Young sailor’s odyssey

Sailing Through Serenity: Viggo Mikkelsen Steele enjoys his breeze-kissed journey.

Seven-year-old Viggo Mikkelsen Steele chronicles his family’s thrilling voyage from Greece to New Zealand, offering readers insights into their seafaring escapades and discoveries.

Sailor, adventurer and budding journalist Viggo Mikkelsen Steele is just seven-years-old.

But Viggo has volunteered to tell Herald readers of the exploits of his nearly five-year-old sister Alva, his parents Ben Steele and Mette Mikkelsen and himself as they sail from Greece to New Zealand.

The family has been living in London for more than three years.

Viggo is Jill Chrisp’s grandson and great-grandson of the late Michael Chrisp.

Jill’s partner Karen Johansen says Viggo is happy to send update reports to The Herald as his exciting voyage continues.

Hello, my name is Viggo Mikkelsen Steele. I am from New Zealand and Denmark and I can speak English and Danish. I was born in New York in the USA.

I am seven years old and we are going all around Greece on our big boat called Saga.

We have been here for two weeks and we got the boat on an island called Samos.

Next we are going to Italy, Spain and so on until we reach our final destination — New Zealand.

It will take a long time and it took a long time to get here as well.

We came all the way from London to New Zealand to Japan to Turkey and then got a ferry to Greece.

I sleep in the port cabin (on boats, bedrooms are called cabins) with my little sister Alva. She is just four years old.

My mum is called Mette and my dad is called Ben.

My dad’s friend is PJ and he is helping us with the boat.

I am going to tell you about my favourite things to do on the boat.

Every day I wake up and have breakfast.

For breakfast in Greece they have chocolate balls. They are like huge cocoa pops.

After that my favourite thing to do is fishing. I have caught ten fish till now but they were all really little.

They were all swimming on the surface when I threw some bread out and I got them with my net.

Once a fish jumped into our tender (that means a dinghy that sits on our big boat) and we used it for bait.

My dad has bought a big fishing rod and we will use it to catch big fish soon in the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean.

During this trip I have been to so many hot and warm beaches.

In one of the rockpools, I found a lot of urchins (in New Zealand they are kina but here they are black and even spikier) and I made an urchin family.

Their names were Spiky, Dangerous, Andrea, Pokey and Prickles.

In another rockpool I saw three tiny shrimp swimming around. I have also seen a giant green turtle that stuck its head out of the water, and I also enjoyed watching the dolphins.

We spotted a peacock feather and observed a goat with big horns while we were at one of the beaches.

My dad dived down and got a pink urchin shell for me and my sister. He also found a pair of shorts that had slipped off someone and had sunk to the ocean floor.

I love swimming off the back of the boat but you have to be careful.

One day Alva’s spade fell off the back and floated and we had to use the tender to retrieve it.

We pretended it was a person so we could practise saving it.

I can do bombs off the side of the boat.

I did a manu and am trying to do a staple.

I am also practising diving.

I want to get down 11 metres or less with my dad. My dad is an excellent spear-fisher and diver but he hasn’t caught any fish in Greece yet.

We eat all sorts of Greek food.

I like the bread because it is soft and I give my leftovers to the fish to eat.

I also like the peaches and grapes because they are juicy and big.

We also had pancakes on the boat with our friends from another boat who joined us for lunch.

There are two toilets in our boat.

You flush them by pushing and pulling a pump up and down. The paper has to go in a plastic rubbish bag and can’t be flushed down the toilet or it will block it.

It is really hot on the boat.

I only really wear togs all day because the best way to cool down is to go swimming.

There is a fan in my cabin but I have to share it with my sister.

Lots of people are coming on our boat like my grandma who lives in Gisborne and my friends from London where I was living before I set off for this journey.

I have lots of questions about living on a boat, like what happens if we run out of food when we are in the middle of the sea and what happens if we accidentally catch a dolphin, and what to do if you see someone drowning.

Overall, I like living on a boat. Every day there’s something new.

My house moves every day and I can see the beautiful beaches when we arrive at a new place.