View All Blog Posts


On this page, you can find a list of all the blogs we've written. Scroll through the pages to see the older ones. To view them in their various categories, use the main menu bar above where you can find them grouped by the places we've visited and by year. On the Blog Posts menu you can select blogs by the following groups:

  • Life Aboard – our experiences of living on a boat,
  • Boat & Technical Projects – the upgrades and repairs we've made to Emerald,
  • Land Travel – experiences away from the boat,
  • Green Emerald Series – Colin's posts about making Emerald into an off-grid sailing boat,
  • Passage Reports – our experiences during the longer sailing passages.

Latest Blog Post

Sail Canary Islands to the Azores: Full Passage Report

An account of our sail from Canary Islands to the Azores. The seven-day, 740-nautical-mile journey included squalls, seasickness, and challenging waves. We successfully navigated the passage and reached our destination, supported by new technology like Starlink.

All Posts

Take a browse through the many posts we've written over the last few years as we travel and live on the watery world.

Rambling Round Ragusa

Our sailing-away life has been a bit marina centred of late and I was starting to get itchy feet for at least a few hours away from the boat. Hiring a car here for a last minute day out is just too expensive or too much hassle, so being limited […]

Tarting up Emerald

The Headlining We were lucky last summer to not have too many breakages or things wearing out which meant when it came to winter jobs we could get on with the cosmetic jobs that are usually bumped down the never-ending job list. Back in the eons of time we decided […]

What have we been up to this winter?

Ah I’ve let the blog slip a little, the last one being back in December. We’ve had some great winter weather since then, only just breaking down in the last few weeks into more unsettled conditions. Christmas & New Year In the run up to Christmas a weekly Sunday advent […]

Bikini Clad Romans and Rumbling Volcanos

As part of our efforts to see more of Sicily this winter we headed off along with the Wandering Dragons (Stephen and Anne) for a three day road trip. We were extremely lucky with the weather – blue skies, light winds and warm temperatures contrasted sharply with the Medicane (a […]

Back in Marina di Ragusa

We’ve been back in MdR a month or so now and have been getting on with putting Emerald to bed, cleaning and removing sails, washing the dinghy and kayaks for storage and servicing and winterising the generator, outboard and main engine. I Can See a Rainbow / Working on the […]

Highs and Lows of our Sail From Greece to Sicily

The Weather Window Quandary The Ionian Sea between Sicily and Greece is a notoriously difficult stretch of water to get a perfect weather window for crossing in one go. This is especially so as autumn arrives bringing regular storms. In the last two weeks we have sat out three storms […]

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Position Report- High Seas

Post via ssb from crossing from Greece to Sicily Position: 37 37.30 N 17 49.01 E Speed: 5.8 knots Course: 247 deg All well on board. Lazy Tern all well on board 4Nm in front of Emerald Wild ride yesterday, Force 6/7 on the beam. About 140Nm to run to […]

If All You Want is a Kefalonia Meat Pie

The last two weeks have had some unsettled weather and it’s got to that time when we want to be thinking about crossing back to Sicily. The last two days we’ve had more rain than the rest of the summer, it’s currently lashing down with rain with thunder rumbling around the […]

Fiskardo

We couldn’t believe our luck when we arrived about midday in Fiskardo on Kephalonia, to find the whole of the north side of the harbour empty. We picked a spot along the wall in the front of the Nicolas Taverna where there were rings to tie on to. In hindsight […]

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Position Report

Test Post via ssb in preparation for crossing from Greece to Sicily Position: 38 18.074 deg N 20 35.964 deg E Speed: 0.0knots Course: 350deg All well on board. Skip a.k.a M0EMR maritime mobile

Wind, Weddings, Walks and Deck Dancing in Vathi

We returned to Vathi as it’s been one of our favourite places so far and we hoped to see a bit more of Ithaka while we were there. One of the reasons we like it is that there are so many options and plenty of space for mooring; our favourite […]

Our Favourite Little Boozer

After an uncomfortably windy night in Vonitsa we decided to head back south to the islands in the hope that the summer hordes would be thinning out with the start of September looming. We had 2 knots of current with us that wizzed us out past Preveza and for quite a […]

Amvrakia Gulf

After a few days at Vonitsa, we headed to Preveza to wave farewell to our cruising companions of the last month or so as they headed back early to their winter quarters. On our way we saw some dolphins leaping and splashing in the distance. When we arrived at the […]

Lefkas Channel to Vonitsa

There we were, minding our own business pootling sedately up the Lefkas Channel when up behind us comes a 40m power boat which starts to overtake us. They overtake quite sedately, perhaps they didn’t want to make too much wash for us. Which would be all well and good if there […]

Whistlestop Kefalonia

It’s got busy in the Ionian It wasn’t a very auspicious start to our time on Kefalonia. As we arrived in Agia Euffimia so did a thunderstorm. The anchorage alternated between boats bobbing randomly to boats pulling tight on their chains as the gusts from the passing rain arrived. We’d […]