SERENITY NOW

  Ibiza: Another location - like Corfu town - where the preconceived notion of the place didn't match the reality. If someone had asked me my expectations of Ibiza, I'd have described sweaty all night towns full of fluro clad, whistle blowing ravers dancing to hardcore dance music, loudly pumped from massive speakers on every corner. Shifty drug dealers, swollen lipped Instagram influencers in overpriced nightclubs, and marinas full of gaudy mega yachts - generally somewhere to briefly enjoy the spectacle from the sidelines then rapidly withdraw. What I didn’t expect was the UNESCO world heritage listed beauty of the North coast, bays with courteous neighbours who greet you with a smile, a wave and an ‘Hola’. We’ve spent the last three days in one such beautiful bay, lots of yacht neighbours, but the bay is big enough to accommodate us all with plenty of room to spare. Canoes and SUPs (stand up paddlebords) seem to be the most popular recreation, with a constant flow of people ...

  24 Aug 2021 We’ve spent the last few days tucked away in Santa Ponça. Other than a few carelessly driven jet skis, and despite it being a tourist town, it’s been a generally quiet place. There’s enough people on land to nearly fill the bars and restaurants, which must be great for the locals, who will have no doubt missed out over the last two years from Covid. There’s a fair variety of nationalities here, but most surprisingly for us was the number of lilting Irish accents heard as we strolled along behind the beach. I’m not sure if this is a feature of the Irish staying in the EU, a lack of lockdown rules or simply a well advertised Ryanair campaign. On our last day, Chez was messaging with a nice Australian lady, Soni, who we’d met back in Greece. Soni mentioned some friends of hers were in the same anchorage. In the afternoon, as I was swapping out our faded and weather worn British flag in my undies, a couple paddle up in their canoe to say 'Hi' - sure enough, it’s Soni’...

  20 Aug 2021 Menorca-Majorca Both tired from what turned into a little bit of a hairy three day crossing from Sardinia, we dropped anchor just off the resort town of ‘Son Bou’ to wait out the forecast Mistral wind whipping it’s way down from France. Son Bou is dominated by two massive whitewashed tower block hotels. It’s long sweeping beach is heavy with multi-coloured umbrellas and packed full of people. A speedboat towing a banana boat drags gleefully screaming holiday makers around the anchorage. Here, you could believe that Covid had never happened. After two days, we were both recovered, recharged our batteries and the Mistral had blown itself out. We made the short morning hop along to ‘Cala Galdana’ a beautiful cliff lined oasis. There’s quite a lot of boats in the compact anchorage - and a lot going on! Where we anchored was the spot used by the local hire company to show people how to drop and re-raise the anchor on their little runabouts. There’s also a constant flow of...

  Well we haven’t really given Sardinia a chance to show her true self. I’m sure there’s so much more to this beautiful rugged country than we’ve been able to see staying here on anchor for barely a week. That said, I will give my impressions from what little we have seen: People here don’t seem as friendly as the Greeks; on our travels, a smile or a wave has always been acknowledged and usually returned. When waved at, the Sardinians will either ignore you completely, or disdainfully stare at you in an ‘are you mad??’ way. The unofficial uniform appears to be fluorescent orange or lime green football shorts for men with nothing on top other than a deep tan. The ladies; small bikinis with the maximum amount of buttocks on show. (Like a scientist, I have been able to confirm this through repeated careful observation) The Sardinians we have seen spend their days either on loud booze cruises dancing on deck, or rafted up together on motorboats playing really bad Black Lace style Euro ...

  After the picturesque beauty of Siracusa, the Western Sicilian town of Trapani was something of a let down. The town may perhaps be lovely on another day, but after two long day/nights with little sleep, we probably weren’t as receptive to its charms as we could have been. It didn’t help that there’s a slight underlying smell of sewage in the air.. and that within an hour of anchoring, the local port police had (albeit politely) moved us along. We hadn’t planned to stay long regardless, Trapani is just the launch point to set off on our next hop over to Sardinia. We headed ashore to fill our Jerry cans with diesel - which turned out to be a significantly longer journey than expected. The outboard ran out of fuel (petrol) on the way.. luckily the diesel stop also has a petrol pump on his jetty... not so luckily the engine also needs 2 stroke oil mixed in to make it go - which they didn’t have. What was supposed to be a quick trip into town, became a long frustrating traipse huntin...

  Forgetting all the angst over the arrival check in process, our first port of call since leaving Greece; Siracusa, turned out to be rather lovely: The singsong shouts of the local market stall holders, the wide variety of gorgeous fresh foods, the sun baked marble streets, the well preserved architecture, and the overall charm of this little gem of a place, has put it high on the list of places I would recommend others visit ...and somewhere I’d gladly return to. Leaving there this morning at dawn, I discovered some fishing net and floats had become entangled around our chain. I managed to wave down two passing fishermen in an oversized row boat called the ‘Maria Louisa’, who kindly came over and untangled the mess for us. With smiles, waves and a poorly pronounced ‘Gratzie Mille’ from me, we left the protection of Siracusa bay. As the sun peeped up through the palm trees and over the castle ramparts at the bay entrance, we set off on our way. The destination for today is not qui...

  We awoke to what appeared at first glance to be a massive skyscraper that had popped up next to us overnight. On closer inspection this turned out to be a monster of a cruise liner - The ‘MSC Seasside’. To give an idea of the scale of it, it has 18 decks, room for 5179 passengers, that’s in addition to the 1413 crew! Chez and I are not particularly deep sleepers, normally waking for mosquitoes or an unusual rattle of the rigging, but surprisingly we slept through the arrival of this behemoth completely. Today is the day we’ve opted to head ashore and finalise the process of checking in to Italy - a process that has dragged for the last four days so far. Realising that we might be number 5180 in the queue at Customs if we didn’t hurry, we made an early start, briefly heading over to our Swedish friends to let them have two of our Covid self test kits. They too had not heard the cruise liner arrivsal and were as surprised as us to see it looming above them. Chez - with her metapho...

We woke in the wide town skirted bay at Siracusa. We’re in a hot mess - hot, because it’s well into the 30s before 9am, and mess because we still haven’t been able to check in to Italy. One highlight to a glum morning was a passing tugboat captain waving at Chez and shouting ‘Ciao Bella!’ Which she greeted with blushes and a coy ‘I’ve still got it’ smirk. As I scrubbed the deck (it’s filthy with Saharan dust) the towns church bells pealed - they’re a lot more tuneful than their Greek neighbours, who’s repertoire is restricted to a simple ‘ding dong’ with few, if any, variations on that theme. Once the deck was done, I again tried the harbour master on the VHF radio. Still no joy, and more of the frustrating ‘standbys’ - I asked if we could just visit their office to sort things out to which I got a ‘yes’ - well that’s progress. Took the tender ashore, located the Harbour Masters office and was directed to ring the doorbell by someone in a bright white naval uniform hanging out o...