Sailing Around the World (Sailing La Vagabonde) - Ep. 1 Intro & Sailing Turkey

Riley Whiteland and I'm from Adelaide in South Australia. My name's Alayna, I'm from Western Australia, a little coastal town called Geraldton. I got the boat in a place called Monopoly which is south of Bari, just a very small country town in Italy. It's a 43.4 foot Beneteau Cyclades. I got it about a year ago, probably a little bit more than that now. I bought it from three arguing Italian guys who, I don't know, they just couldn't get their business organised. So I ended up getting it off them and then sailing it over to Croatia. That was about a year ago. When I first got it, no I had no idea how to sail. I'd done a couple of very small trips, maybe a day and a half or something like that. So yeah, to the point where when I first rolled it, when Lucas and I first rolled out the headsail, we actually didn't even know how to furl it back in. So yeah, it's been a pretty steep learning curve. So from here, as I said, we'll be going over to Malta, from Crete to Malta, then Sicily, Sardinia, Majorca or the Balearic Islands, then Gibraltar and then pretty much following the footsteps of Christopher Columbus over down to the Canary Islands for an Atlantic crossing in probably January. So Canary Islands then down to Cape Verde heading south until, as I say, the butter melts and then heading over to the Caribbean. Hang around Central America for a while in the Caribbean and then through the Panama Canal to the Galapagos Islands. I'd really love to check them out. Then across the Pacific and then, I don't know, Solomon Islands is one place I want to go. That sounds great. And who's the greatest person on earth? That would have to be David Foster. No, I knew you'd say that. What is the average speed of an African mating pigeon? I have no idea. Okay, so I just wanted to do a bit of a tour of La Vagabonde. So this is the bow up here. We've got the anchor. We're anchored in about five meters of water. That's your genoa there, the mast. So that little hatch there goes down into my room, which I'll show you in a second. They're the pride and joy of the boat, the two flexible solar panels which I had installed in Montenegro. Hello Elayna, how are you? So we've had a bit of a tidy up here before we give everyone the tour. Got a little bicycle hanging off the back there. A nut tender. We're going to get a new one of them in a couple of days because it's slowly disintegrating. So we come down here. I'm actually standing on the engine. This is the entryway here. So there's two bedrooms. That's Port Aft. This is Starboard Aft. Got the electronics, viso there, all the music and some safety equipment. This is where all the important documents are, passport etc. The galley, the kitchen, the books. Just storage there. Pots and pans under here. This is where I cook. This is where Elayna cooks. I don't know, I don't really know anything that goes on there at all. Some chillies we've installed. There's some, this is the, well this is supposed to be, yeah that's actually a wardrobe now. This is supposed to be where you'd stick little children. Well, not kids that you stole, but kids that would come on board. That's the, that's one of the, well that's the forward head or my ensuite as I like to call it. This is the recently redecorated boudoir or harem. Turkish. Yes. Got my little ukulele up there. And that's, yeah. Hello world. Back up to where you come from. So that's La Vagabonde. So we've just got our new boat and we have to carry it all the way to the marina to inflate it. How's it going Riles? Good, thanks for all your help Elayna. You're welcome. Another kilometre to go. Nice isn't he? Hey Elayna, could you just tie that, could you just tie the tender off for me please? Yeah no worries Riley, yeah yeah. So you've tied that off, that's all good yeah. This is what's happened over here. Elayna's just going to retrieve the tender which was fortunately caught on that island before it just disappeared over there into the wild blue yonder. So, yes. What just happened? We came back from getting some batteries in Marmaris and the boat was rocking kind of funny and then I turned, I had a sneaking suspicion as to what might have happened and I checked the, I took the navigation on and checked the depth gauge. We're in 1.2 meters of water and seven meters to 1.2, 10 meters. So over 10 meters it goes from seven meters to one meter. So we should have dove on it before we left but hopefully if the rudder's not bent everything should be okay if I hold this straight. So we've just survived our first, what would you call that? Leave the boat grounding. Leave the boat grounding. Leave the boat, come back and find the boat on the ground rather than in the mud. So we are celebrating with wine. Sadafin. And a lovely view.