Hi everyone,

Today I set sail for the next 10 days around the Greek Island with a company called Intrepid. I've never actually heard of them before researching for my holiday. I picked this particular company because all the other Greek Island tours only visited one or two island where as the Intrepid trip visited 8 islands in the 10 days. Also just to let you know there is some reference to some events of seasickness. Gotta love that.

So the plan of attack for today was to get the bus (I have no idea which one to be exact) down to the port at 11am for a brief meeting then we set sail for Ios. Due to the night life the night before I didn't actually drift off to sleep until around about 5.30 this morning. I figured if I set two alarms just in case (which I will) switch off the first alarm and go back to sleep, I'd have the second one as a back up. I set a 7.30 and a 8am alarm and low and behold I switched the first alarm off. I was originally planning to be ready by 8.30 because I did heard that there was a bus to the port at 9am. I managed to pack my suitcase and be down at the reception area by 9am. The lady told me to leave my bags in the reception area and walk to the bus station to find out what time the bus leaves for the port. What a good idea.

I head down the stairs to the information centre in the town square to ask where the bus station was. I am seriously the worst person to understand the way Greeks speak English. I just can't understand them clearly. As I walk down the street in the general directions of which way the station was I had to stop again to ask for directions. Sometimes I just need to open my eyes up a bit more because I was practically almost at the big sign that said BUS STATION. Luckily the next bus to leave for that port was at 10am. Plenty of time to get there for 11am. So I walk back to the town square and grab something small to eat and head back a to collect my bags to walk to the station. I'm not to sure if I have mentioned this yet but it is extremely difficult to walk two suitcase along a pebbly road. It takes twice as long.

When I got to the station I had a good half an hour up my sleeve, so I decided I would take my itinerary out and have a read of it whilst I wait. As in was reading a young lady from London by the name of Sarah asked me if I was going on the sail tour. When I said yes I was so relieved that I wasn't going to get lost and if we were late they won't leave without us. We were catching away and a young guy named Andrew who originated from England but has lived in Sydney for 5 years came up to us and asked if we were doing the Intrepid sailing trip and shortly after that an older man in his 60's I'm gathering also joined in on the conservation. his name was Richard. Now I could relax and breath easier knowing that half of the people on the tour would arrive at the port together. So now they couldn't leave without us thank god :-)

The bus was a good 25 mins late and we arrived at Tavema Dimitri's (a little restaurant over looking the port) at 10.55. Two people were already there. Married couple from Canada Michelle and Trevor. The other two young ladies must have been on the same bus as the rest of us. Angela from Sydney and Julie from Red Hill Brisbane. I was kind of glad that most of us was from Australia.

We settled in and decided to get a bite to eat whilst we waited for our skipper. He arrived shortly after we ordered. His name was Dean from England. He decided to run through the general chit chat stuff whilst we were eating and would go through the boat in move detail when we were all settled in. There wasn't to much to run through, mostly the safety features, where the life jackets and flares were and in the event of an emergency we were also shown how to use the stress signal to alert other ships in the area that help is required.

We the picked who we would share a cabin with. Jules & Ange, Richard & Andrew, clearly Michelle & Trevor and Sarah & myself. We then put the sheets on the beds, moved our bags onto our mattresses and closed all the hatches ready to set sail. The plan was to travel back around the side of the island because the seas and wind was not the best conditions and the normal way Dean usually travels was even worse. So we set sail, everybody was getting along having a good old chat, laughing at jokes etc but myself. I wasn't feeling the best (I forgot to take my seasickness tablets. Awesome start to day one) so I was trying to concentrate on the horizon because I heard rumours that if you look at the horizon it makes you feel better. So that was my plan of attack.

After a while we had been sailing for about 2 hours and I started to come good but then Michelle started to feel sick. Dean got the sick bucket for her and shortly after she was sick. I don't think she had ever been sick on a boat before because she was not coping so well. Crying a lot, saying she wanted to get off the boat and asking Dean to turn the boat around. When she was finished being sick Dean took her down into one of the cabin but to move her down there he slowly the boat down and with the rocking up and down and side to side my poor stomach couldn't take it anymore. No one had time to empty out the but so unfortunately for me I was sick in the communal bucket. Luckily for me I can deal with sickness quiet well it doesn't phase me that much.

After my little episode I was all good to go. I sat at the back of the boat so I could see where we were going and the fresh air was in my face. When Dean came back up he was informed we had a second captive and he made sure I was ok. I did ask him if he was able to empty the bucket out for me. Such a good skipper he was. At the rate we were going we still had another 4 hours worth of sailing to do to get to Ios and Michelle was not coping at all. So Dean decided that we would turn around and head back to the port to dock for the night. What an awesome start to our sailing trip! We were about half an hour away from port when I started to not feel 100%. But I made myself toughen up to make it back to port without having another episode. After we docked I started to feel a lot better but it taking Michelle a lot long to recover. We helped Michelle and Trevor move their bags off the boat because Dean organised a room at Dimitri's for the night and they would reassess what they wanted to do tomorrow. I had a very strong feeling our sail mates would shrink from 8 down to 6 which is a shame because they spent over three grand altogether on this tour which will most likely be money they wont get back. Luckily for Sarah and I we got a bed to ourselves for a few nights and we would swap over rooms when we changed over boats (apparently we had the wrong boat. The harbour police found an issue with the boats paperwork at one of the ports in the previous trip).

We all decided to start having showers to freshen up. We all agreed we would have dinner at Dimitri's, sleep on the boat and set sail early tomorrow morning. We were finally all ready for dinner so we made our way up to meet Michelle and Trevor. Michelle still didn't look the best but she seemed to brighten up as the night went on because toward the end of the ending she was telling the whole table about her drunken Christmas party stories. Probably not to best stories to tell people you have only known for half a day...

The food was absolutely beautiful even the local cheese used in the Greek salad. I'm not the biggest fan of fetta cheese but I tried it anyway. The tomato balls were so good and the watermelon served after dinner was so amazing. That would have to be the juiciest watermelon I've EVER tasted. It was so good! I even went all out and tried a fig but personally dried figs are much better probably because there is so much sugar added to it because figs are not sweet at all.

After we dinner we all said to Dimitri that we will see him again for dinner the next night and he just laughed at us and wished us a good night.

We made our way back to the boat and got ready for bed. It was about 10.30 at this stage and my poor body wasn't use to it yet. I have a feeling there's going to be some super late nights ahead of me. Let's see how well I cope..

Anyway so day 1 of sailing the Greek Islands complete and we are still at our departure destination. Let's hope tomorrow is a much better day. I will most certainly have my kweels ready to go to prevent another entertaining day.

Talk to you all soon,

Hope all is well back home!

Love JB xox