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Flat Island - Ships' Graveyard Flat Island (‘ Yassi Ada ’ in Turkish) lies 16NM south-east of Leros, in the channel between the Greek Islands and the Turkish Bodrum Peninsula. Missy Bear regularly sails up the same channel heading home from Kos and all places further south. The tiny, low island is a ships’ graveyard. For example, in the summer of 626 AD, an Eastern Roman (Byzantine) cargo ship hit the reef there and sank in 30m of water. It was small merchant sailboat. It had

Migrating birds It’s January in France and the mornings are very dark. It was only two degrees this morning, and densely foggy. The ground is saturated, and mountain biking can be slow and muddy work in the valley bottoms. Now is opportunity to light the log fire, curl up and read, and to ponder life some more. As I write in the warmth, I am watching a feeding-frenzy as a host of great tits and blue tits rapidly empty the feeder of sunflower seeds outside on the balcony. The

Galley Slave As part of Missy Bear’s website upgrade, I’ve had to skim through and check the formatting of all the blogs. In doing this, I couldn’t help notice how certain words or subjects or themes recur frequently: “ Venice ”; “ pirates ”, “ Ottoman ”; “ knight ”; “ independence”; or “Arab ”, for example. One word that pops up everywhere is “ slave ”, and as we haven’t covered that topic yet, I decided to collate what we have learned on Missy Bear's voyages to date. By u

Oct Day, October 28, Lakki We have neighbours of several nationalities on Pontoon C: Italian; Swiss, French, and German amongst others. I said “ Buongiorno ” to one lady I had not met before, and she chastised me for using too hard an accent. “ I am not a German ”, she said. “ You must say it softly, ‘moo an sherno’. Not ‘bonn dgerno!’” I repeated what I had heard.  “Bravo”, she nodded approvingly .     I relayed this encounter to our regular Italian neighbour, Sergio. He’s f

Soggy Marmaris Rain in Pedi, Symi - good for cleaning the sprayhood Perspex I suppose I don’t recall such a wet sailing season as 2025. Rain is a rare commodity on our trips, and yet the sheer deluge forecast in Marmaris in May forced us to seek shelter in a marina. We got soaked-through in our ‘wet weather’ jackets and trousers. They are lightweight and not designed for a biblical drenching. They, and we, took two days to dry out. We even put the heating on in the evening, a