From Ithaca to The Odyssey Film
Article Pacific Yachting Magazine ~ by Terry Barkman ~ April 2026
Yes I designed my outfit to match the article, and yes I hired a professional photographer. Still, this is the moment I physically opened Pacific Yachting Magazine and saw my name in print for the first time! No I am not in the movie (how cool would that be??)
I did lead a band of adventurous band of explorers through the same waters the film takes place in. We climbed to the top of Ithaca, (Greece) and stood in the Castle where Odysseus lived before sailing away to fight in the Trojan War!
This is my story:
Matt Damon on the set of Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film The Odyssey
Part of the magic of casting off lines is a quiet agreement with uncertainty. Even the most carefully planned passage will offer something uninvited: a shift in weather, an unearned moment of grace, a lesson that wasn’t on the itinerary (or on the chart!)
Watching the trailer for James Cameron’s film The Odyssey transports me back to my own sailing adventures around Ithaca and the Ionian Sea—an ancient Greek island where the story of Odysseus begins, and where the wind seems somehow to whisper memories and draw out my sense of wonder.
Whether we take Odysseus as a myth or part of history he is legendary to us who love the sea. Told in the oral tradition and over centuries, this is THE sailing story. The original passage tale. Every voyage since—every offshore night watch, every anxious landfall—echoes it in its own way.
Fighting a war in the bronze age must have been the original type 2 fun - horrifying in the moment, and then easier to romanticize, the further the actual experience drifted into the past. Each of us draws a private line between the adventures we want to live and the experiences we’re content to read about from a comfortable seat by the fire. I’m grateful I didn’t have to fight for years at Troy, or spend a decade trying to get home again. I’m glad I didn’t have to spend the night inside the original Trojan Horse hoping this was brilliance and not madness. But I can fully picture myself and a group of sailors far from home and building an ambitious repair out of driftwood and sailing knots.
The sailor’s life, at its core, is a life of experience, of exploring ourselves and the places the seas bring us. I’m grateful to have circumnavigated Ithaca, to have stood on the beach where where Prince Palamedes must have beached when enlisting Odysseus and his crew in the fleet bound for Troy, to have climbed to the island’s highest point where what remains of Odysseus’s Bronze Age castle still stands, and to have looked down onto the seas where his ship once embarked. Standing there, the wind felt older than the ruins—steady, indifferent, and filled with secrets for those of us who listen.
It would be hard to imagine a more beautiful place to be lost. The islands are lush and sprinkled thickly in azure seas.
Sailing, after all, is less about destination than it is about permission to venture out and explore! Permission to leave to have the idea of a plan, and be fully prepared for the wind, waves, and tides to make us much later coming home that we intended.
When we first begin to sail, the ocean invites attention and humility. It asks you to notice. You learn to read clouds the way people once did, to feel pressure build in the helm, to recognize when the silence itself has changed. Seamanship comes with time, but wonder is there even in our beginnings.
For those who have sailed for years, the magic doesn’t fade—it refines itself. Drama gives way to nuance. You no longer need heavy weather to feel alive. Anchor watch under a full moon will do. The call back to the water becomes less about novelty and more about relationships. The sea feels less like an adversary and more like an old acquaintance—never predictable, but deeply familiar.
Odysseus wasn’t trying to conquer the ocean. He was trying like so many of us to return to the home he left. Of course after making his long way home, he found his home very different from what he left behind. This was not because it had changed so much, but because he had grown into a new person who saw his old things in new ways. This may be the oldest truth sailing has to offer. We go out to sea, and whether we intend it or not, we come back changed. Sometimes exhausted, sometimes refreshed, and always richer in experiences.
Every sailor who journeys long enough becomes a keeper of moments. That time the light began to fail before you could get to your anchorage. The wind that behaved so surprisingly unlike the winds from your home waters. The simple meal that tasted magnificent because of where you were, and who you shared it with. The conversation that stretched and opened in ways that can only happen while underway. The boat completes the journey; the experiences we have and the stories we share complete us.
In gratitude to my Crew, Sam at Pacific Yachting Magazine,Anita Alberto for capturing the moment, Martin Knowles for putting the physical magazine in my hands at just the right time, and Tina O for bringing out the magic in my voice and teasing out the way the story wants to be told!
Terry Barkman is currently finishing up his book The Sailboat Effect, named after the way we build teams on sailboats! He is a thought leader in Team Building & Leader Development. His writing, speaking, consulting & coaching are motivated by seeing more connected, effective and focused people come out on the other side. His favorite thing in the world is to coach teams from businesses and organizations to be better at teamwork, and the best possible place to do this is on a sailboat!
