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MILOS-ATHENS-TÜRKIYE: "Winter" sailing NOW

The Med in the winter time is wonderful - admittedly the swimming temperatures may be lower than optimal, and admittedly the sun goes down early, but the landscape is green, it's rarely too hot, there is always plenty of space in the anchorages and harbours, not too many tourists in the towns nor on the beaches, no loud music from the beach bars, the weather is more exciting than in the summer time. For people from my latitudes it's also a great escape from the darkness and cold - by average the winters here are even warmer and dryer than the summers back where I grew up (Tromsø, almost 70° north).

UPDATE 2025-01-22: We're on Milos. Three persons on board. 2/3 is leaving from Athens by the 31st of January. There are many candidates for February and March, but nobody has so far committed to join. My plan is likely to cross over to Bodum by the end of February, spend some time in that area and then cross over to the Black Sea, but this part is not set in stone yet.

SUMMARY

* You're welcome regardless of age, gender, qualifications and experience.
* I usually have a "first-to-the-boat" policy of accepting crew (alternatively "first to book flight tickets").
* I think the ideal crew size is 3. 4 sleeping places on board. We've once been 12 on a multi-day-trip.
* Common meals if possible (tell me about your food preferences)
* We share the food costs
* For other costs, a crew contribution of 10-25 EUR pr day is appreciated if you can afford it. Alternatively some extra help with maintenance tasks and daily chores.
* Be honest and keep me updated. Do you need some weeks to decide if you will join or not? Have you sent an "application" to dozens of skippers and then choose to join another boat? Let me know!
* If you don't like reading long texts, you may skip the rest.

CREW EXPECTATIONS

You're welcome on board regardless of age, gender, qualifications and experience, as long as you're prepared to give a hand when it's needed. Children are welcome. I've had a dad joining together with his toddler - that did work out very well. I've also many times had helpers on board that had absolutely no experience with sailing. Either you learn, or the primary task on your shifts will simply be "wake up the captain if anything happens".

If we decide to sail throughout the nights, most often we'll put up a duty plan where we share the burden of staying awake at the helm - but I still expect to be woken up when I'm "off-duty" if needed. If someone happens to be wide awake when their duty ends it's OK to stay a bit longer, and if someone happens to fall asleep over the rudder it may be important to wake up the next duty even if the time is not there.

I generally expect that we share doing the chores (cooking, dish-washing, maintenance tasks, putting out fenders, cleaning the deck, organizing ropes, etc), but as I also need to spend significant time on my day job I may have a bit reduced capacity.

For relaxed sailing in sheltered waters I'm comfortable sailing single-handed. Two persons on board works out fine for rougher sailing, three persons are optimal when doing night-time sailing, four will work out, five and it starts getting crowded. We have some double beds, couples and children tend to compress pretty well - we once were six adults and six children on board for four days ... I remember it as a nice trip, but I have no idea how we managed :-) We also had a guest family on board summer 2024, four adults and five children for more than a week did work out.

I'm flexible when it comes to diet, I eat almost anything (but be warned, I tend to eat quite much). If crew has special requirements (i.e. vegan diet) I will try to adapt. I can do some cooking, but I'm not very good at it, so I'm generally happy with my crew taking care of it. I've had crew members on board cooking food only for themselves - that's faux de pas, in this ship we try to eat together when possible.

THERE MAY BE DRAGONS

I've had people staying only for some 1-3 days before leaving. Once it was due to bureaucratic problems preventing me from leaving the harbour, but most of the time it's because the crew gets sea sick (or possibly scared). Sea-sickness usually goes over during some few days, and I hope to have learned to be gentle and do short trips on the first days with people who haven't had much experience with sailing. In any case it may be an idea to have a plan B ready in case you find that sailing is not for you, or in case the boat gets stuck for whatever reason.

If you do get sea sick, please stay in the cockpit or (if conditions allow) out on the deck. You may alternatively try to lay down in the bed - for some people that's the best thing. Make sure to ask for the bucket before you need to puke.

There may be situations when personalities don't mix very well. I once told my crew to leave the ship (though, only after a year and a 5000 EUR halyard wrap issue).

Plans may change - sailing may be unpredictable. Sometimes it's needed to spend anything from some hours to a full year repairing the boat after something breaks down or after an accident, other times plans needs to be revisited due to rules and bureaucracy. Weather is of course also an unpredictable factor. I do put a lot of pride into meeting up for my appointments, I've so far only once been two hours delayed for picking up crewbay crew.

Long-time planning is not my game, so please don't ask me what I will be doing several months in the future. I ended up sailing from Constanța in Romania and almost to Myconos in Greece, single-handedly most of the way, for no other reason than that I'd done a commitment to meet someone there ... and then they couldn't come anyway, all flights cancelled that day due to the Crowdstrike incident.

APPLICATIONS

Don't waste time writing up up a long presentation of yourself bragging about your skills and qualifications. I will read it - but the proof is in the pudding, and it's always better with crew that "exceeds expectations" than the other way around.

While I may perceive some candidates as more attractive than others, my policy is most often that the first ones to commit to joining is accepted as crew. If you're coming in by airplane or similar, then I consider it to be a commitment as soon as tickets have been purchased.

By average, for every person joining for real there are like ten other persons responding to my ad but never showing up. I don't know, perhaps there are a lot of people that are only dreaming about sailing, but never really find the time or money to break out from their "real life". Perhaps there are crew candidates writing to tens of captains and ending up on another ship. I do consider it normal politeness to inform me if you have decided not to sail with me (and I also expect you to be frank about the reasons).

COST SHARING

I expect the crew to take their part of the grocery bills. If you could also afford contributing like 10-25 EUR pr person per day to help with other costs (as listed below), it would be appreciated.

There are three models for sharing the food costs, we can count every cent of the food shopping, we may contribute equally to a "food piggy bank" and use that one for grocery shopping, or we may also simply do turns on paying for the grocery shopping, I'm flexible, but I prefer the latter model. Most other "extra costs" with having more people on board are negligible.

Travelling by sail is probably the most expensive way of travelling for "free"! The costs include:

* Maintenance - this is big, probably ~1000 EUR/month. It can't be counted and shared "on the go", the expenses comes down unevenly. Sails, rope, rigging and any equipment tends to get worn out and needs replacement every now and then, things get destroyed due to carelessness or negligence from the crew, skipper doing some serious mistake or just bad luck. Sometimes things may be mended on the go, other times it's needed to buy expensive replacement parts or get professional help. We do not argue about who is to blame when things go wrong, we rather discuss what went wrong and try to learn from the mistakes. I will not claim any compensation for broken equipment from the crew, it all goes on the "running cost"-budget.
* Diesel (has been around 100-500 EUR pr month lately),
* Harbour stays - this is usually fairly low, as I prefer to stay by anchor when possible.
* Insurance, local taxes and other administrative costs ... like fines. I think I have gotten two fines during the last 5 years. The captain does of course bear most of the responsibility for checking up local regulations and adhere to it, but it's not always easy to be up to date on all local regulations. In case of fines, I think it would be fair to share it up until 100 EUR per person on board, with the rest taken by the captain.
* Laundry, refill of drinking water, gas, sometimes electricity in harbours, ....

CONTACT

Please write a message through crewbay so I will have your profile on the candidate list. If you find it easier to communicate off the platform, please remind me to share my contact information

REFERENCES

I may provide references from earlier crew members if needed.

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