Thursday morning was mass exodus day from Marina di Ragusa – the first calm weather day since Saturday. We were in the first batch of departees at 6am when the marineros came on duty and could help us and others without a bow thruster to turn in the narrow gaps […]

Whew! Doesn’t time fly when you’re working hard? April has zoomed by with lots of activity in the marina as boats prepare to leave for their summer cruising. We had a long list of get-gone jobs – transforming Emerald from her static winter state so that we can head off for our […]

Last summer we had to say farewell to Crazy Pony the dinghy whose glue had given up the ghost in the sun and heat. It was replaced by Crazy Horse, a slightly bigger model and this time made of hypalon fabric. Hypalon stands up much better to the sun than […]

Our sailing-away life has been a bit marina centred of late and I was starting to get itchy feet for at least a few hours away from the boat. Hiring a car here for a last minute day out is just too expensive or too much hassle, so being limited […]

The Headlining We were lucky last summer to not have too many breakages or things wearing out which meant when it came to winter jobs we could get on with the cosmetic jobs that are usually bumped down the never-ending job list. Back in the eons of time we decided […]

Ah I’ve let the blog slip a little, the last one being back in December. We’ve had some great winter weather since then, only just breaking down in the last few weeks into more unsettled conditions. Christmas & New Year In the run up to Christmas a weekly Sunday advent […]

As part of our efforts to see more of Sicily this winter we headed off along with the Wandering Dragons (Stephen and Anne) for a three day road trip. We were extremely lucky with the weather – blue skies, light winds and warm temperatures contrasted sharply with the Medicane (a […]

We’ve been back in MdR a month or so now and have been getting on with putting Emerald to bed, cleaning and removing sails, washing the dinghy and kayaks for storage and servicing and winterising the generator, outboard and main engine. I Can See a Rainbow / Working on the […]

The Weather Window Quandary The Ionian Sea between Sicily and Greece is a notoriously difficult stretch of water to get a perfect weather window for crossing in one go. This is especially so as autumn arrives bringing regular storms. In the last two weeks we have sat out three storms […]

Post via ssb from crossing from Greece to Sicily Position: 37 37.30 N 17 49.01 E Speed: 5.8 knots Course: 247 deg All well on board. Lazy Tern all well on board 4Nm in front of Emerald Wild ride yesterday, Force 6/7 on the beam. About 140Nm to run to […]

The last two weeks have had some unsettled weather and it’s got to that time when we want to be thinking about crossing back to Sicily. The last two days we’ve had more rain than the rest of the summer, it’s currently lashing down with rain with thunder rumbling around the […]

We couldn’t believe our luck when we arrived about midday in Fiskardo on Kephalonia, to find the whole of the north side of the harbour empty. We picked a spot along the wall in the front of the Nicolas Taverna where there were rings to tie on to. In hindsight […]

Test Post via ssb in preparation for crossing from Greece to Sicily Position: 38 18.074 deg N 20 35.964 deg E Speed: 0.0knots Course: 350deg All well on board. Skip a.k.a M0EMR maritime mobile

We returned to Vathi as it’s been one of our favourite places so far and we hoped to see a bit more of Ithaka while we were there. One of the reasons we like it is that there are so many options and plenty of space for mooring; our favourite […]

After an uncomfortably windy night in Vonitsa we decided to head back south to the islands in the hope that the summer hordes would be thinning out with the start of September looming. We had 2 knots of current with us that wizzed us out past Preveza and for quite a […]