Along the north coast of Sicily with stops at Sant’Agata di Militello, Cefalù, Termini Imerese and Mondello with a side visit to Sicliy’s capital, Palermo. We’ve seen far more than we expected to with settled winds giving us calm anchorages although it was colder and cloudier than we’d expected. It was a sociable […]

Messina Strait Sometimes days don’t go quite as expected…… All started well on out trip up the Messina Strait. Somebody accidentally set their alarm clock an hour earlier than planned, but that was no bad thing as it turned out as the extra hour meant we got a slow sail […]

Leaving Roccella We made it out of the marina! Despite having watched many boats leaving over the last few weeks, I hadn’t felt any great urge to get gone this year, until just in the last few days, my leaving lust finally kicked in. Just in time for a storm […]

Winter 2017-18 In the depths of January the winter seemed to be crawling by, but in the blink of an eye, here we are in the last flurries of preparation to depart for our summer adventures. As usual, there have been plenty of jobs to do on Emerald. There was the […]

Miles Travelled Here is a summary of 2017 in numbers! First off is the miles travelled during the summer cruise, scroll down to see how much we spent during the year. Miles travelled: 1383.3nm Of which we sailed: 327nm Percentage sailed to motor: 23.6% The miles where we were motor-sailing […]

We’re now in our winter home and settling in to winter chores and exploring the area. Our time in the Ionian took us from Messolonghi for an overnight stop on Ithaka then on to Vlicho. We decided to make a single passage across to our winter home in Italy rather […]

Our third canal with Emerald (we’ve also been through the Kiel and the Caledonian) took us from the Aegean into western Greece and the Gulf of Corinth where we paid visits to Galaxidi, the island of Trizonia, Patra marina and Messolonghi. We took advantage of east winds and added Delphi […]

The Saronic gulf forms the western edge of the Aegean, nestled inbetween the Athens coast and the north Peloponnese and nudging up to the Corinth Canal. Our travels took us from Porto Rafti to the Corinth Canal via Temple Bay, Poros and Epidavros where we got to soak up even more […]

Volos to Porto Rafti via the Chalkis Bridge and Athens Our travels took us from Volos and down the Evia Channel with stops at Likhadon, Ormo Amirou/Atalantis, Politika/Mnima and through the Chalkis Bridge. A few days in the marina at Chalkis gave us an opportunity to fix our broken throttle […]

Two weeks in Volos – a trip in the hills on a little train, a drive to Meteora, industrial history, tsipouro and views from Makrinitsa. We ended up staying 16 days on the breakwater wall in Volos, much longer than originally intended. Some days were taken up with rainy weather, […]

Emerald has inward opening ports, held open by a hook hanging down from the ceiling. There are 14 of them in all, which with most of them open in the summer provide plenty of entry points for small, evil buzzy, biting mosquitoes. I made the first version of the boat […]

We had a great few weeks sailing the North Sporades, visiting the islands of Skyros, Skopalos, Alonnisos, Peristera and Skiathos. We filled our time with swimming in the beautifully clear water, exploring ashore, catch ups with friends and some much needed relaxation with no need to be rushing on anywhere. […]

Turkey to Skyros via Agathonisi and Samos As the days passed by and the forecasts firmed out it looked like we really were going to get a couple of days of light, southerly winds to allow us to sail north through the Aegean. Operation Aegean North West Passage was on! […]

Little Boxes on the Hillside A song kept popping into my head as we headed north from Bodrum. ‘Little Boxes’. The coast is dotted with thousands of white cubes tumbling down the hillsides. They’re summer homes and holiday villas, but we wondered how many of them will actually have people […]

Pamukkale and Heirapolis June: Our second inland trip took us first to Pamukkale to visit the travertines and Roman ruins of Heirapolis. The drive from Marmaris to Pamukkale took about 3 hours, passing through some lovely countryside. Most of the roads were quiet and well made, although there were sections […]