Skipping Forwards

To keep it short and sweet, Hazel and I have had a great summer, sailing up the mainland Mediterranean coast of Spain, across to the Balearic Islands, visiting all 4 of the principle islands of that group, and then crossing from Menorca to Sardinia. As I write this, we're now enjoying a beautiful, peaceful anchorage off of north-western Sardinia.

We also were offered a marvelous opportunity to sail with some good friends who we met back on mainland Spain, to help them take their boat - a 45ft Excess 14 catamaran - from La Rapita (close to Barcelona, Spain) to Tunisia. Well, how could we refuse! So, we sailed to Africa :)

It was a great voyage and quite a contrast to sailing our small monohulls. As with every passage on every vessel, we learnt a lot. Tony and Kelley, the owners, looked after us splendidly and we covered the 550 miles or so of the voyage in 5 passages, 3 of which were overnighters.

On the very first day out of La Rapita, as we were crossing the continental shelf, the fishing lure was struck and line started running out. I was the nearest, so jumped to the rod and tightened the drag and then started reeling in. Well, the result was a blue marlin, by far the biggest fish I've ever caught. It fed us for the voyage; we didn't put the line out again, there was no need!