Season 1

When Richard first said, “ Let’s buy a boat and go sailing ”, I immediately thought of sunbathing on deck, meeting other like-minded people for cocktails, and pottering around little markets buying up local cheeses and specialty breads. As regular readers will know, boat life hasn’t been like that up until now. We arrived in Sardinia on Saturday, after a tranquil crossing and an engine battery problem (the problem was it wasn’t Eveready). Alghero is a delightful place. It is

Courtesy of WelcomeAghero.com. Missy Bear is in the marina not far from the church spire. Alghero is a coastal town of north-western Sardinia. Part of its population descends from Catalan conquerors from the end of the Middle Ages, when Sardinia was seized from Pisa, and became part of the Crown of Aragon. The Catalan language is co-official with Italian, which is a unique situation in Italy. It is known as the Alguerès dialect. Alghero is sometimes known as ‘ Little Barcelon

Our original dinghy is still, we believe, somewhere in a Charles de Gaulles bonded warehouse. Sniffer dogs are trying to decide if it smells of cocaine or rubber. A douanier is wondering if there are any ham sandwiches hidden on it. And so, we now awaited the coming of our second dinghy. Rumours abounded that SAS in Canet (who fitted out the boat) had not only received the dinghy, but checked it and sent it down to Port Ginesta. But no-one could tell us the courier, or a trac

Well, it was just the two of us. Covid-19 has prevented friends getting to us in France to crew, and Italian five-day quarantine has also ruled-out use of newly-arrived Brits crewing on the leg to Alghero. What about local Spanish sailors? Well, the Balearic mad-season meant that all Spanish professional crew were already booked up for the islands. We had been monitoring the three-day forecast on the best weather site ever: Windy (I highly recommend it for passage planning).

Barcelona at night from Missy Bear. Missy Bear passing Barcelona at night, from MarineTraffic. We motor-sailed passed Barcelona in the small hours of Saturday night and Sunday morning; a shimmering band of light between the rolling sea and the hazy clouded sky, filtering the moonlight and hiding all the planets, save Venus. We had had a rollicking sail in 18-25 knots of wind, with a sea on the quarter and maxing at 2m-high waves. The broad beam and twin rudders of Missy Bear

Flag of Catalonia: The Estelada (right) is almost identical to the Senyera (left) , but it is unofficial and has the addition of a blue triangle with a white star. The concept of the star is based on the flags that were seen in Cuba during its fight for independence from Spain. The star means this flag is therefore used as a political statement of independence from Spain. Although the Phoenicians probably traded in the area, Barcelona was a Roman town. It was sacked – as usua

One for the ladies... Life isn’t always rosy in the Missy Bear household. [Ed, Ever? ] As you know, we celebrated our check out of France at Port-Vendres, and were confident we would be able to check into Spain via Port Ginesta. The very helpful staff at the capitania (harbour master's office) here in the marina had taken photos of our passports on our arrival and sent them off to the local police as is the requirement in Spain. They told us to present ourselves on Monday mo

At the Duoannes at Port Vendres. You may remember M. Albrich? He was the charming man at the border police in Port-Vendres, who said they would check us out of France and stamp our passports. We need this in order to sign off our French visa days, and then start our Schengen days when we check into Spain. We had emailed him to say it would now be Friday morning before we were in Port-Vendres, and he had emailed us back to say he would see us then. So, on Wednesday afternoon,

Port Vendres Port-Vendre, looking east (c) Mike G. Port-Vendres is an ancient deep-water port of the Mediterranean Sea, close to the border between modern France and Spain at the eastern edge of the Pyrenees. The Phoenicians and Greeks would have influenced and traded with this area, probably bringing vines and olives. Ancient writers called it Aphrodisium (after its sanctuary to Aphrodite), so that perhaps bodes well for the start of our romantic cruise? The Romans developed

Script. Naming Ceremony 22.07.2021 Sari and Thorne arrived at the quay at about 10:30. (We had driven the yacht back from the marina to try and gather more equipment.) We were soon preparing for our naming ceremony. They had brought some flowers from the local road verges, an olive branch and Champagne. Alix had done a lot of research into the naming ceremony and here are her explanatory notes: 1. The naming of a boat in the UK traditionally uses the phrase “God bless this bo

Picture of a Rascasse, on the wall of a local restaurant in Port Leucat. I have been thinking about fish a lot. Alix and I do like to eat fish, and not just on Fridays. I suppose that when you are about to sail across the sea that has been most-heavily exploited for the longest period of time, it’s not an irrelevant subject to dwell on. At Port-La-Nouvelle yesterday, one of the half-dozen or so day trawlers had landed its catch, some of which was being sold from wooden shack

“ Today was gonna be the day, we were gonna throw the ropes to you .” OK, poetic licence, it was supposed to be Yesterday. Yesterday was supposed to be our test sail, with technical handover the day before. That was Plan A, but we have had so many plan variants, that we are now past Plan Z and onto Plan AA (for any Excel geeks). The latest is that we can get on board on ( Ruby) Tuesday and then Sail Away * on Wednesday, down to Barcelona . The wind should have dropped a lit

Missy Bear on the quay at Canet-en-Roussillon. Thorne has just noted that Missy Bear is now transmitting her position! So SAS must have set up the VHF/AIS transceiver and switched it on as they are on-board. You can now track our position, if you so wish, by going to https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home and searching for 'Missy Bear'. For the technology nerds, AIS (Automatic Identification System) is an automatic tracking system often used by the authorities to monitor

Tracks of the Tramontane and its neighbour the Mistral. Apart from the recent fad of naming Atlantic storms, I’m unaware that we Brits name specific winds that blow across our islands. In the Mediterranean, however, specific winds have been named since ancient times. We are now experiencing one of those first hand; the Tramontane. And it is going to blow hard for about five days, so even if Missy Bear was ready, we might be staying in the ‘Bar du Port’. If you are not a weath

Well, you let Alix write her first blog post about our plans, and the plans immediately get ripped up: “ Oh my goodness, it’s this week ”, is now “ OMG, it might be next week ”. Chris called us. We were in the car as is usual when he calls. We were enroute back down to the Med. Sari was driving and Alix and I were in the back along with the luggage. We held our breath as he relayed the three issues: First, we have no bed: Because our sprung mattress for the owners’ berth in t

Our garden in Aubeterre-Sur-Dronne. Alix here: I had a disturbed night. We are in a quiet lane at the top of the village, but the house next door was converted to a gite a few years back, and occasionally we get a party gang. The music was still going by the pool at 23.40, so I asked them to turn it down, which to be fair, they did a few minutes later. But after that, it was difficult to sleep properly. I woke up at 03:00. Suddenly, I thought – we get the boat this week. Aft

Missy Bear from across the port, with SAS's hanger in the background, courtesy of Miki. We are very pleased to report today that, after half a day of chasing our tails and conversing in ' Franglais ' with various people and French officials, we have confirmed how to get our passports stamped on exiting France. [ To stamp in French is tamponner. ] We eventually found the name of the chap in the Douane (customs and immigration) at Port-Vendres who could help us. His name is M.

France is a huge and varied country; well over twice the size of the UK, and four times the size of England, with only 1.2 times the population. Driving should be a pleasure, as there are far more roads and far fewer cars. The French police, however, seem to be even more keen to catch you speeding than the British. The national speed limit on normal roads was (until a couple of years ago) 90kmh, but Departments were then allowed to change limits to 80kmh at will. This is one

At management school, they used to use the phrase ‘ eating an elephant ’ as a metaphor for tackling large tasks, i.e., one cannot eat an elephant in one mouthful. Today, it feels like we have munched our way through another small loxodontine steak, having arrived safely at the SAS shed in Canet with all our worldly boat-related goods. We managed to shove even more in the car yesterday night, and set off at about 06:45 this morning for our long drive southwards. We headed cro

Quarantine in Malta, credit: Wellcome Collection. During the bubonic plague, infamously known as the ‘ Black Death ’, in the mid-fourteenth century, the disease wiped out an estimated one-third of Europe’s population, during a bad period between 1347-50. This sweep of the plague resulted in one of the mass fatalities in human history; and it was an impetus to take action. Officials in the Venetian-controlled port city of Ragusa (now Dubrovnik, Croatia) passed a law establishi