‘We had a third of the Earth to ourselves’: the band that’s spent four years touring the world by sea

When spending months at sea with a ragtag crew, says Grey Filastine, ‘you may not get along, but you start laughing about how you don’t get along’. Photograph: Brydie Piaf/The Guardian

There are so many famous stories of bands on tour: the Who being banned from every Holiday Inn in America; Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham riding a Harley through the Chateau Marmont. But how many musical acts can say they have circumnavigated the Earth twice by boat, on a tour that has lasted four continuous years, and reached some of the world’s most far-flung places – all without murdering each other?

“Everybody who comes aboard the Arka Kinari is bizarre,” says US musician Grey Filastine, one half of the husband-and-wife duo Filastine and Nova. “I mean, who is going to leave their life for months to make almost nothing and risk their life? It’s a self-selecting group of people.”