a family sailing blog
Whilst in the Alta Rocca Mountains we decided to go canyoning. For those that don't know, and there can't be many, canyoning is a fancy word for throwing yourself, and your kids, down a pristine, freezing cold mountain river. Location southern Corsica. On the morning of our canyoning expedition we were running late and as... Continue Reading →
After the mistral the weather was fine and settled so we headed back to Porto Veccio to meet up with S/V Intention and head into the mountains. Given our previous experience, rather than head into the marina we decided to leave the yachts at anchor and after a pre dawn start, took the dinghy ashore... Continue Reading →
There was another mistral coming. At present they seem to be an almost weekly occurrence, but vary from fairly mild to really quite nasty. With winds gusts of 50 knots forecast we had decided to leg it from north Sardinia to shelter in Porto Veccio on south east Corsica. It actually worked well, as we... Continue Reading →
Other cruisers told us the east coast of Sardinia was a boring place to travel, with limited anchorage opportunities and lots of expensive marina time the order of the day. That may be the case in the wrong conditions, but we had a ball and anchored all the way up this spectacular coast. Sure, we... Continue Reading →
After the wind subsided we ventured out into the tail end of the Mistral, and she was still a little more spirited than we had expected wth gusts of 30 knots, but we were sailing down wind and flying along. First stop was Nora, just 12NM across the bay. The beach was picture perfect, fine... Continue Reading →
After a couple of days recouping in Cape Carbonara we had to run to Cagliari, to escape a fairly intensive Mistral that was rapidly heading across the Balearic sea towards us. The Mistral is another of those Mediterranean winds that sends sailors scurrying to find shelter. It’s a very gusty wind, the average wind speed... Continue Reading →
Italian names don't get much more Italian than Cape Carbonara! The cape is a great place to arrive and has a couple of really good sandy anchorages which provide great protection from most winds. Sand is always good to see, not just because it looks great, but because when it comes to digging your anchor... Continue Reading →
The passage from the Aegadis to southern Sardinia is about 140NM and the forecast wind looked good but the swell/waves looked a bit gnarly. As we left Marettimo the wind was a good F6 on the beam and we were flying, but soon we were out out of the island effect the wind dropped away... Continue Reading →
In our first season we had been sailing for 7 weeks and not met another family. To be fair it was very early season and there weren't many boats about, but our kids, and especially Ben were crying out for other kids. One afternoon we pulled into an anchorage in Mahon, Menorca and next to... Continue Reading →
After leaving Malta at 4am with a 15 hour run to Licata, Sicily planned we ended up diverting into Marina di Ragusa after 9 hours. The conditions were not as forecast and we endured a miserable, large, confused swell which made Vega roll and lurch from side to side incessantly. Things were so bad that... Continue Reading →
a yacht more to life 