Logbook and Photos

Update 11 - Spring Update 2006 from Sardinia

(Reprint of our latest newsletter sent to family and friends)

 
Greetings from TIOGA, now on the NE shores of Sardinia and heading for the Magdelina Island group, to be followed shortly by the west coast of Corsica then the French Riviera and the canals of France. We hope this brief update finds you and your loved ones well.

Since our last update, we have left our wintering grounds at Marmaris Yacht Marina in SW Turkey as of early March after a very mild winter, so we were told. Marmaris was another wintering success story for us. In the beautiful pine-clad bay in the midst of the mountains surrounding the marina we didn't see too much in the way of wind or rain and, while cool, the sun did its very best to keep up everyone's spirits. At the marina, we met a lot of great people, a whole covey of kids from all corners of the world, and everyone really had a good time. After Christmas and New Years, we all settled down to schoolwork, boat maintenance and projects, and just living and before we knew it, it was time for us to get underway again. We were probably one of the first boats in the marina to leave, making the nearby Island of Rhodes, Greece our first stop to restock and have a good feeding on …pork, something we had largely done without since our October arrival in Turkey, a Muslim country (but the lamb was great!).

Traveling in the early season has been a bit of a challenge as the low pressure storm cells keep rolling across the Med from west to east mucking about with our perfect plans! One has to know the location of all the all-weather anchorages and ports along the route and get from one to the next before the next blow. Then you might spend days and days waiting for the weather to improve only to find no wind or headwinds! Such was the case with Rhodes where we spent 5 days sitting out a storm, which included 52kt winds in the harbour. Our boat was surging all over the place and car tires became shock absorbers on the end of our mooring lines. But all things pass and slowly and surely we wound our way through the Greek islands in south Aegean Sea up to Athens, where we spent 5 days checking out the sites from the convenience of a free marina (the recent Olympic sailing venue site). At this time of year, all of Greece is in glorious bloom and green abounds - tourists are a rare sight. After Athens, we once again transited the Corinth Canal and headed for a location to visit Delphi, the center of the universe for the Ancient Greeks. It was stunning to say the least in an unbelievable mountainous setting.

Not much further to the west from Delphi, we made a rendezvous with a couple of east bound boats we had met initially in Portugal after all crossing the Atlantic at roughly the same time. One has a sweet little girl a bit younger than Gerrit and the other had their parents visiting again, the same ones we met two winters ago in Seville (small world). Both boats are couples our same ages but with open-ended itineraries so moving slower than we. It was a nice reunion and, at the same time, a mellow reminder that we are heading west in the final cruising season of this incredible journey we began 4 years ago.

So having left Greece, destination Sicily, we made a two day passage across the Ionian Sea (even caught two bluefin tunas!) to the beautiful city of Syracuse for a few days of R&R.   Though our intentions were to go then south to Malta, followed by northwest to Tunisia, rough weather to our south and heading our way had us heading north instead, backtracking through the Straits of Messina that separate Italy's boot from Sicily and into the nearby Aeolian Islands, where we hung around Vulcano Island, an active volcano, for a few days and even climbed to the crater to watch her smoke (and stink) away. At her base, tourists would flock to thermal mud baths and smear their bodies with volcanic slime - we'll get some pictures of that up on the website! Anyhow, weather forecasts showed more sailable easterly winds for a few days, so that was the opportunity we were waiting for to make another 55 hour north-westward dash across to the NE corner of Sardinia, where we are now. We are glad that we cut out the countries that we did and made some longer passages (probably our last) as our star destination this year are the canals starting in the south of France, by late May. There (in a few weeks time) we will remove TIOGA's mast and head up the river and canal systems of France, Belgium and Holland terminating in Holland in late September. Somehow, we also want to get to London, England, but we are not sure at this point whether we will sail TIOGA there or find another mode of transport. Ideally, we'd like to visit London by boat and later England by car.

With the end of our trip now in sight, back in Marmaris (and still tethered to the Internet via wi-fi), we put together a web site for the sale of TIOGA (www.FastPassage39.com) and already have had some interest. Our current plan is to have her ready for viewing in early October in the Netherlands, then spend the balance of October visiting friends and Sheila's Dutch relatives and then head over to the UK where we'd like to get a car for a few weeks for a tour around, and to visit some of Chris' relatives before heading back to Canada in early December.

Well, that's all the news from this end. If you have a few minutes, please let us know what you have been up to over the past months. Hope this note finds you all well. As a reminder, our website is www.TiogaAdventures.com and, under the 'Find Us' link (APRS), you can always get our latest position report and a Google Earth Link overhead view.


Until our next update...
All our best,
Chris, Sheila, Joel & Gerrit Richards
S/V TIOGA

Olbia, Sardinia

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