After only a few months cruising the western Mediterranean, I realized I was learning the weather, all over again. It was a bit of a shock.

By the time Pandora passed through the Strait of Gibraltar, I’d logged nearly 30,000 offshore miles. Brenda and I had cruised the U.S. East Coast, the Bahamas, Cuba, the Eastern Caribbean, and crossed the Atlantic. I thought I had a pretty good handle on weather.

The Mediterranean quickly convinced me otherwise. Every part seemed to have its own weather.

Along the U.S. East Coast, summer weather follows a familiar rhythm. Cold fronts roll down from Canada every few days, the wind clocks around, blows hard for a while, and then settles back into the prevailing southwest breeze.

The Bahamas are different. A regular series of cold fronts sends cruisers scrambling for one of the few protected anchorages. Ignore the forecast and you may find yourself in an anchorage that was perfectly safe yesterday but has become untenable today.

The eastern Caribbean is different again. The trade winds are wonderfully dependable, but wraparound swell can turn a peaceful anchorage into a rolly mess—and chasing your wine glass around the cockpit loses its charm pretty quickly. Broadly speaking, though, tomorrow usually looks a lot like today.

Even an Atlantic crossing is fairly predictable if you leave at the right time of year.

Then we arrived in the Mediterranean.

Within weeks I felt like a beginner again.

---

Since Brenda and I first headed south on the Intracoastal Waterway in 2012, we’ve relied on weather router Chris Parker.

Before leaving for Europe, everyone seemed to have an opinion about Mediterranean weather.

“There’s either too much wind or not enough.”

I’d become comfortable comparing the European and U.S. weather models. They didn’t always agree, but they usually painted the same general picture.

The Mediterranean was different.

Even forecasts for the same day sometimes looked like they were describing completely different places. One model predicted calm conditions while another suggested strong winds.

It made no sense to me.

Eventually I realized the forecasts weren’t the biggest challenge.

I’d been thinking of the Mediterranean as though it were one body of water, and it isn’t.

One thing Brenda and I have learned over the years is to spend time with people who’ve already sailed where we’re planning to go.

We first discovered the value of that in 2012 when we met Bill and Maureen aboard Kalunamoo. They became our mentors as we worked our way down the ICW, crossed to the Bahamas, and eventually cruised parts of the eastern Caribbean together.

More than a decade later, we’re still comparing notes and learning from each other.

Since then, talking with sailors who’ve “been there” has become part of every major cruising plan.

So, before heading to the Mediterranean, we did exactly that.

We spoke with friends who had spent years cruising there.

Their advice was helpful.

But after several months exploring Spain, the Balearics, and Sardinia, I still felt I was missing something.

I knew what we were experiencing.

I didn’t understand why.

I needed some context, so I set up a call with Chris Parker.

---

By then Pandora had crossed the Atlantic, entered the Mediterranean, worked her way along the Spanish coast, visited the Balearics, and continued on to Sardinia.

One of the first things Chris said now seems obvious.

The Caribbean is essentially one large body of water dotted with relatively small islands.

The Mediterranean is a collection of smaller seas surrounded by continents, mountain ranges, and islands large enough to create their own weather with many names.

That simple observation explained a great deal.

Like many first-time Mediterranean cruisers, I arrived with charts, guidebooks, weather-routing software, GRIB files, and websites.

What I didn’t have was experience.

I didn’t yet know which parts of the forecast mattered most—or just how dramatically local geography could change what we’d actually experience on the water.

That realization changed the way I began looking at Mediterranean weather.

And it was only the beginning.

The Mediterranean Isn’t One Sea

One of the biggest mistakes I made before arriving in Europe was thinking of the Mediterranean, like the Caribbean where we’d spent more than a decade, as a single cruising ground, which I now understand it is not…

We talk about “crossing the Atlantic” or “cruising the Caribbean” because, despite their differences, each has a recognizable personality. The Mediterranean is different. It’s really a collection of neighboring seas, each shaped by its own geography, prevailing winds, and seasonal weather patterns.

I didn’t really appreciate that until we started cruising in the Med. My conversations with fellow cruisers helped, but it didn’t really sink in until we began moving from one area to another.

Now that we have worked our way east from Almerimar, where Pandora had spent the winter, to Sardinia that one of Chris’s comments clicked for me. A weather discussion about the western Mediterranean might have almost nothing to do with what another sailor was experiencing in the Adriatic or the Aegean. Even within the western Mediterranean, conditions along the Spanish mainland could be completely different from those only a day’s sail away in the Balearics.

That realization meant that I didn’t have to (yet) understand the entire Mediterranean.

I only had to understand the part I was sailing.

That probably explains why experienced Mediterranean cruisers smile when newcomers ask, “What’s the weather like in the Med?”

Now I realize that’s the wrong question.

The real question is, “Where are you?”

---

One surprise for us was fog.

During more than a decade in the Bahamas and Caribbean, we could go months without seeing visibility reduced by anything more than a passing rain squall. As we traversed the Balearics, however, we found ourselves navigating in dense fog that reminded me much more of Maine than the Mediterranean.

On one passage visibility dropped to less than a quarter mile as we approached the fog bank in the distance.

Once we entered the bank it was like being in Maine but with warmer water.

It wasn’t something I had ever associated with Mediterranean cruising.

Later I learned it wasn’t unusual during the spring.

Like so many things we were discovering, it was another reminder that “Mediterranean weather” isn’t just one thing.

Our first season is limited to the western Mediterranean, but even there the weather kept changing character.

Southern Spain introduced us to the Levante and Poniente—the easterly and westerly winds that dominate the Strait of Gibraltar. Those winds aren’t simply created by passing weather systems. The geography of the Strait funnels and accelerates them, and they can remain strong for many miles beyond Gibraltar itself.

Farther east, another familiar Mediterranean name (familiar to me now anyway) appears—the Tramontana spilling out of the Gulf of Lion.

And then there’s the Mistral.

Long before we ever sailed there, I’d heard stories about it from other cruisers.

Chris explained that what makes the Mistral remarkable isn’t simply that it blows hard. It’s what happens when ordinary weather encounters extraordinary geography.

A cold front crossing Europe isn’t unusual.

What happens after that cold air is squeezed through mountain valleys and spills out over the sea—that’s what makes the Mistral the Mistral.

That made sense to me.

After years offshore, I’d gotten into the habit of thinking mostly about wind strength.

Twenty knots is twenty knots.

If the wind shifts ten degrees, you trim the sails, alter course a little, and keep going. When your destination is hundreds of miles away, small course or wind changes usually don’t matter very much.

The Mediterranean is very different.

Here, a ten-degree change in wind direction can be far more important than another ten knots of wind.

Most Mediterranean passages are relatively short. You don’t have distance to adjust your landfall as the wind direction is always changing.   You’re trying to reach a specific harbor or anchor in a cove that’s protected from only certain wind directions.

Many anchorages are only protected from a fairly narrow range of wind directions, so even a modest wind shift can turn a comfortable anchorage into one you’d rather not be in.

That reminded me of our early sailing on Long Island Sound, moving from harbor to harbor where we had to maintain a certain course to make it to the harbor without a lot of tacking.

As the weeks passed, I noticed another change.

I spent less time studying the anchorage itself and much more time looking at everything around it—the headlands, mountain valleys, gaps between islands, and other features that have a big effect on the wind.

I’d certainly seen local effects elsewhere. In the Caribbean, for example, the trade winds often accelerate as you approach a mountainous island before dying away in its wind shadow.  Or, in Deshais, Guadeloupe where the wind funnels through the mountains gusting in the harbor at alarming speeds.

But in the Mediterranean those local, Deshais-like, effects seemed to be everywhere.

Once I started looking at the coastline that way, many of the forecasts that had puzzled me suddenly made much more sense.

It wasn’t that the weather models were necessarily wrong.

They simply couldn’t tell the whole story.

The last few miles into an anchorage often depended just as much on the surrounding landscape as on the larger weather system.

In many ways, the land itself had become just as important as the wind

Planning Around Tomorrow

After years cruising the Caribbean, life aboard Pandora had settled into a comfortable routine.

We often joked that nothing happened before noon aboard Pandora with plenty of time to enjoy another cup of coffee and catch up on the news.

There was rarely any reason to rush. The trade winds were remarkably dependable and, unless we were preparing for a longer offshore passage, tomorrow usually looked a lot like today. The biggest question wasn’t whether we could sail—it was whether we’d have a close reach, a beam reach, or a broad reach and if it would be easy sailing, sort of sporty or super salty but the wind was generally from the same direction, if at different speeds.

We’d check the forecast, chat with neighboring cruisers on the morning VHF net, and decide whether today—or maybe tomorrow—felt like a good, or best, day to move.

It was a wonderfully relaxed way to cruise.

The Mediterranean isn’t like that. 

Instead of asking,

“Should we leave tomorrow?”

The question is…

“When is the next good weather window…and what happens after that?”

That was a completely different way of thinking.

I remember sitting in Cartagena.

There were still museums we wanted to visit, markets we hadn’t wandered through, and restaurants we hadn’t yet tried. We certainly weren’t anxious to leave.

But the forecast suggested that three days later we’d have an excellent crossing to the Balearics, followed by several days of fresh winds from exactly the wrong direction.

Suddenly the decision wasn’t just about making the passage.

It was about what would happen after we got there.

Would our anchorage still be comfortable?

Would we be looking for another harbor?

Would we wish we’d waited another day?

And the models were not in agreement at all…

Those weren’t questions I’d spent much time asking in the Caribbean.

Chris pointed out that many Mediterranean passages are short enough that you often have several possible departure days.

The challenge isn’t finding weather that’s acceptable.

It’s choosing the weather window that leaves you in the best place for whatever comes next.

And “next” could very well be tomorrow, or not.

That idea completely changed the way I looked at forecasts.

Instead of planning tomorrow’s sail, I gradually found myself planning the coming week—which often meant not moving at all.

If the forecast suggested conditions would deteriorate before we were ready to leave again, we’d often spend a few nights in a marina instead of an anchorage.

It cost more, but it also bought peace of mind—and sometimes that’s worth every euro.

One of the unexpected pleasures of Mediterranean cruising is discovering just how easy it is to stay put.

The history has a way of slowing you down.

There always seemed to be another castle to explore, another museum, another market, or another café where we could linger over lunch before wandering back to Pandora.

But even while we were enjoying ourselves ashore, there was usually a little voice in the back of my mind asking,

“If we don’t leave tomorrow…when’s the next opportunity?”

Of course, another factor influenced our decisions.

The calendar.

Cruisers like to say,

“The most dangerous thing aboard is a calendar.”

There’s a lot of truth in that.

Maybe it’s a haul-out reservation.

Maybe it’s family flying in.

Maybe it’s a flight home that will cost a fortune to change.

For those of us on non-EU boats, there are also Schengen limits and the need to occasionally leave the European Union to avoid triggering VAT issues.

Whatever the reason, flexibility is one of the most valuable things you can carry aboard.

Another surprise was how often we used the engine.

I’d heard sailors jokingly refer to the Mediterranean as the “Motorterranean,” and now I understand why.

For years I’d unconsciously measured a successful cruising season by how many miles we’d sailed and how few hours we put on the engine.

The Caribbean makes that easy.

The Mediterranean…well…it’s different.

Some mornings the sea looked like Long Island Sound on a hot August afternoon.

By afternoon a pleasant thermal breeze might appear for a few hours before disappearing again by sunset.

Other days there was plenty of wind.

Unfortunately, it was blowing from exactly the direction we wanted to go.

So we waited.

Or we motored.

When I mentioned our unexpectedly high engine hours to Chris, he laughed.

“Have you ever wondered why the ancient Greeks had tiny sails and lots of oars?”

That one sentence probably changed my attitude more than anything else.

There was so much to explore and so much history to discover.

What was the rush?

Sure, we’d rather sail than motor, but the real goal wasn’t to maximize sailing.

It was to enjoy the places we’d come so far to see.

---

Brenda has always been willing to let me know when I’m making good cruising decisions…or not.

When we first started talking about spending several seasons in the Mediterranean, she looked at me one day and said,

“I’m not sure I want to sail somewhere the Greeks had dozens of words for wind.”

I laughed.

Sort of.

After a few months in the Mediterranean, I realized she may have understood the place better than I did.

Learning Never Ends

Spend an evening in almost any marina or anchorage, and sooner or later the conversation turns to weather.

Sailors have always been storytellers, but the stories they tell are rarely about perfect days reaching across a sparkling blue sea.

Instead, they’re about the gale that arrived a day early, the anchor that dragged at three in the morning, or the harbor entrance they found just before dark.

There’s an old saying that cruising is “days of wonder punctuated by moments of sheer terror.”

Like most sailing sayings, there’s enough truth in it to make every cruiser smile.

I certainly have my own collection of stories.

The seas breaking over Pandora off Portugal while I was sailing from the Azores toward Gibraltar will stay with me for a long time.

But if someone now asks me the scariest moment I’ve experienced in nearly 30,000 offshore miles, I don’t hesitate.

Orcas.

As we approached Gibraltar last summer, Pandora was attacked by a pod of orcas.

Watching—and feeling—several tons of highly intelligent animals repeatedly slam into your rudder is something I hope never to experience again.

It was terrifying.

---

Looking back, though, I’ve come to realize that many of the stories sailors tell aren’t really about weather.

They’re about decisions.

A crew leaves because they have a marina reservation.

Or friends waiting at the next port.

Or airline tickets that can’t easily be changed.

Or maybe they simply convince themselves that the forecast “doesn’t look too bad.”

Every skipper has made one of those decisions.

I certainly have.

My encounter with the orcas happened largely because I was trying to keep to a schedule.

With the benefit of hindsight, I would have made a different choice.

That’s one of the reasons I wanted to have Chris Parker help me understand.

I wasn’t looking for better forecasts.

I was trying to become better at making decisions.

What had I missed?

What did I know before leaving that I either ignored—or simply didn’t understand?

Those are the questions that really matter.

---

Before arriving in Europe I’d heard countless stories about the Mistral, the Bora, the Meltemi, and the other named Mediterranean winds.

Somehow I’d come away thinking they appeared almost without warning.

Chris surprised me.

“Most of the time, they’re quite predictable.”

That wasn’t the answer I expected.

He explained that these winds are usually associated with recognizable weather patterns.

The difficult part isn’t forecasting them.

The difficult part is understanding what those forecasts actually mean once mountains, valleys, islands, and coastlines begin reshaping the wind.

That’s the part experienced Mediterranean sailors understand almost instinctively.

They know which anchorages become uncomfortable with only a modest shift in wind direction.

They know when today’s peaceful harbor becomes tomorrow’s lee shore.

They know when to leave one day early instead of one day too late.

You won’t get that from a weather model.

It comes from experience.

Fortunately, Mediterranean cruisers are just as willing to share that experience as the sailors who helped Brenda and me when we first headed south more than a decade ago.

Guidebooks tell you where to go.

Charts tell you what’s under the keel.

Weather forecasts tell you about the wind and waves.

But conversations with sailors who’ve already been there explain how all three fit together.

I’ve really come to appreciate how valuable those conversations are.

---

As our first Mediterranean season came to an end and Pandora settled into her berth in Sardinia before we flew home, I realized something had changed.

I wasn’t thinking so much about the weather anymore.

I was thinking about how I thought about the weather.

That may sound like the same thing, but it isn’t.

I’d stopped trying to understand the Mediterranean as one enormous cruising ground.

Instead, I was beginning to appreciate that every region has its own personality.

The trick wasn’t understanding the entire Mediterranean.

It was understanding the place where we happened to be.

That realization made the whole thing feel a lot less intimidating.

Instead of trying to “figure out the Med,” I could just focus on the next cruising area.

That seemed a lot more manageable.

---

And, in the end, the weather wasn’t what impressed us most.

It was what waited for us at the end of each passage.

One week we were wandering the Roman streets of Cartagena, where three thousand years of history somehow felt perfectly ordinary.

Another day we were shopping in markets overflowing with fresh bread, seafood, fruit, and vegetables before lingering over a late-afternoon sundowner and eventually wandering back to Pandora for dinner beneath the walls of a medieval castle.

In the Balearics we found quiet anchorages and impossibly clear water.

In Sardinia we discovered hill towns and harbors whose histories stretched back centuries before the United States even existed.

The weather determines when you move.

Places like these remind you why you moved in the first place.

For Brenda and me, that’s become one of the great rewards of cruising the Mediterranean.

As Americans celebrating our nation’s 250th birthday, it was hard not to be impressed by places where history is measured in thousands of years instead of hundreds.

---

As I write this, we’re only a few weeks away from returning to Pandora.

Our first season has given us just enough experience to appreciate how much we still have to learn.

Oddly enough, I find that encouraging.

After nearly 30,000 offshore miles, I wasn’t looking for another place to prove what I already knew.

I was looking for somewhere that would continue teaching me—and be a place that Brenda would enjoy.

The Mediterranean has proven to be exactly that.

I’ve always believed that good seamanship isn’t measured by how much we know, but by our willingness to keep learning—from the weather, from our mistakes, and, most importantly, from those who’ve sailed these waters before us.

For me, this first season in the Mediterranean has really been about learning the weather all over again.

After more than a decade of seasonal cruising along the U.S. East Coast, the Bahamas, Cuba, and the islands stretching from the U.S. Virgins to Trinidad, we decided it was time for something entirely different. Of course, each new cruising ground had been an adventure, but taking Pandora across the Atlantic to Spain was in another league altogether. We were leaving behind not only familiar waters, but nearly everything that had become comfortable.

As I’ve noted in earlier posts, continuing our cruising life aboard Pandora, our Aerodyne 47, was far from certain. Brenda had made it clear that selling the boat and spending more time in Essex on the Connecticut River was a very appealing alternative.

After a lot of conversations with fellow cruisers who had spent time in the Mediterranean, we decided to give it a whirl.

At the time I was President and Rally Director of the Salty Dawg Sailing Association and proposed organizing a rally to the Azores. The Board embraced the idea, and I had the privilege of leading the fleet from Bermuda to Horta. As I write this, the second running of that rally has concluded, and plans are already underway for another next June.

After crossing from the Azores to Spain—and surviving our encounter with a pod of orcas—we spent several weeks exploring southern Spain before storing Pandora for the winter in Almerimar. We returned in late March intending to spend more than two months working our way toward Sardinia before hauling the boat for the busy, and expensive, Mediterranean summer.

Unfortunately, equipment failures delayed us in Almerimar for nearly a month, forcing us to shorten our time in the Balearics before making the 200-mile crossing to Sardinia. It became something of a forced march, and I worried that the constant schedule changes would sour Brenda on this whole Mediterranean experiment.

I am happy to report that I couldn’t have been more wrong. She now tells anyone who will listen how much she loved it. Whew!

Despite the delays, we covered an amazing amount of ground in that compressed time and experienced more than many can in decades of vacations. And yet we’ve barely scratched the surface.

The greatest surprise was that cruising the Mediterranean gave me an entirely different sense of time.

Brenda has always been fascinated by the history of this region, having studied in both Italy and Greece during her undergraduate years. She returned this spring with a deep appreciation for the civilizations that have shaped these shores over thousands of years. I’ve always viewed history through a much more American lens.

As America celebrated its 250th anniversary, I found myself looking at our country differently.

Back home, two hundred and fifty years feels like an important milestone. We proudly preserve buildings that are two centuries old and celebrate a nation that has endured for a quarter of a millennium.

Then I stood on the heights above Cartagena, overlooking the Roman theater and gazing across the same harbor that first attracted the Phoenicians more than 2,200 years ago, my perspective began to shift.

As a resident of Essex, Connecticut, I’ve always taken pride in the Griswold Inn, founded in 1776 and proudly claiming to be America’s oldest continually operating tavern. Then you arrive in Cartagena, where entire neighborhoods are nearly twice that age, Roman ruins are simply part of the streetscape, and two hundred years begins to feel like yesterday.

The United States has existed for only a small fraction of Cartagena’s history. Over those twenty-two centuries the city has been Phoenician, Roman, Visigothic, Muslim, Christian, and Spanish. Some civilizations ruled for generations, others for centuries, but every one of them eventually yielded to another. Looking back, it’s easy to imagine that each believed its time would last indefinitely. History had other plans.

Yet the harbor remained. And even a spot for Pandora.

Once filled with trading vessels from across the Mediterranean, today it welcomes fishing boats, cruising yachts, naval ships, and an endless procession of cruise ships. The faces have changed. The flags have changed. The purpose has evolved.

Standing there, it was difficult not to think about Lincoln’s warning that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” He was speaking about slavery, but his words remind us that the greatest threats to a republic often come from within. A nation’s strength lies not only in its economy or military, but in its shared commitment to common institutions and common purpose.

That thought stayed with me throughout our travels. While cruising the Mediterranean, I never flew our American ensign. I worried that it might be interpreted as a political statement rather than simply the flag of our home. After conversations with many people we met along the way, however, I realized my concerns were largely unfounded. Most people could distinguish between our country’s politics and its people far more readily than I had expected.

Traveling aboard Pandora has made me appreciate more fully how much our understanding of history is shaped by where we live. To many Americans, two hundred and fifty years seems like a very long time. In the Mediterranean, our history seems pretty modern.  Walking Roman streets one day, exploring a medieval fortress the next, and then tying Pandora alongside modern yachts beneath eighteenth-century naval fortifications compresses history in a way that is difficult to describe.

America’s story begins to feel less “finished” and more like one that is a continuing evolution. 

Rather than diminishing what our country has accomplished, that realization has deepened my appreciation for it. Two hundred and fifty years is something worth celebrating, but it is also a reminder of how young our republic really is. Cartagena has watched civilizations come and go for more than two millennia. Our hope should not be that America somehow escapes history, but that we learn from it.

As we celebrate our own 250th anniversary, I hope we remember that preserving our republic may ultimately prove every bit as important as creating it.

Cruising the Med will forever change what “history” means to me and I can’t wait for the next chapter coming this fall.

So far, she likes the Med! Me too.

After months of looking for an affordable spot to keep Pandora for the summer, I settled on Bosa, Sardinia as the best option, primarily based on cost as Sardinia, especially for in-water storage, in high season is well, super expensive.

However after stumbling around and contacting dozens of marinas, I found a small shipyard, Nautica Pinna, that works on some pretty nice boats and could store Pandora for the three months on land at an affordable price. And, given all of the issues we faced this season already, hauling her for repairs turned out to be the best option anyway.

Hauling was simple and they took great care with Pandora. Amazingly, the bottom was perfectly clean after two months in the water. I had not redone the bottom paint when she was hauled in Almerimar, as I had heard that fouling isn’t as much of an issue in the Med, compared to the Caribbean, where I had to clean the bottom about every two weeks.

After power washing the bottom she was moved to her new home for the summer.

And, the good news is that there is a public marina next door that is quite reasonable for the week before Pandora was hauled. And, to be able to do a side tie in a world where it’s almost always Med Mooring was so simple.

Bosa is an amazing place. A fishing port with lots of traditional fishing boats and the classic Medieval town to really give a beautiful atmosphere to the experience.

Of course, there is a castle. Doesn’t every town have one?

The castle can be viewed from just about everywhere in the city. We particularly enjoyed this spot where we had a late lunch one day.

Our view of the castle just beyond our plate of pasta. So amazing.

Brenda and I visited the castle, climbing up what felt like countless stone steps from the old town. We finally reached Castello Malaspina, which has watched over Bosa for more than 800 years. As we prepare for our 250th anniversary here in the US, compared counties in the Med, our history seems like more of a blip.

Of course, after centuries, civilizations came and went in bosa which makes me wonder what is in store for us in the US given all of our internal strife. As Abraham Lincoln once observed,  “A country that is at war with itself cannot stand.”

In the courtyard of the castle, olive and almond trees. Oddly, there were a number of signs in the grove “don’t crack the almonds”. No idea why that would be bad. I did and nothing bad happened.

Perched high above the colorful houses and the Temo River, the only navigable river in Sardinia, the castle offers spectacular views of the town, countryside, and coastline. It is easy to imagine why this hilltop location was chosen to guard the valley and protect the town below. The marina is near the mouth of the river and it is an easy run, with no speed limit, from there to town. Our runs back and forth from town to Pandora fun and quick…

And a view of an ancient cemetery.

From the castle, you can even see our dink, the one inflatable amongst the fishing boats.

There was quite a variety of small craft. Plenty modern styles but I loved the classic local designs. This style grows out of those that were traditionally powered by sail and now, with motors, are still used for fishing.

The ones that still have sails are generally used for recreation.

What a view of town as you round the bend.

Just past town it was very rural and lovely. I think that we will explore this area when we return in September.

The waterfront is even more beautiful after dark. On the right is where the many tannery businesses were. Based on that, I expect that the river bottom has some pretty nasty residue from those days.

Every view is magical after the sun goes down.

Right near that spot was where we stayed once Pandora was on the hard. We rented a room on a back alley. A bit tough to find but one of the waiters at a restaurant nearby showed us the way. “Oh, you are staying at Alene. Follow me…”

Our front door.

The old town area, where we spent most of our time, was a maze of narrow cobble stone streets and alleyways.

That particular street has a bar that we really enjoyed, appropriately named.

The proprietor was quite a character and was proud of the fact that he only served wine that his family had been producing for four generations locally. Brenda, always on the lookout for special woven fabric, spied a piece on one of his tables with sheep. While the “table settings” weren’t for sale, he agreed to sell one to her. The runner was on a table with a couple sitting at it. He just jumped in and snagged it for Brenda. This is the detail of the photo above where the runner was.

She was very happy with her loot. We had no idea what he would charge. It turned out to be 6 euros for two meters of fabric. Such a deal.

Brenda also fell in love with a woven bag in a gourmet shop and again, not for sale. As luck would have it, the woman running the store told Brenda that her mother had made the decorations and could probably make one for her. The next evening she happened upon us with her entire family as we were having a glass of wine, again at the same bar, the “fabric runner and wine bar”. As Brenda had posted her mother’s work on Facebook the meeting was particularly enthusiastic with kisses planted on both cheeks. Mom in the middle.

She will have the bag made by the time we return in September. That will surely make it easier to pry Brenda from her home and studio here in CT.

And, speaking of fiber stuff… Bosa is also known for it’s history of hand lace in a unique style. We stumbled on these two women as we made our way up to the castle from town. Of course, she had to buy some for herself and for some lucky friends back home.

Pretty remarkable work. Of course, Brenda put a pretty big dent in their supply. It’s good to be Brenda’s friends, especially if you like fiber stuff.

The last weekend we were in Bosa there was a car show in the historic district. What a setting for antique cars and there were some wonderful ones on display.

An immaculate E-type Jaguar.

And, a pre-war BMW. I have never seen one like this. It was magnificent. According to AI, it is probably a reproduction as an original car like this would be worth more than a million. It does look expensive, never the less.

And the rear end…

I always enjoy seeing the classic Porches. This one was very shiny.

And finally, this car, a Lagoda, built in England in the 30s. Spectacular. I have never even heard of this brand. Pretty amazing.

We always try to have fresh flowers aboard and while that was tough in the Caribbean, no problem here. A wonderful florist.

Aboard we have a vase with velcro to secure it to the galley counter so it won’t fall over when we are underway. However, in port, we just set it on the dining table.

We also try to have live plants aboard and got two geraniums and an herb. When we left we “willed” the plants to the marina manager in Bosa, Francesco. He’s a very nice guy and I am sure that he will take good care of them.

When we return, we will, no doubt, find new plants to brighten things up a bit.

So, while it is still about three months until we are back aboard Pandora, there’s lots to do to be sure that it is “smooth sailing” when we return. Of course, LOTS to do here at home so we can take full advantage of the summer that lies ahead.

We really love Sardinia and can’t wait to get back and explore some more.

It is such an amazing place. You should consider going too. This short piece gives a good feel for what it is like.

That’s it, Pandora is on the hard for the summer, we are in Rome waiting for our next flight that will take us to JFK and home. It’s going to be a long day and with seven hours between our arrival from Sardinia and departure for JFK, lots of time to just hang out and finish this post. Airports are bad enough when you are pressed to catch a connection but this… Well, lots of time, no rush. I’d rather rush…

The day before we departed Bosa we had lunch at a particularly charming spot on the river. The “kitchen” was actually a sort of food truck and the food was terrific pasta. What a spot.

The view down the river, fabulous.

So, to get the most out of our last day in Sardinia, we decided to book a room in the historic area of Alghero, near the airport for our flight to Rome, and took a one hour bus ride north. We booked in a very charming neighborhood but I will admit that lugging our heavy “boat stuff” loaded bags over the very uneven cobble stone streets was a challenge. I actually had to finally give up lugging the 50lb bags, two at a time so did a sort of relay with Brenda. It took a while but we survived. A taxi wasn’t practical as the roads are too narrow.

When the streets were paved with river stones hundreds (thousands?) of years ago I doubt that they anticipated wheelie bags with tiny wheels. It was a very long 10 minute walk. Besides, there is no way that a taxi could get close to the place as the “roads” were built for narrow donkey drawn carts, not cars.

But we made it. Brenda at the front door. The room was very modern in every way. After all the back and forth over rough cobbles, I was very sweaty, Brenda just a slight glow.

And speaking of doors. Well, at least Brenda in front of doors. How about a door that matches her outfit?

We thought that a day Alghero, yet another historic city would be a fun way to end our first visit to the Med and it was. We had a lovely lunch overlooking the city marina, huge with space for over 800 boats. The restaurant was on top of the fortress wall that secured the city from attack. And, of course, there was a reproduction of a trebuchet. What Medieval fort would be complete without one?

Back in the day these weapons were designed to repel invaders, now they are to attract cruise ship tourists. If you look closely, there is a cruise ship anchored in the line of fire.

We did a bit of shopping, or should I say Brenda did a bit of shopping. We also visited a weaving shop and it was fun to watch Brenda talk to the weaver. He has been weaving for 18 years, Brenda 50.

And, of course wine to celebrate the last day.

The idea of heading to yet Alghero was to cap the trip off in the best way that we could and yet by pure coincidence it turned out to be even better.

We stumbled on a wedding taking place in a historic church and so enjoyed watching the festivities.

The church was just around the corner from our room and earlier in the day we had seen a massive amount of flowers being delivered and set up on the church steps. And, as luck would have it, we found our way back just as the wedding was finishing up with everyone congregating outside the church, waiting for the bride and groom to make an appearance.

First the flower girls came running out. So cute.

There was quite a crowd of family, friends and a bunch of “hangers on”, like us, crowding the street. It was very festive.

Then, after a while, a long while actually, out came the happy couple.

Eventually, after lots of hugs and photos, they found their way into the back of an old VW Beetle, The bride had to work hard to squeeze herself and her dress into the back seat.

Watching a wedding in such an amazing place was great but by pure accident, later that evening there happened to be a choral concert in the very same church and we went in. We had great seats and stayed for the entire performance. Brenda, a long time lover of choral music was particularly entranced by the experience having been in a semi-professional choir for many years when we lived in New Jersey.

Having that “Brenda perfect” experience to cap off our first two months in the Med seemed like a good omen for things to come. I could not imagine a better way to finish off our time aboard Pandora.

But here we are in Rome waiting for our flight that will take us winging across the Atlantic. I will admit that after all of the “technical” issues that we faced, too numerous to mention, since arriving in Almerimar in late March, that I am ready to turn over some of the most vexing repairs to the yard here in Bosa and just head home.

Following the long delays and so many breakages it was nice to end things literally on a “high note” at a wonderful concert and we look forward to the next chapter with Pandora when we return to Sardinia in September.

As we look back on our time since arriving in Almerimar in late March, we have covered a lot of ground. The red line is our path since then. Pandora is now on the hard where the blue dot is. The blue line is what we plan to do once we return in September for “leg two” as we continue to work our way toward Sicily where Pandora will stay for the winter. Our stop in Tunis, outside of the EU, will be to reset the clock to avoid paying the 21% VAT on the value of Pandora, a substantial cost.

Our goal, over the next few seasons, will be to head to Greece and Croatia where we have heard that there are so many places to explore. Hopefully the unrest in the Middle East won’t spread any farther west by the time we get closer. Fingers crossed.

So, that’s it. On our way home on a high note. Perfect.

I

Well, we did it, we made it all the way to Sardinia as planned during our first of two, two month stints in the Mediterranean for this season.

While the pace of moving along has been, shall we say “brisk”, due to the extended time in Almerimar fixing stuff, we have enjoyed visiting a number of amazing places along the way. In particular, these harbors, most had dramatic cliffs surrounding them, along with some very nice beaches. And, where there are cliffs, there are young men jumping off of them.

As a parent, I would be alarmed if one of my own was doing this. Me? I might do it but it would be a simple “feet first” plunge. Not so for the guys.

After several revolutions, into the water. Not Olympic gold worthy but daring.

Ok, that’s the locals. We had also heard a lot about chartering in the Med and how “exiting” it sometimes gets to be in the same harbor with “skippers” with little experience. This one catamaran came in and was going to pick up what they thought was a mooring. It was a tiny buoy designed to show where the limits of anchoring were. The guy looped his mooring line around it with no idea that it was probably a small cinder block that wouldn’t even stop a dink from floating away.

I went over and explained that while I would have enjoyed watching them crash into the wall that was a boat length behind them, I thought it better warn them. Ok, good idea they agreed and moved. He pulled forward a hundred yards, slammed the boat into reverse and dropped his anchor, dragging it over the bottom for several hundred feet at full speed, only to end up on top of that buoy again. He did this time and again, each effort worse than the last.

One one of his attempts, he dragged toward several anchored boats, narrowly missing one as every other owner looked on with horror. The skipper of Chablis, no doubt enjoying his Chablis, had no idea how close his glass of wine was to being tipped over.

Overwhelmingly, these charter boats are jammed with many “old friends” with the emphasis on “old”. And, while being topless is common in these parts, many guys just don’t know better.

Local color aside, one thing that stands out from this first cruise is how much broken stuff we have endured, and in some cases, replaced.

Even though we have had a few weeks without anything new breaking, as we departed for our overnight run yesterday morning we discovered that the starting battery for the engine suddenly failed and no amount of charging seems to get it in shape. Fortunately, the builders had the foresight to set the system up so that there is a “combiner switch” at the helm which, when depressed, allows the engine to be started with the house bank.

And, on the very same day, the engine high output alternator completely stopped working. And, that’s the second one in a year to fail. When the last one failed, a day out of the Azores on passage to Gibraltar, I had a spare. No spare now as my attempt to get one while the boat was in Almerimar didn’t work out.

As planned, we also took delivery of the motor for the new winch, which was on back order and shipped to Milorca, but alas, it didn’t quite fit so some modifications will have to be made, hopefully by me, to get the new winch fully operational.

Fortunately, it is very sunny here and the days are long so the batteries have done pretty well so we are not at risk of having no power. Happily with 1000+watts of solar, we were fine, more or less and arrived here with 80% full batteries. When I discovered that the batteries were not charging, I was quite alarmed but we had to push on.

And, there is a long list of other projects, some large and some small, that will have to be completed while Pandora is on the hard in Bosa, Sardinia for the summer.

Another observation from our two months here is that there really isn’t a lot of wind in what is referred to as the “Motorterranean”. so we have basically motored everywhere with intervals of sailing. Gone are the days in the Caribbean where we motored in and out of harbors, only putting on a total of perhaps 60 hours of time on the engine during an entire season.

Since leaving Almerimar, some 600 miles, we have motored about 100 hours, also about on par for engine hours when I made a typical run from the US to Antigua, a passage that is about twice as far as this run. And, when I ran from Bermuda to Horta, in the Azores, a distance of 2,000 miles, I only ran the engine for less than 20 hours.

Anyway. we made it and arrived yesterday after an overnight run of 200 miles from Milorca. Brenda has never really warmed up to overnights or long passages, for that matter. As a result, she is very resistant to anything beyond a day passage.

However, after years of trying to figure out a plan that will allow me to get rest and yet not rely on her, I never figured out a solution, until now.

In the past my effort was to just tough it out and recover the next day, completely exhausted after a night without sleep. On this trip we have done three overnight passages and I got to thinking about folks that sail around the world solo and somehow manage to sleep and stay safe after many nights at sea.

As I have understood it, they take “cat naps”, setting an alarm to scan the horizon to determine if the “coast is clear” and then fall back asleep. So, I tried it.

I set the alarm on my phone for 20 minutes and laid down in the cockpit, as comfortable as is possible when wearing an inflatable vest and harness. Often I wasn’t able to fall asleep fast enough so after a few sleepless minutes, I would look out, scan the horizon and reset the alarm for another 20 minutes. After a bit of this I found that the alarm was waking me from a sound sleep, only to begin the process all over again. It worked and allowed me to get enough rest to feel alert and when dawn came I was able to face the day pretty well.

For sure, cat naps and all, by the next night I was ready for a full night sleep. Not ideal but this new arrangement has made Brenda a lot more willing to do the long runs. The fact that conditions here in the Med are generally calmer than the Caribbean does help. Yes, it can get really windy but those conditions are generally followed by calm so the seas don’t build like they do in strong trade winds that blow day after day, year round.

With the relatively calm conditions, Brenda did pretty well and with an audio book for company, she watched the water go by. Note the scarf? Always the Fashion Pony, that girl.

Conditions, when the winds are light are a lot calmer than the Caribbean where waves develop over thousands of miles by wind that is generally from the same direction. Yes, it can get rough here but it’s different, especially in the summer.

Several times on our run here we were visited by a tiny bird that landed and hopped around the cockpit, landing on everything including Brenda’s hand and my head. Here is Brenda trying to discretely get a glimpse of the tiny visitor.

Brenda caught one of the avian encounters when the little bird landed on her hand as he/she (the bird, not Brenda) hopped around the cockpit. Check out this short and very entertaining video.

It’s been a long time since we have had to contend with fog and never in the Caribbean. However, in the early summer, when the water is cold and the air warm, fog is common here. As we began our passage yesterday morning the sky was perfectly clear and yet on the horizon we saw the edge of a dense fog bank.

When we entered the bank, visibility abgruptly dropped to way less than a quarter mile. Ships and fishing boats passed and we could not see them at all. Very unnerving. Glad we have AIS and radar.

Another thing that is new to us is the fact that many of the harbors are not really harbors, just indents in the coastline that are only usable when the wind is from certain directions. This is also common in the Caribbean but with predictable trade winds, the “good” roadsteads safe most of the time. Not so here where the winds come from just about any direction over the course of a week. This unpredictability of when any given place is safe to anchor spawned a very useful website Navily, that gives really time estimates on the safety of any given anchorage based on it’s physical shape and the current wind and wave conditions. We use this site, www.navily.com every day to book marinas and check on the best anchorages.

Without the plotter to guide the way as we approached the coast yesterday, one part of the coastline looks about the same as any other.

We anchored in about 25′ in soft sand and good holding, which was good as the cliffs were only a few boat lengths behind us. Even a short anchor drag would not go well for Pandora. The spot, Cala E Moro, is like so many other picturesque spots along the coast.

We sat up on deck to watch the changing light as the sun set. It was magical. We were alone with the exception of a young couple on a small local boat. What you can’t see is that he appeared to be applying a liberal application of baby oil to every part of her body. And that body, clearly visible when she stood up, sported only the tiniest thong bikini bottom and nothing else to hide her well lubricated body. It was very distracting, I will admit. Oh, to be young and uninhibited.

Anyway, the scenery was grand. It is hard to imagine what forces it took to wear these cliffs smooth over millions of years. For scale, note the tiny figure on the top.

Huge cliffs just behind Pandora in the setting sun.

Before making the 200 mile crossing to Sardinia, we visited a number of charming harbors albeit for a lot less time than we had hoped for due to our abbreviated time left. Getting a good, or at least OK, wind for our crossing meant leaving after only one full day in Minorca. The harbor, Mahon, has been a major port for as far back as ships have been sailing the Med. It has been under control of both Spain and England over the centuries and has plenty of beautiful ruins to show for these occupations.

We didn’t have time to tour even one of the many sites, including the very first British Naval Hospital anywhere, and were bummed about that. However we did anchor in a beautiful cove. It was a large anchorage that could certainly hold two dozen boats. Even though the rest of the Mahon harbor is huge, one of the best in the entire Med, this cove, near the entrance of the harbor, is the only place that you are allowed to anchor. And, it is a two mile dink ride to town and you are not supposed to go fast. I sort of followed that rule and the run, each way takes about a half hour. Good luck to anyone that has an electric outboard. No way they would make it and it would take FOREVER…

As you approach you can see examples of fortifications built by the British. Very impressive and huge.

Adjacent to the harbor, an island that once was a quarantine facility built to house victims of the plague. It is hard to imagine what it took to build this all by hand. I imagine that the first plague was over by the time it was built. Clearly they took the need to contain things seriously. I guess that the govt did not think that it was “just a bad flu”.

The same walls at sunset.

This is what Chat GPT had to say about this remarkable compound.

“Lazareto of Mahón — also called Illa del Llatzeret or Lazaretto Island. It sits inside the great harbor of Mahón and is one of the most remarkable quarantine complexes left in Europe.

The facility was built beginning in 1793 under King Carlos III after repeated outbreaks of plague, yellow fever, and cholera arrived by ship from North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. Ships entering Mahón — one of the Mediterranean’s finest natural harbors — were forced into quarantine if disease was suspected.

The word “lazaretto” itself means a maritime quarantine station. Before modern germ theory, isolation was the only real defense against epidemics. Entire crews, passengers, and even cargoes of cloth or cotton were detained for weeks — often forty days, which is where the word “quarantine” comes from.

What makes the Mahón lazaretto especially fascinating is that it was designed almost like a prison-fortress devoted to public health:

For sailors arriving in Mahón today, it is easy to miss just how important this place once was. In the 18th and 19th centuries it was effectively Spain’s maritime immune system.”

Here is an arial photo of the place. The harbor where we were anchored in in the upper area of the photo.

For more info check out this Wikipedia page. Fascinating. Sadly, due to weather constraints, we had to depart so we missed an opportunity to see this first hand. Perhaps next time.

We did visit town for a few hours to see at least something ashore. We also had to pick up the motor for the winch that was shipped to a local yacht club. We had hoped to spend a few days at their marina but had to cancel as we needed to leave very early the next day to head to Sardinia.

This view is from town, over the harbor and you can see how far it was to motor there. The cove was connected to the harbor by a narrow channel that is far in the distance, beyond what this photo shows.

I took that photo we were in the upper level of the town. Beyond the waterfront, the main town is hundreds of feet straight up a cliff and to encourage visitors to visit more than the dock area, they have a number of outdoor elevators. My first experience with an elevator that wasn’t part of a building.

The view from up top of the old town area. We would have loved to explore if we’d had more time. Have I mentioned that I wish we had had more time? Thought so.

So, here we are in Bosa with about a week until we fly to Rome and our flight to JFK and home. Lots to do with many boat projects that need attention and hopefully some time to do a bit of touring of Sardinia.

The plan for the fall is to fly back at the end of August for two months and to do some exploring of Sardinia, Corsica and then head south for wintering in Sicily.

While it’s not quite a “wrap” yet for the first leg of our 2026 tour, we are nearing the end of our first of hopefully many visits aboard Pandora over the next few years.

Season one, act one…

Now, with some luck, the next “act” will be more adventure and include less flexing of our Visa card…

Details to come as the list is long and will surely be expensive. No complaining, at least we are in the Mediterranean.

Could be worse…