Flying Fish Life
Exploring the world on a Leopard 44 catamaran
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September 2024 – Part II
Too depressing to be included in Part I After motor sailing in light breezes most of the way from San Vito lo Capo we dropped anchor in a large bay at Campulongu on the southeast corner of Sardinia. We’d had some weather moments along the way, including a couple of almost-waterspouts, and though the night…
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September 2024 – Part I
Weather Jail in San Vito lo Capo, Sicily We spent two weeks waiting for a window to sail to Sardinia, then on to Mallorca. There are much worse places to be in weather jail, but even the nicest cages are still cages. Er, boats. We started out back in Palermo, where we “had to” sight…
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August 2024
Escaping the Mediterranean heat in the best ways possible Up she went. Took a couple of hours, but eventually she was settled securely on the hard and ready for a few weeks of beautification. We tied up the many loose ends, including removing our sail bag for its zipper replacement and mcgyvering a protective UV…
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July 2024
Our first over night passage – two nights actually – and no one died. And, hello Sicily! Zakinthos has a very mixed reputation. On the one hand it’s known for its frat boy atmosphere, loud parties until all hours of the night and drunken tourists living their vacation lives out loud. It’s also home to…
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May 2024
Season 2 is off and running! I’m trying to be positive! Season 2 started in late April again this year, and all winter long we had planned to start out with a trip to Kušadasi port, Türkiye, partly to get the Fish out of the EU for a bit to restart our VAT clock. (If…
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Exploring Lesvos
Finally – more of Lesvos to love! After weeks of being “busy doing other things,” we woke up one morning and realized we would be leaving this island we call home in only another couple of weeks. That day I sorted a car and two nights’ lodging and a few days later we were on…
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Cappadocia, finally
Before we caught the “let’s explore Lesvos before it’s too late” bug, we came down with a serious case of “we have GOT to see Cappadocia.” Back in November, soon after we’d arrived in Mytlini, we talked to Karina and Tim (Matilda) about going together – what’s more fun than a group road trip? Now…
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April 2024 – Pre-Season Kick-Off, Round 2
In which we get our asses in gear. Last year at this time we were frantically working through boat maintenance projects, ticking off the to do list items, all while completely terrified about what lay ahead of us. A year later we’re in the same boat (see what I did there?) except for the terror.…
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Mytilini, Lesvos
Or, welcome to your winter home There is a sense of real-ness about Mytilini that is refreshing. It’s not a tourist town, as much as it is the capitol of the most beautiful island in the Aegean and is flooded with tourists in the summer like any other beautiful island in the Aegean. It is…
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October 2023
The home stretch. Peggy’s departure signaled the end of our lollygagging and the beginning of our efforts to get to Mytilini on or about November 1st. Because of an unavoidable stop we needed to make in Naxos while Peter went to Montenegro, we knew we were going to have to move almost every day to…
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September 2023 – Part II
In which things get better. We spent enough time the morning after Bailey and Michael arrived in Argostoli to see the turtles cruising the fishing boats on the town quay, do some serious provisioning, and check in and out with the Port Police. Then it was Eastward Ho! as fast as our engines would take…
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September 2023 – Part I
In which we have some issues…. And a dearth of photos documenting them. Overarching all our other concerns about returning to Greece from Denver was that we were worried about our Schengen status – I had only 8 days left, and Peter had 15. We’d prepared everything we could for our Greek “Digital Nomad” visa…
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August 2023
Homeward bound It was hot in Denver too, but nothing like we’d had in Greece. We stayed with Peggy for a few days before driving my sister Laura’s car to Minnesota to meet Mia and Laura at our cottage on Lake L’Homme Dieu for the pre-wedding prep. My niece Megan and Nolan were to be…
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June-July 2023
The Season is officially ON. We headed for Lakka on Paxos the morning after Mia left and after an obscenely swelly night in the anchorage under the old fort in Corfu town, with mozzies feasting on our flesh the whole time. We got as far as Petriti, a good way down the southeast coast of…
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The Crash
We used to be charterers, but we never crashed into someone else’s boat (even if we did come close one time!) It was windy, upward of 20 knots. It was a relatively crowded anchorage – not Lakka crowded, where your neighbor could hand you a cup of coffee over the sugar scoop in the morning,…
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May 2023
THIS is what we’ve been waiting for? Or, Ah! THIS is what we’ve been waiting for! Sailing from Tivat to Greece takes a few days. Some just do an overnight passage and arrive 30 or so hours later in Corfu, thereby avoiding the whole checking in and out of Albania. But we wanted to be…
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April 2023
Pre-Season Kickoff We’ve been living on our boat here in Montenegro for a little over four months, and just in the last couple of weeks the marina has started, well, buzzing. Liveaboards who’ve been here for months and others who had the good sense to leave their boats here and spend the winter somewhere else…
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Montenegro
The first phase of life as liveaboards on our new catamaran: November 15, 2022 – April 27, 2023 People ask us “why Montenegro” and the answer is easy – that’s where the boat was.We had been shopping for over a year for a sailing catamaran that was in the Med and ready to sail. There…
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March 2023
Wait, it’s March already?? We finally made reservations to stay at the Porto Montenegro ski chalet in Kolašin the first weekend of March. Lift tickets were €25 for two days of skiing, and good quality rental equipment was available for even less. Felt safe – surely there would be enough snow, weren’t Claire and Ollie…
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February 2023 – The Rest
It had some redeeming features. Fortunately, February was also the month I got to get on an airplane and fly to Nairobi to spend a week with Peggy. For anyone who doesn’t know Peggy, she and I met in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone in 1985 and have been best friends ever since. She…
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Official Chocolate Croissant Research Project
Finding the Best Chocolate Croissant in Tivat: What Does It Take? Research Question: Of all the pekara in Tivat, which one makes the most consistently delicious chocolate croissants? Background and Significance: Pekara, or bakeries, are numerous in Tivat – pulling over their weight, so to speak, for a town as small as this. And every…
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February 2023: The Bora
“Never seen anything like it” every Old Salt within 200 miles of Tivat Let’s start with The Bora, shall we? From my journal, February 4th: Well, the Bora blew in tonight. Like a freight train coming down the tracks, sparks flying, whistle blowing. I was sitting on the Front Porch this afternoon playing games on…
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January 2023
You will be lulled into a false sense of security…. Isn’t it beautiful? It really was! Sunny, warm, glassy water, and the sense of peace and contentment that descends when you should really know better. Oooops. But it was fiiiine. (I can say that now, in April, because February was worse. Anything we encounter from…
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December 2022
New friends – and getting outta town – are good for you. The dreariness of November seeped relentlessly into December, but there were mitigating factors and events that helped us cope. First, as the weeks went by we became more adapted to living on the boat. Small cabins, check. Cold cabins, check. Long walk to…
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Living in “Moldova”
Actually we’re still in Montenegro, so it’s not really Moldova the country, but Mold-all-over-ya boat. One thing about living on a sailboat in “winter” (if you can call it that here in Montenegro where it’s typically in the 50’s most days), is that you get condensation. And sailboats have so many closets, hatches and places…
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November 2022
Welcome to Monetenegro. You will not see the sun this month. We made it! After an admittedly hellish six months of preparation, we’re here, and we’re “liveaboards” on our very own boat. Since it’s now April, this is an effort to bring our adventures up to date. Bear with me as I try to summarize…