After almost two months of work on the yacht, which the shipyard kept putting off until tomorrow, we were ready to go. I had already become accustomed to the Dharma and was eager to start moving westward. I've never been to Europe until now, except for Greece. Based on past experience, I came up with a game where I only studied nautical charts and never watched or read anything about a new place. Because all the countries I've visited before have also been sailed. It seemed to me that I was a true pioneer of this time, and it was much more interesting to live like this.

Just two weeks later, I was so overwhelmed with emotions from the new seats that sometimes, when I woke up in my cabin, I spent a few minutes remembering where we were standing. A couple of times, when I looked into the cockpit, I was surprised to remember the parking lot the day before yesterday and forgot the current one.

I loved all these cozy seaside towns and villages and wanted to stay in almost every one of them and live a little life there. But we were following Pyotr Georgievich's regime and exclusively according to his plan. He had already been to many places before and looked quite well fed to the point that I was absolutely thrilled.

We went to a restaurant every evening. Peter always told me about the places he'd already been to, and then we discussed plans for the near future. He would start every morning with a Skype workshop and I would get ready to go. The cotton of the laptop cover was equivalent to the command “Give back the moorings!” He flew to Moscow every month for a week to solve current issues, and almost every time he returned with his family. His youngest son Sasha was like my own, and his eldest son Andrey was like my brother. I was living a full family life these days and I loved it. At that time, we walked very quietly, stood more, swam, walked and ate a lot. Considering that I didn't pay and was also getting a salary of 2,000 euros a month, it seemed like I was just in heaven. Then the family left, and we both breathed out, cleaned things up together and turned back into yachtsmen.

In this mode, we walked all over Europe in increments of 50 miles a day, sometimes we experimented and shot 700 miles non-stop. It was important to find a comfortable watch schedule for two people to cross the ocean. I adapted to this kind of life and felt very comfortable. When Peter went home, I did minor repairs, but more often I was on my own and just walked around the area.

Gibraltar was coming, and that was the word that scared me the most. This seemed to be the door between Scylla and Charybdis, and even if I could pass by unnoticed, the ocean would definitely end me.

📸 Dharma in Malta

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