One of the worst bits of the last year has been coming to terms with the fact that our plans to sail the world could no longer happen.   We’d spent so long thinking about it, planning routes, pouring over charts, working out how we could earn enough money to fund long term sailing, then suddenly it was gone.  All those plans and ideas and  dreams over.  It seemed to add injury to insult that ,when Andy was feeling so ill,  we should have been in the Canaries, heading down to Cap Verde  or crossing the Atlantic to the Caribbean.  We thought that our sailing days were probably over.

However, every day Andy has got a little bit stronger and able to do more and  a small idea began bubbling away that perhaps we would be able to do something. We couldn’t cross oceans any more or explore Pacific atolls but surely we could sail somewhere near enough so we’d be able to get back to the UK or Australia if we needed to.

We were helping out on the Ocean Cruising Club stand at the Southampton Boat Show and found ourselves near the Sailing Holidays stand. We had watched this flotilla holiday company during two seasons in Greece and always enjoyed seeing them arrive and get shepherded together by the lead crew.  We even joined them on a couple of their outings.  We got chatting to one of the staff on the stand and discovered they were selling some of their older boats at very reasonable prices!

We are now the proud owners of a 2000 Dufour 32 based in Corfu! Her name was S/V Thalia but, as we have to take her out of Greek Registry and register her in the UK, we decided to change her name.  We wanted to continue the Aussie theme and finally decided on Banjo after Banjo Paterson who, for those of you who don’t know, wrote Waltzing Matilda!

We’ll be waltzing round Greece this year and then maybe up to Italy again and possibly Croatia and would be delighted if any of you would like to join us.  She’s not quite so spacious as our lovely Matilda but we’ll have the same view from the cockpit, the same amazing Greek islands to visit  and the same beautiful, green water to jump into off the back.  Yiamas!