After many leaving/farewell parties with the winterers of Cagliari, we headed off for a short shake down trip prior to crossing to Sicily with 2 other boats. A good overnight sail although a little bumpy, we had sight of the others most of the time and radio contact. This definitely gives reassurance on a long sail.
It was a good time to cruise Sicily with a few of the marinas free as it was too early in the season for some to be open. We went north to the Aeolian Islands to see Stromboli, the lighthouse of the Mediterranean, at night. Amazing. Mount Etna was always in sight and actually had a waypoint on the chart plotter.
We worked out tides for the Messinia Straits, the first time tides had come into effect for a while. All was correct apart from the wind suddenly turning on and giving us wind over tide. We reefed down and had a very wet sail to windward with the windsurfers weaving around us and unfortunately we didn’t see any swordfish or even boats hunting them!
The foot of Italy saw us cruising in company again whilst passage making along the coast. We weren’t racing though!! Much wine and Italian food was consumed before we parted with them and headed north to Croatia...
Croatia was beautiful with many anchorages and as long as you were sheltered from the open sea you were guaranteed a comfortable night. P was known to describe cruising here as “cream puff sailing”. Cruising chute out, flat seas and gentle breezes, perfect. It was hard to believe that the country had been at war just over a decade ago with only evidence of bullet marks in the more remote inland villages. It wasn’t a cheap place to stay, with marinas being the same price as UK but anchorages were free and plentiful. An area we are likely to visit again. Our visitors that year, we believe, think the same, a great place to cruise.
Time began to run out and we headed south for our winter berth. A planned meeting with others that we’d met along the way, found us going through the Ionian Islands relatively quickly but the taster helped to make our mind up that we’d return the following year.
Kalamata on the Peloponnese was a great wintering place, a city that had everything you could possibly need and if they didn’t they’d make it! It was not a hard decision to return there for the next 3 winters. This year though we had the boat lifted out and travelled home to return to work as our money was starting to run out and it gave P the opportunity to return to practice before her registration ran out. G stepped straight into work too and the cruising fund was easily made.
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