For once, a luxurious life on the ocean wave was for me

Martin Hesp spends eight days aboard a three-masted, full-rigged sailing ship cruising around the coast of Sicily with delights aplenty

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Purveyors of magic. That is how you could describe some of the companies or agencies which make their money by selling you experiences away from home.

The holiday industry can be hit-and-miss, but book with the right people and there can be golden moments when you are able to sit back and appreciate that your chosen purveyors of magic are, indeed, waving their wand.

Which is the best way I can describe what's happening as I write these words. The experience of a lifetime is, indeed, under way as I sit aboard a sailing ship watching the mountainous Sicilian coast pass gently by in hot July sunshine.

We're passing between Sicily and the Aeolian Isles with a following wind so we're under full sail, which means all I can hear is the sound of the blue waves slapping against the hull. Some members of the crew are clambering high in the rigging and they've invited us to climb up to the crow's nest, but I've got words to write and, to be honest, I'm too scared. Those yardarms are a long way up.

Not that my failure to climb the rigging, or anything else come to that, matters - the customer is absolute king aboard the Sea Cloud Spirit. You do what you like, and to help you do that there are outstandingly friendly and attentive teams of waiters, bar-staff, pursers and goodness knows who else.

The views are stupendous enough as I tap on my keyboard - I don't need to go to the crow's nest to see distant Mount Etna rising into the clouds - and I'm also aware that we'll be dropping anchor much closer to the volcano that so recently blew its top, once we've turned down into the Straits of Messina.