With the COVID19 crisis dominating our thoughts and screen time, I thought I would write a post that had absolutely nothing to do with the virus. I couldn’t think what to write about until I remembered a conversation we had with some cruisers a while back where we were all discussing some of our ‘must haves’ on board. -cont reading…->
The news coming from home gets worse, more people are contracting this disease and the death toll is rising. Small business is suffering and hospital workers are being separated from their loved ones while they fight this virus on the frontline. The world seems, for the first time ever, to be really united in conquering this illness and the general population seem to be adhering to the new regulations. yes I read of people still going out and visiting people etc but from what I see via my mobile/iPad most people are doing the right thing and staying home. -cont reading…>
We are living in the most unusual time with the world in lockdown due to COVID-19, but life on a yacht seems no different. We are still in Kas and have been informed we won’t be arrested for being illegal but will just face a fine when we leave. I think they should scrap that rule as these are such unique circumstances but we are lucky to be in such a gorgeous spot that we don’t want to upset the apple cart. -continue reading…>
We splashed at 1am the day after we got back to Marmaris with a view to spending our last month in Turkey cruising up and down the coast and eventually catching up with Mike and Proud again in Kas. We arranged to have our new sails put on the the bay, but there was a delay so we spent a couple days hanging around and with our new sails in situ, we set off to explore the coastline. -continue reading…>
With another month on the hard stand we were within good time to not only finish on time but maybe early enough to spend a few days exploring inland. Ian had built a compression beam for our new bowsprit and the new gennaker and main were all completed. -continue reading ….>
We finally entered Turkish waters on 25th November 2019 and headed for the customs dock in Marmaris to check in. With 25kt winds onto the jetty we were loathe to tie up here so we called Marmaris Yacht Marina where we had pre-booked a three month stay, and asked if we could come in early and check in at the marina. They duly obliged and we were able to get our visas, check into Turkey and head back to the boat. By now the winds had got up to about 50kts and we asked if we could stay on the collector jetty for the night as we didn’t want to anchor in the bay. They were fine with that and we found out later that the weather in the bay had hit 70knots so we were very grateful to be snuggly tucked up inside the marina. continue reading …
The sea state was terrible in our journey down to Montenegro – only 30nm from Cavtat to Tivat but it took 7 hours and we arrived exhausted. Only a small amount of damage – just the main sheet block came off the traveller and luckily we found the pin on deck to fix it. Damage is always the worry in big seas and with the boom swinging around as the waves threw the boat around, it made us quite nervous so when we actually came into the bay of Kotor we relaxed a bit. -continue reading…>
We sailed back over to the east side of the Adriatic Sea to the small town of Umag to check into Croatia – a procedure we had done many times before so we knew what paperwork to have on hand and roughly how long it would take so armed with our folder containing everything necessary we docked next to the police station and started to check in. -continue reading…..->
It was warm, sunny and calm the morning we set off to spend a few days in the romantic city of Venice, not the promised strong 20kn southerlies to push us up the coast. A good weather window is vital for a 400nm plus journey (3 days) but as our cruising tax was running out we had no option but to go.
I had been to some places I had never heard of and knew nothing about. I had the even been to countries I knew nothing about, for example Djibouti and Albania but at least I had heard of them and knew they existed, but in all honesty I didn’t realise Montenegro was a country in its own right – so to sail there, check in and discover all about it was very intriguing. -continue reading….>
