Yearly archives: 2018


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 […]

Emerald on the Costa Smeralda


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 […]

Olbia and a Road Trip


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 […]

Sardinia East Coast



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 […]

Cabo Carbonara


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 […]

Sailing to Sardinia – Our Best Passage in the Med?


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 […]

Along the North Coast of Sicily



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 […]

North Through The Messina Straits


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 […]

The First Trip of Summer 2018


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 […]

Winter 2017/18



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 […]

2017 Summary: Miles and Spending