About three years ago, I had a crazy idea.

It took about a day to get our sea legs and despite all that was to come, no one ‘fed the fishes’ after day two.

What if I get a bunch of friends together and sail the Greek islands? That would be amazing, I thought.

We’d have our own yacht and we could go where we wanted, do what we wanted, see what we wanted.

The idea was almost immediately dismissed as unviable.

Too expensive, we said.

Surely we could never get all the right people in the right place, we said.

But earlier this year the planets began to align and we realised that we were going to have nine people all in Athens at the right time.

It was on.

The first decisions were the hardest: what sort of boat? And which charter company looked the least dodgy?

It was a tough decision when you consider we were about to send almost $6000 across the world and hope we didn’t turn up to a barely floating bathtub.

Mono-hull yachts are cheaper and more readily available. Catamarans are more luxurious and therefore significantly more expensive. Of course we went with the latter option.

The selling point was the net between the twin hulls where we could lie and watch the world go by, which we did, a lot.

In total the one-week charter cost AU$5800, which is a lot of money on a backpacker’s budget, but when you divide it by nine and take into account that it includes all accommodation and transport for a week, the hefty price tag becomes justifiable.

Once the expenses of the boat are out of the way, everything else can be done on a budget if you’re willing to forego fancy meals and be content with daily feasts of fresh bread, dips, salad and pasta.

So on a steaming Athens day we turned up at the Alimos marina in Athens to meet Panormitis, our boat and Ilias Koutsoumbas, our skipper.

Initially we were a little apprehensive about the idea of a skipper we didn’t know.

Not because we thought we could sail the boat ourselves, but we were concerned that if the skipper turned out to be the fat, lazy, alcoholic smoker that I’d imagined, it could wreck our entire trip.

Luckily Ilias was legendary in his filoxenia and was the first Greek I have ever met that truly understood customer service.

As far as he was concerned, this was our cruise to go where we wanted, do what we wanted, see what we wanted.

We set sail late on our first day and headed away from Athens towards Tzia via Sounion, where we killed the engines a kilometre off the coast and had a speedy dip.

During this stretch we first encountered the realities of living on a boat: tiny cabins, tiny toilets, incessant rocking and seasickness.

It took about a day to get our sea legs and despite all that was to come, no one ‘fed the fishes’ after day two.

We arrived in port close to midnight, in time for one of our crew members, Andrew, to see-in his 25th birthday by taking a dive off the bow.

Not a bad way to celebrate.

En route from Tzia to Kythnos the next day we spotted a sea turtle off the port bow.

Shortly afterwards we dropped anchor in a secluded bay where we swam and snorkelled, exploring the cliffs and caves.

Day three saw us sail from Kythnos to Serifos.

We hit some strong winds late in the day that swept a crank handle and some clothes off the deck. Before I knew it I’d dived off the back of the boat and was swimming after them.

From Serifos we sailed to Sifnos where we spent the night partying with the locals.

When we woke the next morning Ilias had moved the yacht from the port out into the bay.

Unfortunately Andrew wasn’t on board at the time, so Ilias had to launch the dinghy to retrieve him from the beach.

Day five brought us to a shallow straight between Despotiko and Antiparos. We decided to spend the night in the calm green waters there, and spent the afternoon performing acrobatics off the side of the boat.

We also watched the most brilliant orange sunset any of us had ever seen.

The next day we sailed to Paros before heading to Mykonos on day six, encountering gale-force headwinds and four-metre swells, which made for a rough ride.

After docking we spent a fine Mykonian evening sipping cocktails at the Verandah Bar in Little Venice.

In the morning we bade Panormitis and our new friend Ilias goodbye as we disembarked, a little sad that it was over, but glad to be back on terra firma, despite our jelly land-legs.

In seven days, we saw seven different islands and went to places that we probably would never otherwise have gone.

Best of all, we did it at our own pace.

Sailing the Greek islands was everything we hoped it would be, a truly once-in-a-lifetime experience and worth every cent.