Nichola

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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 […]

To our Winter Home Across the Ionian Sea

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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 Corinth Canal and Gulf

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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 […]

The Saronic Gulf

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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 […]

The Evia Channel and Athens

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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, […]

Lots of Fun in Volos

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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 […]

Instructions for DIY Boat Mosquito Screens

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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. […]

Sailing The North Sporades

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