it's a brand new sculpture that's actually in the sort of where where all the tourists line up to hang out with the Pope. And it is a boge of migrants from all nationalities, from all over the world, all sort of adrift on the sea and casting their eyes to God and to hope with the Pope,
MARK:which good just to see the Catholic church is doing something useful, like creating bronze statues of people suffering and being saved by Christianity.
SAL:I think you'll find my video sums it up, Mark. My film sort of sums it up in that basically I pan across this beautiful bronze sculpture and then across to the bazillions and millions and trillions of dollars that are and will always be the Catholic church definitely in our lifetime. Always is a very long time. But, yeah, it is to sort of yeah. To so many ideas, so many thoughts on all of that.
SAL:But if I was pope, apart from the fact I'd look really good in a in a popey frock. If I was pope for a day, I would very much install a tourist tax, quite a hefty tourist tax. And I don't care who, it's not gonna be means tested or actually maybe it should be means tested. But nonetheless, it'll be across the board. It'll be a 100 Euros to enter the city of Rome.
SAL:And that money will go towards many, many, many things but generally the upkeep particularly of the streets Because can I tell you, like this area that I'm in is very, very, very touristy? It is the heft of tourism here. It is why you know, streets are empty at the moment during the heat of the day. But later in the day, in the evening when they sort of become cooler and they're all in shadow, it's heaving. It's absolutely heaving.
SAL:And because I'm getting up at 5AM in the morning before the street sweepers have been through, it is an embarrassment. It is disgusting. It's pizza boxes, it's bottles, it's glasses, it's cups, it's cigarettes, it's bags. It's it's just it's overwhelming. And I just feel that until people are actually taxed, they might not wake up to the fact that this is just wrong.
SAL:It's just wrong.
MARK:That's Okay, I'm going to say that's the wrong approach because if you tax people and if you say, 'Okay, you get a rubbish tax', that almost enables you or allows you to throw your rubbish. Because you say, 'I paid for this, I paid for the street sweepers'. What I think you should do instead is you should find people who do it, and you should put an effort into actually catching and fining and imposing not everybody, but enough people that word gets around that you can't do it, because it's almost like an acceptance of it by saying you have a tax. I have a text so that I can go out of the bush.
SAL:Call it a phone.
MARK:But it's not a phone if you haven't done it
SAL:before. Don't think that I just what we're really doing is drawing attention to poor behavior. That's really what it is. And I don't think anybody there's very, very few people on the planet, and certainly tourists who would I'm sure alcohol has a large part to play in this area at nighttime. But at this I don't think tourists would go, oh, I've paid my tax.
SAL:Bingo. Chuck something on the floor. I think that it's gonna benefit I think my plan when I'm pope benefits everybody. I I really do. And I don't think you would have to have You would just have to have so many And I think finding people on the ground on the spot and pulling up one when a thousand people are doing it is, I think that's a poorer message.
SAL:Anyway, we digress and we're on different What's bugging you
MARK:this week? Well, let's stick with the same theme. On this beautiful beach that I described earlier on Orthonoy, which is probably the most beautiful bay I've been to yet this summer, with the pine trees rising on the cliffs above the crystal clear water. There is a lot of fairly sort of industrial grade plastic rubbish. It's not just like lolly wrappers and stuff.
MARK:It's like big fishing lines and floats and ropes and pipes and eskies and couple of footballs and that sort of thing all washed up. And they've, you know, they've been here a long time. It's not like fresh rubbish. It's accumulated. It's a north facing beach, and it faces up the Adriatic.
MARK:And just literally, I don't know, about ten, fifteen miles away over there, I can see Albania. And Albania is one of the poorest countries in Europe, there is a correlation between poverty and not dealing with your rubbish well. I suspect that a lot of it will have come from Albania or further up the Adriatic, coming this way. And I did think as a sort of mused as I was walking along back, you know, how could you get this beach cleaned? You know, you could get a barge in here and a team of 30 people and you could load up five tons of rubbish and then what you do with it, you have to drag it round to the Greek Mainland or how would you go about it?
MARK:And actually whether it's really worth it, because what do do with it then? Do you just dig a big hole and put it in there? And it just made me thinking about the treatment of rubbish and what is the actual not ethical, but what is the most practical way of alleviating the problem. And the problem is a visual one for tourists like us, but I suspect the problem is really only solvable at the source, stopping people making and chucking their stuff.
SAL:Yeah. It would be interesting to know, I mean, if we had the sort of the technology of the smarts to be able to look at that rubbish and see how old it is. Like, is it is it ten years? Is it six months old? Is it five years old?
SAL:Is it 10 years old? Is it 15 years old? Because it'd be really interesting to know whether or not if we cleaned it up, are we cleaning up a long term problem that has actually seen behavioral change since that first lot of rubbish came? Like, I'm wondering if we cleaned it up, if in five years time we returned, would we be would it still be a massive issue, or would we have seen some change?
MARK:I think we might have seen some change. On a very slightly related anecdotal incident yesterday, we spent a couple of years sailing around these waters thirty five years ago, and we spent the whole summer in this area. And then yesterday coming in here, sailing along, I saw something floating in the water and I thought, oh no, another bit of rubbish. And as I sailed past it, it did a little sort of waddle and flipped over, and it was a beautiful sea turtle. All that time, thirty five years ago, I never saw a sea turtle.
MARK:Now I know that's just purely anecdotal.
SAL:The whole ocean of coal is
MARK:clean and people are trying, and there's fish swimming around the boat all the time that I don't remember of that time. So I suspect there are good efforts being put in to try and make things better, and I suspect this beach is a hangover from the last twenty years or thirty years.
SAL:It'll be really interesting.
MARK:One thing. This last few months.
SAL:It'll be interesting the day that we go back to Sparta Hauri and to Steve's Taverna because I remember the guys there, the fishing the fishing fleet coming in with sort of six pathetic little, you know, tiny little pilchards that you wouldn't have even you would have wouldn't even have bothered to caught. You would have tossed them back. And it'll be interesting to see if if they're still fishing at all or, if their if their haul has actually increased. It'll be very interesting to see.
MARK:There's still lots of fishing boats out. I think this rubbish thing is something that I want to put more time and effort into thinking about ways of addressing it and whether it is worth addressing the symptoms or whether the symptoms is a lost battle and you have to just focus purely on the cause. Anyway, that's my little gripe for the week or big gripe. How's your reading going, Sal?
SAL:My reading well, my reading at this well, first of all, A Stranger in Corfu, great book, incredible, incredible moment of sort of espionage and spiderm and actually, obviously taking place in Corfu, as the title says. So I was very excited.
MARK:A word.
SAL:Oh, it is now.
MARK:Has it been espionage?
SAL:Oh, just the world of spies, you know? It's actually set on an island. I think the island is fictitious. It's off the coast of Corfu and they call it Spyland. So, you know, Spider Man Spyland and all of that sort of stuff.
SAL:But here's the thing, I've left it on a plane. So clearly there's somebody who's picked it up and is enjoying it. If they wouldn't mind sort of, I don't know, posting it back to me complete with my favorite bookmark. That was actually a little bit of sadness that that I've had since 2019 when I visited the Prado Prado Gallery. And so my bookmark and my book have been cast asunder.
SAL:And so I was very fortunate to find that there's an English bookshop just around the corner from me here. And I have just purchased Dark Is The Morning by Rupert Thomas. That's also about kids in Italy. So I've got a couple of other books on the go as audio books that I listen to when I'm out and about. I finished Yesteryear so that MATILDA RADIO podcast book group will we'll put a date out for that in coming weeks.
SAL:And The Heir Apparent, which I'm also listening to by Rebecca Armitage from Tasmania. Gosh, she knows a lot about the royal family and or she's spent a huge amount of time reading WHO weekly. That's not to put her writing style down whatsoever, but this is somebody who has completely and utterly sucked in and absorbed the zeitgeist of the Windsors and made it her own. Quite compelling listening at sort of 03:00 in the morning when I can't sleep. I'm sort of very much enjoying that.
SAL:How about you, Mark? Did you finish a book this week?
MARK:Yes, finished My Brilliant Friend, which some of you would be saying about bloody time. I get that it's brilliant. It's an amazingly written book and it is very different to most other books I've ever read. But I've got this slight issue with it in that it addresses one very small community at a certain time, which is sort of the poverty around Naples in the 1950s and the issues of that society. And I don't think they're particularly universal.
MARK:I don't think that they particularly apply to many other societies, machismo and the violence and sort of the gender politics of that time. Okay, there'll be other communities where it was a bit like that. But when you think of the great books, where you think of Tolstoy or I'd say Arundhati Roy, which are of course written in amongst a particular community. They're also universal. The themes do seem to apply to me today, right now, and I don't feel like they do with my brilliant friend.
MARK:Although I enjoyed reading it and I get it that it's beautifully written and actually quite interesting, I don't feel like I can take on many of the lessons from it or perhaps I just missed something.
SAL:But going back to your comment, it's not universal, did you not feel a sense that you were looking under the cover of a world that you would not normally have sort of had any interest knowledge of. Was that not interesting?
MARK:No, no, definitely did do that. And then, you know, it definitely sort of taught me things about, you know, Italian society of that time. But the messages brought, I couldn't find a way to sort of translate them into lessons for my life or my existence. They're very much stuck in the times and the norms of where it was set. I think that's probably as easy, as much a comment on my reading of it as it is as her writing of it.
SAL:We often talk about the people that we would invite to the greatest dinner party on earth. And Arundhati Roy always gets a seat at your table. I'm interested to know that, to think that you find her books universal because they are so not. They are incredibly and utterly niche. They are unique to her and she's inviting you in.
SAL:Did you not feel invited into maybe it's because you wish you were Indian and you don't really wish to be Italian. I don't know. Interested I'm to know why you didn't find the sort of the stories universal.
MARK:I'm not sure. I certainly feel like the relationships and the lessons of Arundhati Roy's books, the two novels, she's only written two, I think they're absolutely universal. Ask me to start them now because I'm not about to do a critique of two of the great novels of the twentieth and twenty first century. In opinion, totally. Everything's in my opinion.
MARK:It's not fact. Anyway, so I finished it and I'm about to start the Ian McKeown book that you read.
SAL:Oh, interesting. Interesting.
MARK:Cool. What we can know.
SAL:What we can What we can know. What Yeah. We can That'll be interesting to see. Well, I look forward to having a conversation with you about that in about the next two months when you finish that one.
MARK:Yeah. But I read them thoroughly.
SAL:Yeah. You're a very thorough reader. You don't have a number on the go like other people that we know. What's for dinner tonight?
MARK:Probably some sort of pasta. I haven't quite worked out what sort. I've got a whole lot of options to go in the pasta, But I'm going to go for a big walk up through the hills this afternoon, see if I can find a little chapel at the top. A big Greek Orthodox chapel a long way from the Vatican I think we've just about reached our half hour haven't we?
SAL:I we might just be there. So I'll come back to you from Rome next week. Where do you plan to be?
MARK:I'll be somewhere in Greece. I'm not quite sure where. Somewhere in the Ionian. I can be more specific, think.
SAL:Somewhere in the Ionian.
MARK:We'll see what the weather brings. We've lots of wind coming this week, so I'll go and find somewhere to shelter for the next on Wednesday and Thursday.
SAL:Somewhere to shelter. Meanwhile, I'll be, you know, trucking through. You know where to find me. So thanks for listening this week. And try and follow us on Apple or try and follow us on Spotify and we'll be back next week.
MARK:Thank you everybody. Hope you've enjoyed our separate but connected travels. So one more week like this, and then we'll be back together in in the IO. Looking forward to it.