"No," replies my friend John, his mischievous, satisfied smile just visible in the pinkish, post-summer-sunset glow, "but we do have a yacht.

Our privately chartered 45-foot, four-cabin sailing catamaran, it seems, won't entitle us to the happy-hour specials specifically designed for the rabble-rousing Yacht Weekers, but we don't really mind. It may only be the second day of the nearly eight we'll spend sailing the coast and islands of Greece's Peloponnesian Peninsula - the mitten-shaped hunk of land that comprises the country's western reaches - but my five city-living, rat-racing friends and I already feel more relaxed than we have on any other vacation we can recall.

Over the course of those first 48 hours, we picked up our ship in Pireas, the port city next to Athens, and met our skipper, the smiling-eyed, leathery-skinned Yannis, who quickly raised sail and expertly sped us southwest, across sparkling sapphire waters toward the island of Aegina. As the hills of the Greek capital disappeared behind us, and its densely packed white buildings receded into little more than a pale blur on the horizon, our shirts came off and our Kindles turned on, the laptops shut down and the bottles of rosé opened up. This was living.

The trip had started a bit less auspiciously. When we'd initially chartered the boat, back in February, we'd done so with the intention of sailing east from Athens, making our way to the iconic Cyclades - Mykonos, Santorini and their sister islands - whose white-washed villages and blue-domed churches we'd all seen splashed across travel brochures and websites for years. As it turned out, a week wouldn't give us enough time to make it there and back, so we resigned ourselves to the Peloponnese. We thought we were settling - but this, it turned out, couldn't have been further from the truth.

While the Cyclades can be completely overrun in high season - not just by those staying in the islands' scads of hotels and resorts, but also by the hordes of day-tripping big-ship cruisers who invade them on shore excursions - the Peloponnese is relatively untouched by outsiders. Instead, they're a favored getaway for posh Athenians; Vanity Fair has even referred to the town of Porto Heli here as the Southampton of Greece. The ruggedly beautiful islands of Hydra and Spetses, meanwhile, with their bustling villages of tile-roofed, sand-colored stone houses and secluded beaches, have similar reputations. The rest of the world is slowly getting onboard: Amanresorts opened an ultra-haute hotel near Porto Heli in the summer of 2012 (previously visitors had little choice but to rent a villa if they wanted to stay there); and the British and American press have recently taken note, too.

And, so, west we went, taking advantage of the relatively low cost of a boat charter (compared to a week at hotels in the area) as well as the catamaran's unique ability to access remote areas of the peninsula's east coast. Making it halfway across the Saronic Gulf on that first day, we pull into the marina of Aegina just as the sun sets, turning the sky pink, orange, yellow. Yannis eases the boat into its berth - having to negotiate both steering it into a tight spot and convincing our maritime neighbors for the night to help tie us up securely.

These same neighbors encourage us to eschew the eateries lining the marina, a hopping stretch of tavernas, bars and frozen-yogurt shops. They prefer the quieter pleasures of the Aegina Nautical Club's alfresco restaurant, which sits at the end of the rocky jetty behind us, where all the yachtsmen hang out. The town gets hot at night, they explain, while the club stays cool. It's delicious, too, we find, feasting on mixed meze starters of garlicky tzatdiki (a dip of yogurt and cucumber), saganaki (grilled haloumi cheese), tender octopus with olive oil and oregano and Greek salad with crumbly feta. These give way to perfectly grilled fresh sardines and other just-caught fish, all served in no-frills style, on folding wooden tables whose tablecloths are clipped on to withstand the wind.

After Aegina, our days quickly fall into an easy, languid routine. Following a quick breakfast eaten onboard or off, we set out for the next island or coastal town, consulting with (and often just deferring to) Yannis to determine our route. We sail nearly all day, watching the craggy coastal cliffs recede and advance behind and in front of us. A few of us might spend a few hours reading in the hammock-like netting in the boat's bow, or playing cards at the built-in, open-air breakfast nook in the stern. John, who appoints himself our de facto first mate, helps Yannis with the sailing, while I whip up lunch and Danny DJs.

In between our major ports of call, we drop anchor in quiet coves and abandoned inlets, where the sapphire seas turn turquoise in the shallows, set sparkling by the bright summer sun. In some places, the water appears so rich in hue, it feels like we're swimming in pools of cyan dye. Here, we'd snorkel or cliff dive, lounge in the florescent-colored inner tubes we'd picked up in Aegina, or work on our diving skills from the boat's roof. We even spend one night anchored offshore, in one of Yannis' favorite protected natural harbors, on the north side of Hydra.

For the most part, though, we pull into an official marina as the sun sets, what clouds there are little more than wisps lit mauve and violet by the dusky light. Having already cracked open our second bottle of inexpensive, local rosé, we head into town to explore winding, alleylike streets, almost all of them devoid of cars. (In Hydra, sturdy donkeys handle trash collection and cart bags from dock to hotels and private villas.)

We'd have dinner at an alfresco seafood spot - Castello (castellohydra.gr) or Omilos (omilos-hydra.com), in Hydra, say, or Tarsanas (tarsanas-spetses.gr), in Spetses - places where you can often pick out the whole fish you'd like grilled for the table. None of these restaurants prove fussy - far from it, in fact, though you wouldn't quite want to show up in a bathing suit. "Pants fancy," we took to calling these joints. Most people seemed to sit down to eat around 10, but we'd get in a bit before, in anticipation of the morning's early push off.

By the end of the week, we've gotten our sea legs - so much so that our inner ears start to play tricks on us, and it begins to feel like we're rocking up and down when we're off the ship, not on it, no matter how firm the actual terra firma we're standing on is - and my skin, dusted with a light, ever-present layer of sea salt, has turned a nutty shade of brown I hadn't seen it since I spent summers at camp.

On our last day, we sail back to Athens, the wind moving us ahead seemingly faster than we've gone all week. After almost seven full days at sea, coming back feels incredibly anticlimactic.

But then the Acropolis comes into view, its white marble colonnade lit golden in the glow of a sinking sun. It seems like the dramatically unique sunsets we'd watched every night of the week from the ship's prow might just have followed us back to the city, and, with that sight, we have high hopes that maybe the extreme relaxation we've been feeling all week will stay with us too.