Aack! One week to go before we cross the Atlantic but at least the “to-do” list is getting smaller. As of today, we have cooked 12 meals (2 per day for 6 days) – lasagna, spaghetti, chicken stew, chili, jambalaya, and chicken tortilla soup. What a lot of shopping and chopping that took! 5 trips and we still don’t have any fresh stuff... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7TBS-PRz9I It’s a…
Continue reading ...
When I last wrote, we had a long list of chores to “put the boat to bed” for our time back home: wash the boat, clean the inside, “pickle the watermaker” (add special chemicals to preserve the watermaker so the bacteria doesn’t grow on the membranes), set up desiccants/dehumidifiers to absorb humidity, fill up fuel tanks (again to keep bacteria from growing), clean out fridge/freezer, add…
Continue reading ...After a good night’s sleep, we set out to have a look at this area (La Linea) before moving over to Gibraltar. Why did we need to move at all you ask? Since we were waiting for a spinnaker, we wanted to be on the Gibraltar side to avoid the associated 20% European VAT (value added tax) charge, but the Gibraltar marina didn’t have room for…
Continue reading ...
We left LaGrande Motte for an overnight sail (240NM) to Fornells, on the North side of Menorca in the Balearic islands and were accompanied along the way by our friends Anja and Patrick from Anam Cara. I had just become a little more comfortable with some French words and now I had to switch to Spanish…. We had a wonderful, but short, visit with them, including…
Continue reading ...
La Grande Motte: Now that we were safely back in La Grande Motte, we needed to clear in and get started on the “to-do list”. Stephane was taking the month of August off – and he sorely needed the break- so Rafael was now our main contact. Once he and Anthony reviewed the list of ~45 items, Rafael began coordinating the repairs and upgrades while we…
Continue reading ...
At the end of the last post, I promised some details about the passage. What a roller coaster ride it was! This video is from early in the trip and shows us sailing south around the heel of Italy with great wind! Once through the Straits of Messina, we had very little wind and had to motor-sail for about 36 hours. The wind started to fill…
Continue reading ...
We left Marina Kastela in Split and headed south to meet Even and Eva from 3T. It’s been 14 years since we last sailed together in the Pacific and 8 years since we’ve seen them at all and now they were just 110 NM south of us in Kobas Bay where their boat is kept. We split the trip up into 2 legs, stopping for 1…
Continue reading ...
We’ve been quite busy since I last posted. We came into Split (Croatia’s 2nd largest city) and docked at Marina Kastela to wait for Anthony’s brother and family who arrived on July 5th. This gave us a good opportunity to wash down the boat, provision at a nearby hypermarket, wash clothes, etc. Being at a marina means we can use their dock water to wash off…
Continue reading ...
After a lovely 3 days in Mljet, we sailed to Lombarda (~12 NM) a small fishing village on the south end of Korčula. We were anchored by ourselves in the bay and watched the charter boats come in and out of the nearby marina. Korčula has a walled medieval “old town” similar to the one in Dubrovnik, but smaller. Legend suggests it was the birth place…
Continue reading ...
After a nap and then another 8 hours of sleep, we were ready to get off the boat and stretch our legs a bit. A trip to the Old City was the perfect opportunity. We found out how to take the bus (much cheaper than a taxi) on Sunday morning to have a look around. If you’ve ever watched Game of Thrones (We have never seen…
Continue reading ...