With some southerly winds forecast, it seemed the ideal opportunity to head on up the Italian mainland for a spot of touristing in Pisa. Baratti We didn’t fancy an overnighter to get to Pisa, so chose to do a couple of day hops. In hindsight, the overnight would have been […]

Our visit to the Italian island of Elba, or Napoleon was ‘ere part II. We were pleasantly surprised by Elba and spent more time than expected there. There was plenty to see and do on land with beautiful scenery, well marked walking trails, history, musical entertainment and an interesting cable […]

Having sat out some strong winds, we decided the Porto Vecchio anchorage was safe enough to leave Emerald to make a few day trips inland. For that we really needed a car. Public transport is available between the larger towns, but it isn’t very frequent nor does it go to […]

Off to Corsica We left the Maddalena islands on a sunny morning for the short trip across to Corsica. Our plan was to sail south east Corsica aiming for Porto Vecchio. The often feisty winds of the Bonafaccio Straits were having a rest day and the most we saw was […]

The Maddalena islands sit within a national park on Sardinia’s north east coast, just across the water from Corsica. A permit is required to visit and we hoped this fact might keep the number of boats down, now that we were ramping up towards the busy, high season months of […]

Golfo Aranci From Olbia our  first stop was just a few miles away in Golfo Aranci and what looked like would be a good anchorage for northerlies forecast for the next few days. Anchored in a spot off of the Lega Navale pontoon we had a short trip ashore and […]

Olbia Having limited finances, we spend most of our time at anchor during the summer, especially from June onward when marina prices in this part of the Med skyrocket to budget busting proportions. The downside of this is that we don’t always get to see as much inland as we’d […]

Cabo Carbonara to Olbia The east coast of Sardinia is a long stretch of sandy beaches backed by mountains, in places very spectacular. Unfortunately, there aren’t that many sheltered anchorages, particularly if there is any swell. This meant our first trip was a fairly lengthy 55nm to Arbatax and an […]

Cabo Carbonara Cabo Carbonara / Villasimius provides a choice of anchorages on the east or west side, depending upon the wind direction. We were there for well over a week but we were in no hurry and it was a lovely place to be stuck. After our passage from Sicily […]

Due to the birthday celebrations of the evening before and the possibility of feeling a little shabby, we’d planned on an easy day and a short trip to anchor off Capo San Vito for one night and to take Friday’s forecast north easterly winds across to Sardinia. But after a […]

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 […]