I’m getting tuna’d out, but Shadow thinks life is grand. We had grilled tuna for dinner, then Robert grilled more this morning so I could make fresh tuna salad for lunch. Then I made a tuna casserole for dinner. You get the idea … Hey, it’s fresh tuna, something you folks back home pay mucho dinero for. And here it practically jumped onto our boat, twice! We froze some so we’ll have a couple meals later in case our luck runs out. Robert’s not fishing for a couple days

Right now we’re in schedule to get to the Canaries by Halloween. This, as always, depends on Mother Nature and what the wind & seas bring us. I read a book today on the Cape Verdes, and a couple days there before our ‘mates’ arrive should be adequate, so plan is to reach Praia on 25 November. Mike arrives the 26th, Rod the 27th, & we’ll head out the 28th unless weather prohibits it.

Next few days call for light air, so looks like we’ll be motor sailing to reach Mallorca & Formentara. At $9/gallon, that doesn’t excite us — to say nothing of the diesel fumes!

Mahon is the capitol of Menorca. They have a naval base here; one of their ships (looks like an old American one)headed out past us this morning playing some music. It’s a beautiful town with a gorgeous natural harbor. We’re heading to town today; they have a daily market. Next we’ll head to the south side of the island & visit Cala Cove & Cala en Porter, where we’ve been told by friends to visit the Cave Bar.

Jamey mentioned he goes to Google Earth to look at the places we’re visiting. Others might enjoy doing the same.

Our sister ship, Zialater, hopes to be in the Canary Islands for Halloween. That’s a very ambitious schedule & we may be behind them somewhat. They are currently headed towards Barcelona. At some point we’ll meet up with them, as we’re planning to do the trans-Atlantic crossing together the end of November. I had calculated our trip to reach the Cape Verdes earlier today, & came up with 51 days down there. That doesn’t work since we have people flying in there in 45 days! As such, we are going to spend less time getting to the Canaries. Once there, we’ll know how much time we have to explore before heading the 900 miles south to the Cape Verdes.

We will probably stay here two nights & do boat maintenance. Robert’s having to work on the starboard engine again, plus needs to get the watermaker working & didn’t want to work on it in the river in Ostia.

I ended up doing about nine loads of laundry between Thursday afternoon & Friday. We got the halyards back up & the jibs on deck and on the ProFurls. Filled the water tank.  By last night we were ready to go.  Bad news is that a front came/is coming through and we’ve got strong winds out of the west. So now we’re waiting for those to die.  Worse news is that once they die there won’t be much wind! So we either have to go get the hell beat out of us or motor all of the way to Sardinia (about 127 miles as the crow flies). I’d rather motor than get us & the boat beat up, so we’ll probably wait ’til tomorrow & leave mid-day.

We had some friends from Australia head out on Thursday; they thought they’d have calm seas & motor the entire way. I heard from them today & the wind kicked up and they had rough seas & strong winds the entire way. It took them almost 28 hours to get there, & it was dark. Fortunately they’d been to the area where they were heading so knew it.  We need to arrive in daylight since we’ve never been there before.

We’re both anxious to get sailing again. We plan to visit the islands in the Bonifacio Strait between Corsica & Sardinia, then along the west coast of Corsica before we sail over to Menorca in the Balearics.

Our friend, Mike, who is making the crossing from the Cape Verde Islands with us, located another person for the crossing that has sailing experience & has owned his own boat.  Rod’s about our age & lives in Alberta. We’ve exchanged several emails, & it sounds like a good fit of people.  So we will have four people for the crossing the beginning of December.  That’ll make it easier on everyone for watches, as people will be able to have six hours off.

We had a good time, but we were both disappointed in the Sistine Chapel. Thought it would be bigger and more magnificent. It is beautiful, but I think we’ve been in more churches in Rome than most Romans, and I must say that several of them, imho, are much more breathtaking. I also wanted one more visit to the Trevi fountain, and we managed to squeak in three other churches also.

We had pizza and a fresh fruit (7 kinds) tart for dinner, then caught the train back to Ostia. Then had to catch a bus & then ride our bikes back to the boatyard. We got here a little after 7 pm, so it was a very long day.  The weather was so gorgeous; we both are sad to be leaving Rome but looking forward to our next leg.

I’ll be checking the weather forecast tomorrow and we’ll decide when to leave for Sardinia. We will only visit part of the northern coast before heading up to Corsica to visit the south and west coasts.

Weather here is about perfect: mid-70 days & mid-50 nights. It feels cold when we get up, though. Robert commented about it is going to be cold when we do our overnights, and then the multi-day trip to the Balearics. But we both have fleece, so we’ll be fine. The biggest thing will be going back into shift mode.

Next email will hopefully find us underway and getting our sea legs back!

Just a short note to let you know that we arrived safely in Rome around 8:20 am local time today.  We had an uneventful flight and landed on a gorgeous, sunny day with very little breeze.  It took forever to get our luggage, but there was no hassle for immigration (didn’t even stamp our passports!) or customs (didn’t look in any of the bags and had no idea about Shadow).  We got a taxi as soon as we came out; a guy asked if we needed a big one with all of our luggage.  Well, they saw us coming, as they charged us 75 euros to Ostia Lido, which is only about a ten minute drive.  You do the math; that’s about $110 USD!!  Nothing to do but pay it and move on.

Anyway, we got to the boatyard.  Mauro was there and let us into the yard.  The boat weathered the winter and summer well but is filthy dirty.  We will have a couple days of just cleaning to remove all of the dust, grime and bird droppings.

Shadow did well on the flight and seems happy to be back on the boat.  We’ll see how he feels once we’re back in the water!  We realized, once we reached the boat, that we had taken his cat pan back to the US with us as we had spent our final days in Rome last year in the city renting a room.  So we got here and the poor cat has no pan.  We will shortly head to the store to get him a pan & scoop and us a few groceries.

We are both suffering from jet lag and it’ll be an early night.  It feels great, though, to be back on the boat, although it will be a big task getting it in shape to set sail again.

Love to all,
Dar and Robert