So it's been an incredibly busy week and that is my main excuse for both the delay in getting a new blog post up and the length of said post. Our last update was from Portoferraio in Elba which we departed on 19 October, heading towards the Italian mainland. We learned an important lesson in the subsequent days: the wind hates us. Wherever we're headed, the wind is guaranteed to be coming from that direction. If we decide to change our destination to put us on ...

After 10 days of fattening ourselves up with bread and pastries in Corsica, we're back in Italy which does neither of these things well. I'm pretty sure I've hinted at the high quality of their ice cream once or twice though?? We celebrated our arrival in Portoferraio on Elba with a triple cone (each) so I suppose it's swings and roundabouts. Good thing Gerard's already locked in - and I suspect he knows better than to comment on the growing waistline of the pe...

So I think I made reference in one of the earlier posts about big waves. What a fool I was! The wind did indeed pick up the last few days as per the forecast but in true Mediterranean style, there's either not enough or too much so we ended up spending Thursday night cowering in a marina in a place called Cargèse - actually a really nice little village so ultimately we were glad we stopped there. It was the sensible choice because there was only one viable sto...

Much of what I've been writing about so far has been about where we are, what interesting (this is perhaps subjective) things we've been up to, and where we're headed. What's also maybe worth a mention though is that just 2 weeks into the sailing portion of our trip, we've already settled into a bit of a routine and can give some insight on a typical day. Depending how far we have to go and what the wind is like, we get up somewhere between 7 and 9am - most ...

We are now sitting in a beautiful little anchorage nuzzled between 3 islands in the La Maddelena Archipelago (the islands off the northeast coast of Sardinia). We got our first glimpse of Corsica this morning as we sailed north from last night's anchorage - that's our next stop so encouraging that we already have it in sight. Our navigation skills are well-developed after our Dayskipper and Yachtmaster theory courses but nothing beats a bit of point-and-steer! ...