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Clockwise L-R: Megan's bed taken apart to access bilge pump; Dale descending into the bilge area under the bed board; Kari using a foot pump to pump out grey water out of the bilge; Dale in an uncomfortable contortion reaching under another layer of boards to rewire a new bilge pump
For those of you who’ve been guests on Helios, it may look like Skip (Dale) and Christine just breeze through their sailing excursions effortlessly. You may even have dreamt of owning your own sailboat since they make it look so easy!
However, as someone who crewed one Atlantic crossing and now frequently stays on the boat long enough to see multiple parties of guests come and go, I can assure you there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes work involved in owning Helios.
Here’s a run-down of what happens between guests, plus the additional work Helios requires:
Interior: Each guest cabin is given a thorough inspection by Christine and cleaning touch-ups are completed as needed before the next guests arrive. NOTE: despite rumors to the contrary, this is not always due to guests not cleaning their cabins competently!! Hair, dust, and salt are constantly accumulating on both the exterior and interior surfaces of Helios. If there are a couple of days between guests, everything is dusty and salty again and has to be wiped down. Likewise, hair - that eternal bane of Helios - annoyingly gets blown into every corner of the boat.
The entire salon area is given a complete washing, including climbing up onto the counter behind the sink so we can reach all the way to the windows. Climbing up is pretty easy, but getting down can be challenging with the port cabin stairwell looming below you! The refrigerator and freezer are wiped down, any old food is disposed of, the stove is scrubbed, the couches are vacuumed, and the floor is swiffered.
Exterior: While many of you helped hose down the boat after a salty day of sailing, an extra thorough exterior washing is done between guests. The seat cushions are all scrubbed with the brush to remove salt, which is a step usually skipped while guests are on board because it can take awhile for them to dry out again. The windows are washed with vinegar and rags to remove water spots. Vinegar is also used to wipe down all of the chrome on Helios. This includes the numerous railings, handles, and lifeline posts, plus the two big posts in the stern.
And have I mentioned hair? That affects the exterior of the boat as well! It sticks to surfaces both horizontal and vertical, gets tangled around blocks and posts, and can be very difficult to wash away with the hose if the water pressure is weak. Often, I’ll just walk around picking up exterior pieces of hair before washing Helios since it seems easier to unstick it when it’s still relatively dry. And now you all know why I’m constantly wearing headbands on Helios - it’s all about hair management!
Food: It can be difficult to anticipate what foods, and how much, guests might eat during their stay. After one set of guests leave, we eat a lot of leftovers to try to clean out the fridge. Anything we don’t eat gets thrown out, tupperware gets washed, and the remaining usable food is inventoried. Then comes the shopping list creation! Christine is great about keeping track of standard items we’ve run out of, but dinner ingredients need to be compiled and we have to estimate how much lunch and breakfast food we’ll need. This is especially challenging if the next section of sailing won’t be near any towns with stores to replenish fresh food.
And then there’s the actual shopping, which usually happens multiple times between guests. An initial shopping picks up all of the non-perishables items, plus enough fresh food to feed the three of us while waiting for the next guests. Then a second shopping is done right before the next guests arrive to buy any missing items - often, we end up searching 2-3 stores in a town for specific items - and to fully stock the perishable foods. At times, fitting everything in the limited fridge space can feel like a particularly challenging puzzle!
Administrative: There is so much administrative work with a sailboat! Who knew? Everything from coordinating repairs, finding marinas, ensuring port authority documents are up-to-date, insurance, listing the boat for sale, etc. all take an astonishing amount of time. When Skip and Christine decided to leave Helios for 3 weeks in July and August, Christine had to contact every marina in a 200 kilometer radius around Athens before she finally found one in Kalamata with an available slip! That’s a lot of emails, texts and phone calls, often made difficult by language barriers.
Finding people who are able to repair specific problems with the boat can be very time consuming as well. Do you need an electrician or a plumber or a mechanic? Can you find one who’s English is good enough to understand the problem? Are they available during the time when you’re in port? Do they have the parts needed? Even when you finally find someone, they typically can’t give you a specific time they’ll be coming to the boat. Often, someone needs to stay with the boat all day in case a repair person shows up, which then limits time to complete off-the-boat tasks like laundry and grocery shopping.
This last excursion had the additional task of taking photos and videos of Helios to send to the listing broker. Yes, Helios is officially for sale again! We spent over a day scrubbing the interior and exterior, removing and hiding unnecessary clutter, staging all of the beds in coordinated sheets and blankets, with towels and Helios crew shirts artfully arranged on shelves. We staged the tables on the fly bridge and in the back cockpit to look ready for mealtime, and Christine even arranged the salon table to look like people were playing a game! Since Skip wanted both daytime and nighttime photos, we had to leave everything staged into the evening, which meant I couldn’t take a nap and I had to stay up past dark. Oh, the hardships!
The Unexpected Events: Ah, yes, the constant fun surprises that Helios can throw your way! This last visit, I thought I was well prepared to have a relatively calm final day of helping to clean the salon, repair the freezer handle, and then simply pack, clean my cabin, and then toddle off to the hotel room I had for my final night. We even had air conditioning, so easy peasy! However, before cleaning my bathroom, Skip suggested I check my sump pump to make sure it wasn’t too dirty. This is the pump each bathroom has which handles all the water from the sink and shower - fortunately, not the toilet!!
As it turned out, the sump pump had broken and, unbeknownst to us, water had been overflowing and accumulating in the bilge because the bilge pump was also broken! This meant Skip and I had to completely disassemble Megan’s entire bed to access the bilge area. Then we had to clean out gallons of pretty gross water, squeeze ourselves into an impossibly small space, and wipe down the bilge area with a bleach solution to prevent mold. “Ouch” and “yuck” all in one task! I still have bruises on my leg from pressing against a shelf while reaching down into the slimy bilge. Fortunately, the electrician we already had coming for the water maker (another unsolved repair mystery) was able to replace the sump pump, but Skip had to replace the bilge pump the next day after I’d left. It made for a very long day, although one that I won’t forget any time soon!
Overall: This is not intended to make any guests feel badly about their time on Helios! Skip and Christine genuinely enjoy having people on board, especially those who are willing and brave enough to play Skull King with them. Personally, I’d rather clean toilets than play that game, so thanks to all of you guests who stepped up to satisfy their gaming addiction!
And obviously, all of the amazing anchorages, beaches, villages, sightseeing, swimming/paddle boarding/hiking excursions more than make up for this work. It’s been a pleasure and a privilege to participate in these behind-the-scenes tasks on Helios over the years, and I’d happily do it again anytime!
Staged guest bedroom Staged salon table Full refrigerator ready for guests
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