I swear I’ll get to Cyprus soon (it was boring) as well as to the actual sailing and night shifts and rough seas and all that (not boring at all, but I’m paralysed by the fear of not doing it justice), but for now, let’s catch up to where I am right now: the tiny Greek island of Kastellorizo.

This is our fourth night here. We’ve been here for this long because in addition to being a living, breathing, postcard-perfect manifestation of the clichéd romantic ideal of what a remote Greek island should be, we also know that the weather from here to Rhodes, on what is to be the last leg of the sailing chapter in my journey, is predicted to be harsh. 

We decided to wait it out here, in the relatively safety the island’s harbour offers, but even with our anchor cast and moorings secured, it’s going to be rough. 

I just spent the last few hours literally battening down the hatches and securing everything that couldn’t be stowed, and despite being several meters from the dock, we’ll be spending the storm on the Poodle, for two reasons:

The first is that we may need to attend to things on the boat as the storm progresses, and second is that in order to keep the boat safe, we had to distance it from the concrete docks so that it has enough lebensraum to move around without crashing into them. 

The entire second half of the day was spent poring over wind forecasts and current charts, trying to understand together with the other skippers here where the brunt of the storm is expected to hit, and how best to prepare for it.

The first half of the day, however, I spent hiking alone on the high ridges of the island – photos attached.

There was also an underground crypt in an empty monastery at the top of a mountain, looked after by a groundskeeper dressed all in black and covered in tattoos head to toe – but I didn’t get any photos of that, sadly.

How will the storm progress, and how bad will it be to stay on board during taxing seas with dry land merely meters away? Stay tuned.