Our crossing of The Gulf of Bothnia from Finland to Sweden took into account the forecast of light, predominantly westerly, winds so we chose an anchorage bearing SW, once clear of the islands south of Marihamn. Although we did experience some current in places, the sea was flat and Melodrama happily slipped along on a close reach until the wind completely died shortly before entering the many rocks and islets.. Read More
If you have been following our track, you may be wondering how we managed to hop from Sicily to Finland so quickly. Having secured Mazu in Ragusa, and after three bus trips, two plane rides and a short train journey we arrived at HMVK Marina, close to the center of Helsinki, where we joined William and Karen onboard their beautiful, shiny Dehler 38, Melodrama. We felt especially honored to find.. Read More
Siracusa was definitely worth exploring more, with its history almost covering three millennia. Most recently during the allied sea and air invasion in July 1943, its harbor was a major strategic target for Montgomery. Patton went after Licata. Siracusa was founded by the Greeks around 733 BC and was the birthplace and home of Archimedes. Apparently Da Vinci plagiarized some of Archimedes ideas. There is a nice museum with working.. Read More
The Strait of Messina separates Sicily from the toe of Italy. It is narrower at the northern end (barely 1.5 nm) and wider at the southern end (about 7 nm). It also separates the Tyrrhenian Sea from the Ionian Sea and has a reputation, dating back millennia for fearsome whirlpools and winds whistling down the mountains that border it (e.g. Scilla and Charybdis in The Odyssey). Interestingly, the eddies in.. Read More
It seems the Mediterranean summer weather pattern of northeasterly winds is settling in, as we experienced during our passage from Sardinia to the Aeolian Islands off the north coast of Sicily. Unfortunately the wind was a bit on the light side, especially as we were sailing downwind on a SE-erly course so, while we enjoyed some leisurely downwind sailing, yet again, the engine assisted us more than we would have.. Read More
After being in a marina in Castelsardo our next stop, after about 5 hours of mainly motor-sailing was Porto Pozzo, where we picked up a mooring ball (€25/night). PP is on a long rocky inlet, with the small town at the southern end. We had a very pleasant meal in an up-market restaurant overlooking the bay the first night of our two-day stay there. Our next port of call was.. Read More
The 35-hour passage from Menorca to northern Sardinia was benign, perhaps a little too benign in fact because we ended up using the engine somewhat more than we wanted …. for almost 21 of those hours. Better that way than too much, I suppose. It was a moonless night so the stars were shining brightly but the phosphorescence was lovely, maybe fewer but larger bursts of light than we have.. Read More
Sadly our time in Menorca is drawing to a close, having been here for a week now. Our first couple of days at anchor in the beautiful Cala Galdena (pictured at top) were quite relaxing. Our anchor held well even with some fairly strong gusts on occasions, still our GPS position remained on our original dot, taking wind direction into account. A cautionary note, beware of forecasts in this region.. Read More
As we hadn’t managed to circumnavigate the island, we decided to rent a car on our last day in Mallorca and do it by land instead. In fact, it gave us another dimension of the place and in many ways was perhaps better than doing it by boat …. but we both agreed that we prefer traveling by sea, especially after the nth roundabout. We headed northwest through Artà that.. Read More
From Cabrera we had a pleasant enough sail with a bit of motoring to Puerto Petro. The highlight of the passage was being accompanied by several, what we think were, bottlenose dolphins for a while. One in particular seemed to hang around longer than the others, swimming off and then returning, rolling over to show his lighter colored underbelly as he approached our bow. The water was so beautifully clear.. Read More