Wow. I was a terrible travel blogger, wasn’t I?

So – what happened?

Why did I stop, and what have I done since, and what am I planning to do next?

Fear not, kind readers. All shall be revealed – and it shall be revealed… now.

Chronologically speaking, I think I left you off relatively early in my travels. I did write a few updates from Italy and France and possibly one from the UK, but they mostly covered the first few weeks of my journey, skipping over Cyprus almost entirely, and tapering off sharply after Kastellorizo.

In Kastellorizo, as I’ve written, I’ve had incredibly fresh raw fish, brought in on a yacht full of pensioner-pirates (not real pirates, just very swashbuckling old drunks) from Haifa who docked next to us, whose captain tried to convince M to sell me to them, and with whom I also had the following conversation:

“Hey, kid – come aboard my boat for a minute, won’t ya?”

“Um, o..kay? Hang on, let me take my sandals off.” (It’s considered bad etiquette to board any sailboat with shoes on, and I was walking along the dock.)

“Leave the sandals on, I want to ask you something. Come on, sit down.”

I gingerly boarded the boat – a rusty old steel tub full of empty Ouzo bottles and dirty laundry. The captain was a large, barrel-chested man with long, grey hair, arms covered in eclectic, squiggly, sun-faded tattoos. I pushed a pair of moth-eaten boxers aside and sat in front of him, as he poured me an oily glass of arak.

“Tell me,” he said, gesturing at my head with his half-empty glass, “Why don’t you cut your hair?”

From genuine trepidation, his hint of a grin and playful intonation allowed a sense of relief and smartassery to wash over me, and, now relatively secure in the knowledge that was not going to eat me, I immediately retorted with “Why don’t you cut your hair?”

The old pirate raised an eyebrow with newfound appreciation for my rhetoric prowess. 

“Listen, kid – this is very important. You know why I don’t cut my hair? For the same reason I have these tattoos.”

I waited.

“Because it pisses my wife off.”

My travels were full of encounters like that – humorous, joyous, friendly, weird and blunt – but the most colourful, adventurous characters I met were almost all on or around boats.

Another boat encounter – this time in Cyprus:

We had phoned ahead and spoken to the harbormaster at a small marina in Paphos, to make sure we’d have a berth to moor in when we arrived. We were assured we would, but when we arrived, it turned out to be a risky place to tie up due to depth and underwater obstacles.

Valiantly coming in for the rescue in those early morning hours, however, was a severely drunk fisherman. “You can do it, is safe!” he assured us, milky glass of ouzo in hand. 

“No, we can’t! We’d tear the boat up on the rocks!” M shouted back. 

We really couldn’t, and ended up tying up to a larger ship’s hull, which made getting on and off the boat quite difficult. 

When I finally did make it to land, I started a conversation with the old fisherman.

“You could have gotten closer,” he told me. “I know this marina – I live here, on this boat that I built.” He pointed at a floating shack precariously angled next to one of the docks.

“Is my home, is my work,” he said, his chest proudly sticking out as my eyes slowly moved over the graffitied plywood rat’s nest. “I call her ‘the Kamikaz.”

From Kastellorizo, M, S and I sailed on to Rhodes after spending about a week on the island due to unfavourable winds. The passage to Rhodes was uneventful, and we reached the large, industrial marina around nightfall. After spending the night on the yacht, I shouldered my pack (around 20 kilos (!!!) of camping gear, cookware, clothes and knicknacks) bade them a teary farewell (“We’re like your parents now, Adam! Keep in touch!” – I didn’t, but I should have, and I have nothing but a deep love for this special couple who took me into their floating home with open hearts and friendly smiles. M,S, if you’re reading this – I love you and am eternally grateful.) and boarded a ferry to Athens, not knowing where I’ll spend my first night in the city or what I’ll do next.

After a few days in Athens, I decided some green, leafy nature was in order. A few google searches later, I settled on Mount Pelion and its ancient villages, where I found myself trekking around its apple orchard-laden slopes and chestnut-heavy ridges with a newfound friend, then on to Meteora and Ioannina, before boarding another ferry in Igoumenitsa and landing in the South-Italian city of Bari, from which I then made my way to Matera, Naples, Florence, lake Como, and then crossed over into Switzerland, where I joined a childhood friend in her converted #VanLife van, then Zurich, Bern and Geneva (many childhood memories, some fond, some not). I then rode a train to the Jura mountains, where I stayed with Ben, a friend from my Lycee days who now lives with his wonderful partner, Mine, in a quaint country home complete with a well and chickens in their backyard. 

From there – Paris, Brittany, another ferry from the French coast to Dover and its iconic, monumental white cliffs, London (where I became very ill), Scotland (where I stayed with my good friends Michael and Alicja who nursed me back to health), Wales (where I stayed in a small village in the woods, practised my banjo playing, made friends with the post office volunteer who filled me in on all the village gossip and brought me up to speed on the place’s history, from its days under Roman rule to the latest cellular antenna tower installed) and then back to London where I stayed with my friend Katie, met the artist Yuli Serfati for tea, and walked around for days on end, before finally deciding it was getting too cold to keep vagabonding, and boarded a plane (my first since setting out!) to Tel Aviv, for about £60.

I had a lot of beautiful encounters and saw a lot of stunning nature – so… why didn’t you read about any of it?

Somewhere on Mount Pelion, back in Greece, I had a very meaningful conversation with Noam, one of my best friends, in which I realised that by committing to blogging my experiences, I was committing to making them fit a clear, coherent narrative, which would, in turn, shape my trip.

Back then, that was an unwelcome influence, and something I found myself wanting to avoid. I wanted to allow things to take any shape they wanted, and to be as free as possible from my previous state of mind.

So when I felt like writing, I did – but even then, I was wary of trying to make things “fit.”

In my mind, before setting out, this blog was meant to be this grand chronicling of an epic journey. When it was relegated to a space for sporadic thoughts and impressions, it lost steam for me, and I left it untouched since, though my journey was, indeed, grand and epic.

So why am I back now?

A lot has happened since my return.

I made some major progress in my career; I built, recruited and trained a team of content writers in a large marketing company, then left, and joined a climate tech company,w here I now head all of their major communications, from marketing and branding to outreach, popular science and fundraising.

The really exciting part about all of this is that they’re developing an ocean-based platform for carbon dioxide removal – for the first time in my adult life, I feel like I’m part of something that’s working towards a lofty, important, admirable goal, in a setting that excites and fulfils me.

Taking the steps necessary to get to this point in my career wouldn’t have been possible had I not gone on this trip.

But that’s just work stuff.

The really exciting thing is that in the past year I’ve attended and completed a very comprehensive skippers’ training course. I am now a licensed boat captain, just like M – and my father.

If you go back and read the first post on this blog, you’ll see I was suffering from a maritime form of imposter syndrome. This is no longer the case.

Am I a seasoned, salty sea dog? No. 

Not yet, at least. 

But my ropemanship is fluent, I understand winds and currents and am developing an intuition for them, and I have a grasp that goes way beyond the basics of sails, motors, and navigation.

Which is why I’ve decided that it’s time to buy my own boat and start working towards a level of sailing proficiency that will allow me to cross the Mediterranean.

I’m currently in Lisbon, Portugal, following a two week vacation with my partner’s family, then another week with mine, and another week alone, exploring the Iberian Peninsula and the Canary Islands (more on this next time, I hope).

Tomorrow, I fly back home to Israel. I’ve already got a few prospective boats lined up to look at next week, and I think that chronicling this process could be an interesting way to keep track of my thoughts, priorities and considerations.

I’d love to have you join me as I get ready to head west of here once more – this time, with my own ship.