It's really getting into autumnal weather here, today we had high winds and driving rain, so just the right time to get on a plane and fly to a Greek island. A few weeks ago we had one of those Fxxk it moments and booked ourselves a 7 day flotilla holiday in Paxos, which is a little island on the west coast of Greece.

This will be the next step in our learning curve, and we hope a way to ease us into handling a yacht all by ourselves, albeit with an expert on hand if we go wrong. We did think about going back to Scotland and doing a solo sail back up in Largs but then we spotted this end of season bargain on the net and now it's almost time to pack our grab bags and go do it.

We'll be sailing in a Jaguar 25 footer, which is a lot smaller than we have been training on, but funnily enough the same sort of boat that we almost bought a few weeks back on Windermere.

We're both excited at the prospect of casting off all by ourselves into the blue Med although the forecast is for rain at the start of the week. But Hey, who cares, it can't be anything like when we did our Day skipper up in Largs. The one thing we don't want is no wind, perhaps about force 4 or 5 would be great.

It's just over a year now since we started this adventure and I think we have a grasp of the basics, hopefully by the time next week is over we will have gained the confidence we need to take it to the next level. Day Skipper Coastal is the next one after this and then it's back to the Dominican Republic in January. Whoa, can't wait.