Evening Standard from London, Greater London, England • A51

ies), Amorgos (craggy, quiet and windswept our favourite) and Mykonos (the hedonistic party island) and finally at Monemvasia, a dramatic island linked via a causeway to the Peloponnese peninsula, and known for its preserved medieval walled town and fortress. One of the unlikely daily highlights came in the early evening, when the routine of unfurling the Star 16 sails for the next leg of sailing became a kind of choreographed ceremony conducted by the crew to rousing theme for Ridley film 1492: Conquest of Paradise. What was it Coward said about the poten tency of cheap music? Even now, many months on, that song brings a lump to the collective family throat. After two days, we knew most members of the above-deck crew by name. After five, they felt like close family friends, from Igor the towering Ukrainian barman nicknamed fifth to Robert, the half-Hungarian, half-Liv erpudlian DJ.

At dinner each night, the birthdays of any passengers were marked without prompting with ostentatious deliveries of huge cakes by the waiting staff. As those of my wife and I both fell during the cruise, we got our worth. Tips were not included but we were recommended to pay per passenger per day. Over a week, for a family of four, that mounts up but rarely have I felt less resentful about rewarding staff. They were so much fun to be with.

Back at Piraeus, as we trudged down the gangplank, it was surprisingly hard to accept they would soon be welcoming another of passengers on board while we disappeared from their lives for ever. DETAILS: ISLAND-HOPPING A seven-night trip on board the Star Clipper costs from full board (excluding flights), starclippers.co.uk Wednesd 9 Jul 2014 51 Travel Jonathan Prynn and family sail across the Aegean from the Turkish coast to the Greek islands aboard a four-masted tall ship GONE WITH THE WIND HERE were two cruise ships moored in the harbour of the western Turkish port of Kusa dasi that day. One was a towering slab-sided floating apartment block, from which waddled legions of middle-aged tourists. That was not our vessel. A few hundreds yards further out in the bay bobbed our temporary home, a gleaming Onedin Line vision of four-masted maritime elegance.

Smug come close. Kusadasi was our first call on a weeklong island-hopping flit across the Aegean aboard the Star Clipper, a full replica of the great tall ships of the 19th century. It was our first holiday, although with a crew of 78 there was very little opportunity to pump the bilges or scurry up the rigging. Phew. But there was no forgetting that wind not diesel was our main source of propulsion.

On our first full day at sea, scampering across from the Athenian port of Piraeus to Turkey, those nagging Aegean breezes whipped themselves up to a Force 8 gale. Great for filling the sails, but unsettling if you are trying to negotiate your way to its bar. The lean, and the rough seas, also meant the (fortunately sealed) portholes of our cabins on the lower decks were buffeted by slooshing seawater for much of the day, making us feel we were living inside a washing machine on a particularly long cycle. Despite the occasional reminders of maritime life on board the Star Clipper, we quickly settled into an obscenely pleasant routine. To the undisguised delight of my two teenage sons, it was possible to eat pretty much around the clock, with six daily meals laid out with barely a gap between to recover.

A light breakfast of croissants and Danish pastries was laid out from 6.30am, followed by a full breakfast buffet until 10am, a vast lunch, afternoon tea, a five-course dinner and a midnight snack. The standard was consistently and miracu lously good, given the broom-cupboard dimensions of the cramped and baking galley. A typical dinner menu might include beef carpaccio topped with slivers of Parmesan cheese, melon sorbet, pork medallions in a red wine and fig sauce, vintage Stilton with port and baked Alaska. In the short spaces between meals, however, the alarmingly energetic sports team made sure passengers worked off at least some of their calories with a succession of activities, starting with pre-breakfast gymnastics. We skipped that but tried sailing, snor kelling, wake surfing and mast climbing.

If those were not enough, there was often dancing on the deck after the evening entertainment that could be a quiz, an anarchic fashion show or a demonstration of belly dancing that had the eyes of one elderly passenger almost popping out of his head. The 360ft-long Star Clipper may have been only a bath toy compared with the hulking cruise liners we shared some harbours with, but it was a surprisingly spacious home. There are two bars, a library and games room, and two small swimming pools, although these are often out of use during rougher weather. Cabins are no pokier than many a hotel room on terra firma and include en suite toilets and showers. For an extra we could even have upgraded to one with a whirlpool bath.

There were 120 passengers on our trip from 15 different countries, including France, Belgium, Germany, America and a deceptively quiet family from Kazakhstan, who played a mean game of Monopoly. Passengers are encouraged to share tables at dinner to break down national barriers, although, perhaps inevitably, on our cruise we quickly settled into four regional blocs: Anglophones, Francophones, Teutophones and rest of the We took up with a laconic cruise veteran from Florida and his son scariest voyage I ever took was on my way to England from a place called and an amusingly rowdy Australian camera crew making a documentary about the Greek islands, who annoyed the German contingent with their raucous late-night singing around the bar piano. We are in touch with them still. Mostly, we sailed at night, waking up in or approaching a new destination. At Kusadasi, we wandered around the market, marvelling at the disarmingly honest come-ons from the traders.

We particularly enjoyed you let me hassle you and and look at my genuine And of course, like lambs to the slaughter, we did. Kusadasi is the port for one of the great ancient sites of the eastern Mediterranean, the great preserved Ionian city of Ephesus. Unmissable. For the next five days, we sailed back west toward Athens, stopping for half- day excursions to the north Cycladean islands of Patmos (chic, prosperous and teeming with monasteries and nunner High seas: the magni cent Star Clipper at full sail on the Aegean Sea; below, the Library of Celsus in the ruins of Ephesus, western Turkey All Greek: above left, a bar with the Kato Mili windmills beyond on Mykonos; right, the Johanniter monastery on Patmos.