Category Archives: Cruising Guide

Information for other cruising boats. Our experiences finding places to anchor, dealing with officials, provisions, etc.

Back to Monaco

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We had to get up painfully early this morning in order to make it to the train station by 0645 for our train. Andrea was sweet and got up with, then walked us to the bus stop and told the bus driver where we were going and to make sure we got off at the right place.

The train ride to Ventrimiglia was uneventful, other than the fact that we were running late. The layover was only supposed to be 10 minutes. Because the people in the train station didn’t speak English, we’re not sure if our first train being late meant we missed the second train or if both trains were running late, but our layover turned out to be closer to an hour and a half. Of course, we waited diligently in the station the whole time.

We arrived back to Monaco around 1330. Eric called the Port Captain right away and apologized, letting him know we’d be there in a few minutes. We went to Kosmos, Eric dropped off his bag, and immediately was off to see the Port Captain. It turns out that Continue reading →

Hiking in the Italian Alps

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We were all up early for our big hike. Francesca woke up with the flu, so no hiking for her. Andrea stayed with her. So Antonio, Eric and Christi set off to the Italian Alps. From the little we have seen of Milan so far, it looks nothing like any other place we have been to in Italy. It is a modern city, with mostly newer buildings. The roads are wide, like almost as wide as in America. The cars are bigger than we have seen anywhere else in Europe. It is a pleasant place with tree lined streets. Milan was heavily bombed in WWII by both the Allies and the Axis, so there aren’t a lot of historical areas left and they were able to rebuild a more contemporary city.

It was yet another perfect day, with sunshine, clear skies, and comfortably warm weather for autumn. We headed north out of the city. Once out of town, the Continue reading →

Welcome to Porto De Turistico in the Suburbs of Rome

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By 0100, the wind had picked up to about 7 knots real, but the seas were still smooth and nice. At 0800, we pulled into the marina. We were greeted by two crew to help us tie up. Christi found the new ropes to be heavy and unwieldy, and the initial tie up was especially clumsy. This marina only has a single mooring line, and we found getting the mooring line situated properly to be quite tricky. The workers needed to come and help us. Tomorrow there is supposed to be high winds, so after the workers left, Eric re-did all the lines to make sure that Kosmos was perfectly situated for the wind. All in all, it took well over an hour between initially pulling into the spot and Eric finally deciding we were situated well enough.

Eric put out the passarelle. The passarelle has been nice to have in all the other places we have been, but it certainly wasn’t a necessity. We could have managed with jumping on and off, which would have been inconvenient, but doable. But not here. The concrete quay is Continue reading →

Flood Aftermath and Touring Lipari

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We all woke up feeling like total zombies. Despite excessive amounts of sleep last night, we were all tired. Probably more emotionally than physically, we suppose. We were also worried about getting sick from the combination of freezing up on the volcano and the long, stressful night. Christi thinks she has found at least a dozen new gray hairs.

Tai went shopping for souvenirs. Eric went to the coast guard station to file an official report. He met the coast guard commander, the English speaker, and had a good chat with him about the events. After he finished with the coast guard, he got to work on the boat. He opened up the generator through hull, checked the generator to make sure all looked OK, then fired her up. Then he started cleaning up in the engine room.

Christi stripped the linens off the mattress, moved the mattress off the base of the bed, then started cleaning out the storage space under the mattress. Everything was Continue reading →

Volcanoes, Boats in Danger, and Emergency Rescues – Part 1 of 3

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Preface: This blog story is of the scariest night of Christi and Eric’s lives. Tai leads a far more adventurous life than us, but it was still high on his list of scary events. This is one of those truth is stranger than fiction stories, but we swear every word of it is true. This is by far the longest story we have ever written on the blog. As we usually do for exceptionally long stories, we have broken it up into multiple parts. Normally, we like to keep each post 2 pages or less, and we have never had a post longer than 3 pages. Until now. This story is so long that we have broken it into three 4 1/2 page posts. If you didn’t read the last two posts, you probably should before reading this one since there is some useful background info in them. And we know, weather reports are not always accurate, and just because a bunch of other boats stay someplace does not make it safe. Also this is a good time to remind people the blog is not in real time. This event has happened in the past. See About this Blog.

So, yesterday we wake up to rocky seas. We were rolling like crazy, worse than being at sea. The water was a bit too shallow to deploy the paravanes. The rough seas were weird because it wasn’t windy and it looked like a pretty nice day. We were also bummed when we realized that the entire boat was covered in a fine black sand. We were afraid that it wouldn’t come off very easily, just as the sand from Tunisia hadn’t. Oh well, we’ll worry about it when we get to Rome.

We were desperate to get off the boat and get to dry land. As we were getting ready to go, Tai said “Hey, do you know what the name of the town here is? Scari! Oooo, scary! Ha! Ha! Ha!” As we were almost ready to walk out the door, a speed boat pulls up alongside us and Continue reading →