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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.
Maybe in ten years, you'll call me on your telephone wondering if I'm all alone. Remember how we knew each other in ten
Sal:years. Just like that. Everyone's We're at episode 10.
Mark:I know. Ten weeks ten weeks, two and a half months of summer. To
Sal:MATILDA RADIO. CALAMARA CALAMARA, welcome to MATILDA RADIO episode 10. I'm Sal Balharrie.
Mark:And I'm Mark Chew.
Sal:And this week, we have walked up the hill above Phrycus on the island of Ithaca to have coffee at a little town called Stavro. I've walked up through the olive groves, heard some tinkling bells of the goats, seen a lot of crumbling ruins and beautiful houses desperate for renovation.
Mark:Yeah. And I learned quite a few houses that have been renovated and sort of obviously holiday rentals. Quite beautiful. How far are we from where Odysseus left from?
Sal:Oh, we are. This is it.
Mark:What? This village?
Sal:Uh-huh. No. Not this village. Phrycus. Phrycus is where he left.
Mark:Oh, so This is where
Sal:Penelope Penelope's house was somewhere around here.
Mark:Okay.
Sal:I'm I'm kind of I am kind of wondering why he left. I I know he went and battled you know, had a big battle in Troy, and, you know, that was why they they headed off. Bit of a bit of a horse involved.
Mark:But Troy's
Sal:I know. That's my that's my kind of thing. I was like, so why why what did it take for these guys to sort of go, oh, let's go and fight that battle over there?
Mark:I wonder if it's explained in the film because neither of us has seen the film.
Sal:Neither of us has seen the film.
Mark:No. We've we've got a guy. Not going to.
Sal:It it passed surpassed a billion dollars at the box office last weekend, so a few people have seen it.
Mark:We're in the minority. Did did they film any of it in Ithaca?
Sal:I do not believe they filmed any of it in Ithaca. They definitely filmed in Sardinia, in Faviana,
Mark:Alright.
Sal:Part of those islands. Is that Sardinia or Sicily?
Mark:No. Sicily. Sicily.
Sal:We we did go to Faviana.
Mark:West End Of Of Of Sicily.
Sal:West End Of Sicily. We are we should explain, we are seated beside a road. Actually, very much on theme, we are seated outside of a museum that has a sign up called Throwing Light light on on Homeric Ithaca, the Homeric identity of Ithaca, what would you give this exhibition out of 10, Monk?
Mark:Well, I'd
Sal:give It'd better if the lights
Mark:are on. I'd give it a two because there's nothing to see apart from panels with typography on them.
Sal:They've got
Mark:But they're probably quite interesting. They're pretty quite interesting set, but I think it would be better presented as a book rather than a museum. Yeah. That's But we should just paint a little word picture because it's just a a little road that curls up from the port. Yep.
Mark:And we're looking at we can see the olive trees, and there's a fig tree there. The fig trees are loaded with figs in that oil.
Sal:Some bells?
Mark:Oh, we got some bells, Monday morning
Sal:bells. Monday morning bells. Must be We
Mark:got a Greek flag. 9AM. Greek flag flying from the the flagpole outside the little museum. When you say museum, think people are gonna get the wrong idea.
Sal:Yeah. It's a shed. But we have walked up into town. Coffee of choice?
Mark:Well, we're having espresso fredo with Espresso.
Sal:No fredo espresso.
Mark:With a little bit of milk and no sugar is the perfect coffee in this temperature.
Sal:Frapppe. But actually, the last couple of days, maximum 28, minimum 26, we have arrived in heaven. The land of the lotus eagles.
Mark:Water temperature 27.
Sal:Water temperature 27.
Mark:Halfway in between nighttime and daytime.
Sal:You're outside in honey, and you're in the water in honey. It's it's pretty fantastic. We had an interesting time anchoring yesterday in Frickas on Ithaca. Wasn't easy, was it? Three goes.
Mark:Yeah. When we used to bring the flotillas in here thirty five years ago, as we keep carrying on about, This was the only port where, when you say allowed to, but when the process is that you put the boats alongside the quay and then raft them up outside of each other.
Sal:Yep. So lying parallel to the quay.
Mark:Parallel to the quay. Yeah. And the reason was that in the afternoon, it's at the head of a long valley that comes down towards the east, and the wind really funnels down there. And if you had a bow anchor out or a stern anchor out and you were tied up to the quay, you would be stressing your anchor a lot. So they let you go alongside here, and it was the only place we used to do that.
Mark:And last night, we didn't come into the town quay. We anchored about, I don't know, what, half a mile off
Singer:Yeah.
Mark:On off this sort of little rocky beach.
Sal:We should we should mention on the rocky beach is the most gorgeous camping site Yeah. That turned into a nudist colony at dusk, which was quite interesting and fun and good on them. They looked healthy and gorgeous.
Mark:And so, yeah, we anchored off there and took stern lines ashore. And from about, I don't know what was it, about 05:00 till 08:00, we were really tested at Rocna.
Sal:25 knots?
Mark:25 knots and the boat was tugging sideways which I always hate. That's why I like anchoring because you're always presenting the sort of minimum amount of boat to the wind but when you've got your stern lines out, you're side onto the wind, or you can be, and really tested the anchor, but it held.
Sal:Interestingly, when we came in to the the, you know, the little bay, there would have been one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, say, eight boats.
Mark:Mhmm.
Sal:An Irish boat came in beside us, and they we had a bit of fun, bit of bit of com bit of comms between the two boats watching others come and go, and turned out that they were a lovely Irish couple. They came aboard for a drink last night at about 11:00. And, we sat down with a bottle of Ouzo, and, Catherine wondered if anybody was famous on the boat, and and we quickly dispelled any any thoughts she had of fame. But turned out Barry was a bit of a famous dude, wasn't he? Yes.
Sal:Or is.
Mark:So Catherine and Barry had a lot of acronyms on the back of their boat, like Royal Cork Yacht Club, Royal Ocean Racing Club, I think even maybe Royal Yacht Squadron, I can't remember.
Sal:Had a white frame around their Irish flag.
Mark:Yeah. And they're very much pro cop. But lovely, absolutely delightful and really enjoyed their company. But Barry runs a yachting business in Malta and is a competitive offshore sailor. And what I like about Barry is he'll do he's a competitive offshore sailor.
Mark:When he goes on holiday, he goes sailing. So Yeah. That's all he's
Sal:Catherine's got a road bike.
Mark:Yeah. She's got her carbon road bike.
Sal:Carbon road bike on board. But, turns out Bazza, has done quite a few Sydney to Hobart. So and and was really interestingly said given everything he's done, and he's a winner of the Middle Sea race in tour
Mark:Two handed. 12. Yeah.
Sal:Double single handed.
Mark:Double handed.
Sal:Double handed. In 2012. And yet he cites Bass Strait as the world's most treacherous piece of sailing water. Yeah. Which that was kind
Mark:actually say that, or did he say he just thought it was pretty bad?
Sal:Well, did he say it was number one most treacherous, most deadly water in the world? No. He probably didn't. But he said it was pretty terrifying. I I think he was he was quite forthcoming saying that.
Sal:So we very much enjoyed meeting Barry and Catherine from County Cork in Dublin.
Mark:And their boat, Imagine.
Sal:Is that what it's called?
Mark:Yeah. A Geno 45.
Sal:Geno 45. Imagine that. So we've had a great week. Crew change, new crew arrived in Venice, from there, we went through the Levkus Canal, which was always, you know, always interesting. God, that was a hot day.
Sal:Eye wateringly hot.
Mark:So just I'll just explain that briefly that the Island Of Levkus, as we explained in the last podcast, is separate from the Mainland Of Greece only by bridge. Yeah. And the bridge opens, I think, about five times a day. And because there's so many boats here, just before opening time, the boats will pile pile up on one side and the other side, and the bridge opens for a while, and everyone rushes through. So it's a bit of a palaver.
Sal:And they were about to close it before everyone had gone through. Yeah. They weren't they weren't worried about
Mark:I suspect they have problems because, like, if you get too many boats, they might not be able to close it for an hour. You know? And they've got traffic coming and stuff. So I'm not quite sure how they manage that.
Sal:But they just must go
Mark:Okay. We're closing.
Sal:That's it. Go. That's it. Done. We're floating we're putting our floating bridge back.
Sal:You guys can just wait, and there'll be some angry faces around.
Mark:And once you're through that, you're into the Southern Ionian. So you're away from Corfu, and you're down into the islands of Levkus, and Ithaca, and Kefalonia, and Kalamos and Custis. And the first place or the place that we most connected to
Sal:Meganissi. Meganissi. Meganissi. Wow. So many things, so many thoughts about Meganissi.
Sal:I mean, truck, very big truck, big truck with big crane going somewhere to build something slowly. We've decided we've discovered that everything happens very slowly in Greece. Meganussi, there were two particular places on Meganussi that we used to go, and we we didn't go just because they were beautiful. We went because the people were amazing, incredibly kind, and still there. It was so interesting.
Sal:I'll talk about Vathi first. Vathi, the rose garden taverna, which was where we used to that was our taverna of choice with Effie's still there. Effie has two children. Effie's 30 years older, welcomed us. I I was surprised that my artwork was still on the wall.
Sal:That was
Mark:amazing to drawings from thirty five years still on the cafe wall.
Sal:On the wall. Was so gorgeous. But, boy, Vathi has, and look. I'm mindful. The world has changed over thirty five years.
Sal:Melbourne's changed in thirty five years. Everything's changed. But from a town of two little to a thriving metropolis of gift shops, it was pretty Mhmm. It was pretty saddening, I felt. I don't think it's changed for the better.
Sal:And it felt slightly is ubiquitous the right word? I I think know, it had lost its sort of little sense of identity, but so Vathi, another town on another Greek
Mark:Another Greek sort Yeah. Tourist village.
Sal:We went around back around to Sparta Hore, and, wow, what a beautiful and soul warming experience that was. We we came in. We didn't know where we were really going to tie up or what the order of the day was, so you jumped in the dinghy.
Mark:Yep. I went into jumped in the dinghy and went to the taverna that we we talked about last week about. Our friend Steve who died a few months ago just a few weeks ago before we arrived but the Tavern is still there and it's run by his brother Jerry and I think I remember Jerry we didn't have so much to do with Jerry but I think I remember him anyway I jumped in the dinghy and went short introduced myself and said to Jerry that we used to run the flotillas and he smiled and he said he remembered me and and I said he said you know I said can you come and have a coffee and he said we'd be delighted to and he told us to tie up on his own little pier where where nobody else is allowed to tie up on this concrete pier. And we did that and we ended up staying the day and the night there.
Sal:And not also he walked around to take our lines. Yeah.
Mark:He walked around, and he's quite old. He'll be, what, 75? Yeah. 70? Something
Sal:like that. So I'd
Mark:say 80. And just a nice smile, and we talked about Steve, and we said how sorry we were, and we bought him a bottle of whiskey. And then he came around with a bottle of wine. That's the trouble with Greek people. You start giving them gifts, they start giving you back, and then you
Sal:you can never end the cycle. Circular gift economy.
Mark:Oh, yeah. Yeah. But we ended up having dinner there, and it was just rather lovely to be back.
Sal:There's a shrine now.
Mark:A little shrine.
Sal:And Yeah. And a a memorial book.
Mark:But what But somehow, Sparta Hori seemed to handle the tourism better, maybe because it's harder to tie up there.
Sal:Harder to tie up there, but and harder to get to. We walked right up to the village, and, oh my goodness, please, everybody come and see Sparta Hore, the village of Sparta Hore. So beautiful. I've not been to the Aegean, but the sort of the white houses and little little curling streets, it was absolutely gorgeous. Mhmm.
Sal:We we bought figs, a little box of figs from this guy who just plucked them off his tree. They were sort of warm and delicious. We went back to get some more the next day and he said, oh, I don't have any more. And when I said, oh, but they were just the greatest figs I've ever eaten in my life, he sort of reached down and from under the counter pulled out another box that he'd been keeping for his mate and said, 'Look, you have them. Such a lovely moment.' We went across to Scorpios Island, which is the Onassis Island
Mark:that What was the Onassis?
Sal:Was the Onassis Island, but Onassis, Aristotle Onassis purchased it for his the love of his life, not Maria Callas for Jackie. Purchased Scorpios for Jackie. And we had an amazing night there anchored off, Jackie's Beach bungalow.
Mark:Actually, technically, we were doing something illegal because we tied a stern line to the island.
Sal:We touched it.
Mark:And you're not allowed to touch their island. So you're not even allowed to have a stern line running
Sal:on Well, the reason why you're not allowed to touch it is because it's now owned by a Russian billionaire. Well, he's actually gifted it to his 26 year old daughter as a wedding gift. But that's why explain the guys that came around to check on us.
Mark:Yes. So a guy in a powerboat came around, big big powerful rib came around and said, you're we can't stop you anchoring here, but you're not allowed to tie up to the
Sal:Do not touch my island.
Mark:But we did anyway, and nobody seemed to care.
Sal:But you and Lex went for a swim, and you got into a bit of strife.
Mark:Oh, we just got shooed away. Right? Shooed away. Yeah. Very I'd love to know what technically the rules are, you know, whether they can earn up to the high watermark or something like that because they can't stop you sitting in the shallows.
Sal:No. They said, well, it would exactly as you say, technically, it would be really interesting to know. Extraordinary midweek was comet night.
Mark:Yeah.
Sal:And that was
Mark:What was the name of the island we went to for that?
Sal:Well, that was that Lampino?
Mark:Lampino. Lampino. Once
Sal:again, we found a bay. I I requested I requested a bay with no light pollution from the West because we really wanted to see this extraordinary we were we were unable to see the eclipse, the solar eclipse from from where we were in Greece. Apparently, there was a little tiny chunk out of the sun, but we didn't really we weren't able to really see that. But boy, oh boy, did the sky put on a comet show. Mhmm.
Sal:We found that beautiful island. We were the only we had we could see no light, could we? We could see no residual light. There was no light on the land.
Mark:No. We were
Sal:And we We were the
Mark:only boat in the bay.
Sal:Not disappointed. So we we lay on deck staring at the sky, and we had we had Elon on so that we could access Spotify. And we went through every song we could think of that had a a moon, a star, a space reference to it and lay on our backs looking up at the comets
Mark:as there's a lot of songs that reference the sky stars.
Sal:Well, was gonna say there were a lot of comets. It was really oh, boy. It was really one of those if you talk about making memories, it really was one of those nights that I don't think I'll ever, ever, ever forget. And those comets were just extraordinary, weren't they? They were powering through the sky just like a comet.
Mark:What did they say? One every 75 an hour, obviously.
Sal:75 an hour. I think we we were definitely we would have been seeing fifteen, twenty an hour?
Mark:At least. Yeah. One every few minutes.
Sal:One every few minutes. And so there was a lot of, like, woah, and a lot of movement around the boat and a lot of, did you see that? Which, you know, pretty bloody special, I have to say. The interesting thing about that island is that Brad and Angelina Jolie were, were cited as wanting to buy it, which, you know, I don't know. It feels a little bit like Mary Queen of
Mark:Scotland too. Apart from a church, one little church. Yeah. One little church. Well maintained, but there's no houses or people or anything.
Mark:Yeah. I can't think why wanna buy it.
Sal:I can't I cannot think why you wanna buy it.
Singer:I used to love you like the world lived. I used to
Sal:love you. So so it's been a it's been a week of of sort of island hopping. Tomorrow is a big day.
Mark:Yep. Tomorrow, it's we're leaving Greece behind and heading back to Italy. So, really, tomorrow's our our turnaround.
Sal:So you're telling me tonight is our last Greek salad.
Mark:Yep. Our last Greek salad.
Sal:Thank god. Love and he doesn't
Mark:like it. No. I don't You're not
Sal:a man like lover of cucumber.
Mark:Just overrated. I love It's not that exciting.
Sal:I love it. Give me a piece of feta sprinkled with oregano, and a bit of an olive, and a bit of a tomato, some olive oil, salt, cucumber, and I'm very happy.
Mark:So by so Tuesday, we're gonna start our passage back to Italy. We're gonna aim for La Castella where we've been before because it's a good place to to sort of good direction. We think it'll take about
Sal:walking the the castle.
Mark:We think it'll take about thirty six to forty hours. Yep. And we'll start our passage tomorrow morning and hopefully be in by Wednesday evening. And we'll be back in Italy where we will be for the next month or so.
Sal:In preparation.
Mark:In preparation for the Rolex Swan Cup. Yes. So, yeah, this is the turnaround point of the summer where everything sort of starts to head head back westwards.
Sal:You do feel that everything's turning a little bit, don't you think? I mean, it's interesting because I was chatting with some people on a Bosch who are in Corsica at the moment, and they were still saying they've still got high thirties. But here, I do feel there's a tinge of autumn in the in the in the air.
Mark:I think it might just be a cooler week. I think it's a bit early to to use the word autumn in August. But I do feel like in terms of tourism, we may have hit peak tourism, and we may be slightly numbers might be slightly going down a
Sal:little mindful that we're contributing to that.
Mark:Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. But we're contributing solidly through the summer. Solidly.
Mark:So we've got we're now what are we today? What's the date today, Sal?
Sal:It's a date in August.
Mark:Okay. Is it the twentieth?
Sal:It could be. The joy of my life is that I'm not really sure.
Mark:Well, so it's around the August 20, and we have to be back in Costa Smeralda by the tenth. So we've got about twenty days to do about four or 500 miles. Yep. So we've got a bit of sailing ahead of us.
Sal:But we have been very happy with how the boat's been performing. Yeah.
Mark:The boat's been going well. We had a beautiful sail the other day. We had a 20 mile sail which was beating all the way. We'll put up a I've got a nice little snapshot of the route that we took for that, and MATILDA just absolutely creamed it in sort of 12 to 15 knots upwind is the most gorgeous sailing boat and fairly flat water, and she just trucks along at six and a half, seven passes. They
Sal:Hey, Mark. Guess what?
Mark:What?
Sal:Today is the first MATILDA RADIO book group.
Mark:Oh, when are you doing that?
Sal:Doing that at midday, so three hours. So I've got three hours to swat up on yesteryear. A book that I can say this because, the the book I I found it like I remember when I was pregnant and they test your blood sugar by getting you to drink a glass of glucose, chugging a glass of glucose. I found yesteryear to be chugging a glass of glucose. Did it move the conversation forward?
Sal:Did it make me feel richer for the experience? Absolutely 100% nosh. Did I feel the character was fully formed? No. Did I feel it was cliche ridden?
Sal:Absolutely. Would I recommend it to people to read? Maybe if you wanna sort of tap into a zeitgeist moment. But there you have it. That's my review of yesteryear.
Sal:Chug a glass of glucose at your peril.
Mark:So how does the book group work? Is it too late for people to join? No. Oh, well, will be by the time we've posted the podcast.
Sal:By the time we've posted this one, it will be. However, we will, of course, be doing another MATILDA RADIO podcast in the future, booked to be determined, obviously, by the group because I'm I'm not a 100% sure how book groups work. I'll have to ask my captain.
Mark:Many people have you got? How many people have you got?
Sal:I think we've got a dozen. I think we're going for a baker's dozen. So, hopefully, we've got 13. Yeah. Maybe.
Sal:I I think we've definitely got 10. Wow. Louise is running late. She sent a text to the group this morning. But yeah.
Sal:So so that that's out there. That's happening. What are you reading?
Mark:I'm reading a book.
Sal:I'm how are you enjoying Seascraper by oh, I thought you'd forgotten.
Mark:No. No. No. No. I was just thinking.
Mark:Okay. I can't remember who it's by. It's a book called Seascraper. Very much enjoying it. I've read about 80 pages Benjamin of Wood.
Mark:Benjamin Wood. Basically, young man who lives with his mother in this rather sort of miserable, sad English seaside village. For generations, his family has scraped shrimps off the long mud flats.
Sal:What a great job.
Mark:Pulled by horse, these nets pulled by horse. And then a man from Hollywood arrives, and that's all I'll say. And it's beautifully written and very evocative, and I'm really looking looking forward to getting back down to the boat.
Sal:What time period is it set in?
Mark:Well, I was struggling with this. And then last night when I was reading, he talks about going walking through the village past they've got one little cinema. Oh. And showing at the cinema was Peter Toole in Lawrence of Arabia. So Ah.
Mark:I guess that would be what? '75? '72? '70 yeah. Yeah.
Mark:Yeah. So that's the only that's the only reference I've
Sal:Mister got to Yeah.
Mark:To the time frame of it. So, yeah, I can recommend I can recommend Seascraper. It's just a thin book.
Sal:That great scene in mister Lawrence with Lawrence of Arabia where he puts his hand hand through the flame, and the pain the the trick is to not mind the pain.
Mark:Yeah. The boy says, does that hurt? And he says, yes. It hurts, but the trick is not to mind that it hurts. I like that.
Sal:Such a great, great scene. I'm listening to the heir apparent speaking about drinking I mean, if if if, yesteryear is like drinking glucose, heir apparent is like absolutely scoffing molasses. And then the Persians, I'm reading the Persians, which is like sipping French champagne. It's, actually, you don't even say it's like pin number, isn't it? You just say champagne.
Sal:It's sipping champagne by Sanaam Malouji. Really beautiful, beautiful book about Tehran and and what it meant what it meant to means to leave and the identity of what it means to leave when you've got money, when you've got very wealthy Iranians Iranians leaving Tehran, but leaving your homeland behind. And you might be rich, but you've got nothing. And it's really I'm really, really enjoying the the multigenerational characters in that book, the Persians.
Mark:So, Sartre, if we're turning around tomorrow and heading back west Yeah. And we're probably maybe just past the half way mark of our summer. It's a good time to assess how you feel the experience has been, whether you feel it's been everything you wanted, as rewarding as you expected, the things that you found hard or the things that you've enjoyed. What's your sort of because we've got five minutes left for this pause podcast. How about a reflection on the halfway point of the summer?
Sal:It's been it's been incredible. We've seen so many places. It's interesting that you should say that because whilst I was walking up the hill this morning, I was actually did a sort of a, you know, a a bit of a if we left if, let's say, we had all of May, all of June, all of July, so and we're into August. So we've definitely had over a over a hundred days of of traveling. I would say that that's been that's my my point is that I I feel we've probably seen too much.
Sal:So I've I would have
Mark:gone less far.
Sal:I would have gone less far.
Mark:So not come to Greece.
Sal:Right. See, and this is the thing. And I think the difficulty is because we're unsure about what we're doing next year, whether or not we're having another summer in the mid or whether or not we're we're moving and starting to sail back or what have you. I I probably would have slowed down and I mean, the other issue too is about where we leave the boat. I like spending a week somewhere.
Sal:That's that's probably that's probably my my reflection. I'm certainly not not negative about the experience whatsoever. But that would be my I I think gone pretty hard and fast.
Mark:I think you're probably right. I think maybe maybe we might have felt like we were just padding, but perhaps once we got as far as the bottom of Sardinia, then we could have started, you know, just really exploring Sardinia and Corsica in detail.
Sal:And Sicily?
Mark:Yeah. So maybe around Sicily and then back up to I think maybe maybe the Greek thing was a step too far, not because I haven't enjoyed Greece, but just because it means that you are moving along a lot.
Sal:I think I think if if we had have done I mean, look. It's the power of hindsight, isn't
Mark:it? Yeah. But also the hindsight hindsight, you you can learn from that and and change your your habits for the future.
Sal:I I I would very much like to go through the Corinth Canal, the Aegean turkey. I would really like if if if that if it was me next year, I'd be having one more year in the Med. I think I think we could I think next year, if we went back to Valencia I know we're talking about the Canary Islands, and I know we've been talking about the Baltic, but I think we could, and you know what? This is such a great conversation because I think I'd love people to sort of understand this is actually how our thought processes work. Like, we we have these opportunities, and we just go you know, my two favorite words in the English language are imagine if.
Sal:And I I think, you know, we've got this amazing opportunity that we've created that we can go back to back to Valencia. We've got to put our heads down and get our money a bit sorted. But, know, maybe next summer we do rather than going that way back to Canaries or Baltic. Maybe, you know, maybe we put our heads down and get to Greece quite quickly and then go through the Corinth and then do that part of the world where, you know, I'm I'm pretty I'd love to see Turkey.
Mark:It's a pity there. So much fighting in the Middle East because we could just go through the Suez Canal.
Sal:Oh, imagine if you could go through the Suez.
Mark:Well, people do still. Do they? Yeah. And you don't hear about many of them getting killed.
Sal:Maybe we could go through the Suez Canal.
Mark:Yeah. It's not so much the Suez Canal. It's a bit on the other side.
Sal:Yeah. I mean, if you go sort of African side, it's dangerous for pirates. And if you go the other side, it's dangerous for bullets. So you're sort of you're sort of messed up either side, aren't you? Bloody hell, people.
Mark:Alright. Just stop fighting.
Sal:Say peace. Say sailing, not war.
Mark:Give peace a chance. Maybe we should end our podcast with give peace a chance.
Sal:Give peace a chance. Have a have a p do you know the thing is though, Mark? People do choose peace if they can. I I don't think people choose war. I think I
Mark:think Rich megalomaniacs do.
Sal:But Rich megalomaniacs choose war. What it so your what's your reflection?
Mark:No. I think so. I think I sort of expressed it there. I think I think we've done really well this summer. I still feel like I I still feel like I need to work on being in the moment on the boat better rather than rather than being distracted by devices and technology and just actually smelling things and listening to things and and thinking about things more I think you're
Sal:pretty good in the moment. I think you're living in the moment.
Mark:Not all the
Sal:time. I think you're you're making dreadlocks in the moment, and you're living it. You're absolutely living it. Okay. So
Mark:That's it for another week.
Sal:That's it for another week. Next week, we'll be
Mark:From Italy.
Sal:Back in the land of Parmesan, Parmesan cheese, good olives. Not that the Greek olives are pretty good. I do love a we've had some delicious olives. But we'll be land back in the land of the pasta, and I've enjoyed Greece, and I feel I feel sad to leave her. Yeah.
Sal:So I think I'm gonna push for Aegean
Mark:next year. Maybe we should just then not go back to Italy. Well, we do have to go back to
Sal:We have to go back to Italy, but maybe we'll leave the boat in Corsica. Leave the boat in well, why don't we leave the boat in Marcon? We're we're leaving the boat anyway. Anyway, these are the kind of
Mark:Let's do that bit again from there.
Sal:Let's get
Mark:let's wind it up after this traffic. So I feel like we're just rambling again.
Sal:I think that's a nice place. That's nice. Let's leave all that ramble in, and we'll see you next week in Italy. It's fun.