Blog

Swapping Liquid for Frozen Water Being on land for a month, we are enjoying some activities we normally cannot do on the boat, like ice-skating! Yesterday was the first time the kids ever wore skates. In fact it was the first time they were even on ice! We went to an indoor ice-skating rink, since […]

Monkeying Around From the moment we told the kids that we would go to The Netherlands, they have been excited about going to Monkey Town. It is an indoor play area that we visited last year, and they just love it. We love it too, since it gives us a chance to sit back with […]

More Old Stones This winter we plan to explore Sicily in a series of little road trips. The first road trip led us to the Valley of the Temples near Agrigento. More ancient Greek temples for us, yay! Or, as Kai would put it: more old stones that we are not allowed to climb on… […]

Trick or Treat! Halloween is one of our kids’ favourite holidays. They had been counting down for at least 60 days… We had great fun going around the marina trick-or-treating. 14 kids were in the marina at the time. They all went along the boats together, with us parents in tow off course. The kids’ […]

Back in the Land of Power Ballads We are back in Sicily for the winter. Just one tiny example of things we love about Italy is: listening to Italian radio stations while driving. The excited talking! The power ballads! Love it, just love it. Other than that, we are loving the food, the prosecco, and […]

Check out this awesome video of our boat Spacegrazer in the old harbour of Methoni. Thanks to Jack on SV Vesna for making this video and sharing it with us! Bianca Kindler

Saying goodbye in Zakynthos Our last Greek island this summer was Zakynthos. Since we had considered ourselves intrepid travellers rather than tourists, we had refrained from buying tacky souvenirs all summer. So… here was our last chance to go shopping! The boys got lousy t-shirts, Zoë a frilly dress, and I got a captain’s hat… […]

Katakolon – a geriatric playground We parked Spacegrazer along the town quay at Katalon to go visit the site of ancient Olympia from there. Katalon is a weird place! The town was completely empty when we got there. But soon after, two cruise ships arrived. Shops opened, souvenir stands popped up, horse-drawn carts and beer […]

Walking in the rain Methoni has a magnificent old harbour, flanked by a fortress and a Venetian tower. Even though it rained and the fortress was closed on the day we were there – we did try to get in, but hey, it’s a fortress – we had fun exploring outside. We also caught up […]

Saying Hiya! to Hades Ancient Greek legend has it that the caves at Diros were the entrance to Hades – the underworld, the realm of the dead… We dropped our anchor in the bay just outside this entrance, and made our way to the visitors’ centre to buy ourselves some tickets. Because you don’t just […]

Early morning arrival After an overnight sail from the island of Milos, which covered about 80 sea miles, we arrived at Monemvasia on the Greek mainland early in the morning. The sun was just rising. The tiny peninsula of Monemvasia looks like a massive lump of rock from a distance. As you get closer, you […]

Santorini is such a stunning, strange place, that I do not even know how to start to describe it. Wikipedia has this to say: Santorini is essentially what remains after an enormous volcanic eruption that destroyed the earliest settlements on a formerly single island, and created the current geological caldera. […] It is the most […]

Let them eat cake We had a birthday coming up on Spacegrazer and the kids were very excited about it. Granddad would turn 68 while staying with us. We had already shopped for cake ingredients a while back, so we could be sure that wherever we would be, we would be able to celebrate properly. […]

Friends reunion We arrived in Kos a couple of days before Max’s mum and dad were set to fly in from New Zealand. We would use that time to tidy up and clean the boat, sort out cabins, stock up on supplies, etcetera. But first, we wanted to catch up with Jack & Julia and […]

  Making friends On our way south to Kos to meet up with Max’s mum and dad, we stayed in Patmos a few days. A couple hours after anchoring up, a boat with a Dutch flag came sailing into the bay, with kids on board! So we waved ecstatically and invited them on board. Wouter, […]

Things the kids were into in August 2017 Swimming (duh) Board games and puzzles Playmobil Zoë likes to sit high up in the cockpit when we are sailing and yell into the wind: “Woohoo, this is amazing!” Beau loves doing yoga. Funny stuff they said this month Zoë: Max: “Zoë, you will be 5 next […]

Millionaires’ idyllic island We are making our way south through the Eastern Aegean Sea, more or less in a straight line down from Lesbos, via Chios, Patmos, and some smaller islands in between, to Kos. At the end of one sailing day, the anchorage we planned to stay at on Chios was not as sheltered […]

Island under pressure After Jean left us in Mitilini on Lesbos, we stayed there for a few days to load up on provisions and fill the tanks with diesel. The kids enjoyed the local playground. We enjoyed the bustling old streets lined with shops and restaurants. But there was something in the air that made […]

Can I invite myself? A couple of weeks ago Max received a message from his auntie Jean. She had been following our journey and was wondering whether she could tag along with us for a few days, or a week, or whatever. She would be flexible and would meet us wherever was convenient. We thought […]

Reunion We had been on Alonissos island for a while, waiting for Max’s hand to heal and then waiting for some packages to be delivered – with parts for boat repairs. Then on one glorious day, the packages arrived, and our friends Oliver, Sinem and their son Henry on sailing vessel High Flight dropped by […]