We’d been chased away from the rugged peninsula of Cabo Tinoso by swell which was bending around the headland and making life uncomfortable. We headed east to Mar Menor and experienced one of those days that are memorable for the wrong reasons.

Leaving Cartagena marina, post COVID lockdown, we travelled a few miles west to Cabo Tinoso where we relished the freedom of the wild anchorages. We explored ashore and relaxed on the calm, blue water, before moving west to Azohia when the winds turned east.

We were finally able to leave the marina two months later than planned and headed out a short distance to Cabo Tinoso. Emerald wasn’t going to let us relax however, and threw several unexpected problems our way.

A summary of our travels and expenses for the year 2019, where we left Marina di Ragusa for Tunisia, then headed north to spend three months on the French Cote d’Azure. From there we sailed south down Mediterranean Spain to our winter berth in Cartagena.

The final legs of our 2019 summer cruise certainly gave us some tales to tell. After being tourists in Barcelona we had a nerve shredding departure. September’s Gota Fria storm kept us boatbound in Sant Carles de la Rapita followed by a bumpy ride to our winter home in Cartagena.

We departed France for an overnight passage to Spain and a new area to explore. We experienced a little bad luck however, and the weather became more unsettled.

Completing our summer travels along the Cote d’Azur, from Antibes to our departure for Spain from the Marseilles area. Two months enjoying varied anchorages, easy access to shore and beautiful coastal trails

From Villefranche-Sur-Mer we headed west to anchor off Antibes. The anchorage provided a great location for us to explore ashore where we visited the Picasso museum, a grand garden and enjoyed coastal walks.

Emerald returns to France, the very first country we visited in her, back in 2004. We spent over two weeks in the area of Villefranche, taking land visits to Nice and Monaco and enjoying the many delights of the town and area.

A purposely slow sail to San Remo where we spent one night on the transit quay and had a whistlestop visit around the town

After a gentle motorsail from Elba to Corsica, we set out in a heatwave to walk part of the Customs Path around Cap Corse

We squeaked and rolled our way to Elba for our third visit to the island to enjoy some walks and a snorkel on the Elviscot wreck

Or the “if only we had a Cruising Chute” passage. As we waited in Porto Istana, we began to make plans for continuing on to the south of France based on the resources we had available. What goes into a passage plan? Our starting point is the weather. We’re not […]

We tend to find single night passages to be more tiring that multi-day ones. During a single night our bodies have no time to adjust to the rhythm of the 3 hour watch system and we generally end up not sleeping very well. So after three overnight passages in a […]

A tale of Three Passages tells the story of our travels from Monastir in Tunisia to the north east of Sardinia via three, overnight passages