Pandora’s Mediterranean Adventure Begins

Today we fly to Spain to begin our first season of cruising in the Mediterranean. This has been a long journey that began decades ago.

Brenda and I have been sailing together since high school in the 1970s, so at this point it takes something fairly significant to feel like new territory. This spring, I think we’ve found it. For the first two months, we will be heading out of Almerimar on Spain’s Costa del Sol and working our way east to — Cartagena, the Balearics, Corsica, Sardinia, until the beginning of June, where Pandora will be hauled in Sardinia for the summer. We’ll rejoin her in September for two more months aboard that will again include Sardinia, then heading south for a brief stop in Tunis to reset Pandora’s time in the EU to avoid the punishing cost of the VAT, before leaving her for the winter in southern Sicily. After this season? Who knows — likely farther east for a few more seasons of exploring the Med.

I will say that finding a way to become oriented to such a new area for cruising has been very challenging. In particular, finding a place to leave Pandora for three months in Sardinia, during the height of the season, at a price that I could afford was very tough. Using Navily to contact marinas, I sent out requests to dozens only to learn that the prices were just crazy. How about paying $12,000 for three months of storage? That was the highest but I finally found a place that would haul her for about $1,000 a month, all in. I could live with that. It turns out that there are not a lot of places that a boat can be hauled for more than getting work done and on-the-hard is less than even the least expensive in-water storage during high season.

How we got to this chapter is a bit of a story. After more than a decade of Caribbean cruising — the Bahamas, Cuba, the eastern Caribbean down to Trinidad, and just about everything in between — Brenda made it clear that it was time for something different. She didn’t specify where we should go next, only that “next” needed to happen. One of her suggestions was that we sell Pandora, buy a Beetle Cat, and she would sit on the deck of the Essex Yacht Club with a glass of wine and watch me sail back and forth in the river. Oh boy. Brenda, how about the Med? Fortunately, she agreed, so off we go.

My late father had once said to me, “Bob, wouldn’t it be great to take Pandora through the Straits of Gibraltar?” That comment had been rattling around in my head for years, and suddenly it seemed like a far better answer than a Beetle Cat on the CT River. Fortunately Gibraltar happened, not a tiny Beetle Catboat.

Last summer I sailed Pandora across the Atlantic as part of the first Salty Dawg Rally to the Azores — a rally I’d helped put together. After a month cruising the Azores with Brenda followed by what I’ll diplomatically call an “eventful” passage through the orca zone off Portugal, I made Gibraltar and hauled in Almería for the season. Brenda had joined me in the Azores for a month of exploring the islands, then flew to Scotland to pursue her own interests while I moved Pandora to Spain. She came home with a bag full of yarn. I came home with a lot of ideas about what lay ahead in the Med.

Our spring cruise runs April and May. We’ll start at Almerimar, where we have rented an apartment for a week while I we get Pandora ready to go back in the water. As soon as we can get a decent weather window we will make our first stop at Cartagena, which has one of the best natural harbors in the Mediterranean and more layers of history than you can take in on a short visit — Carthaginian, Roman, Moorish, you name it. From there we head out to the Balearics: Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza, Formentera. I’ve heard enough about those islands from other cruisers that I’m genuinely curious to see them for ourselves.

One issue for us is that we really want to be home in CT for the summer so that forces us to head back to Spain a bit early when the weather is still a bit unsettled as is witnessed by this view of the gribs today.

Not a lot of wind near us. Pandora’s current location, Almerimar is noted with the western most arrow. After that, to the east is Cartagena and then Ibiza in the Balearics

Fast forward two days and there is a lot more wind and from the wrong direction, the north, which more often than not is the case, especially this time of year. I understand that strong northerlies are common all the time but more-so early in the season.

From the Balearics we’ll cross to Corsica and then Sardinia. Both islands have reputations among Mediterranean sailors of being amazing, and we are excited to check them out ourselves.

Pandora will be hauled for the summer in Sardinia. When we return in the fall we’ll continue exploring the island before heading south to Tunisia. That stop serves a practical purpose — boats in the EU are required to leave every 18 months or face a substantial VAT bill, and a run to Tunisia takes care of that — but it’s also simply a place we want to see. After Tunis we’ll run Pandora to a marina in southern Sicily, pack up, and head home for the winter.

Here is the current plan for our first season, spring and fall.

Two Blogs, One Boat

I write about the sailing side of things here — passages, weather, what breaks and how we fix it, the people we meet along the way. Brenda has her own blog at www.argoknot.com, where she writes about our experiences as well but focused on weaving, spinning, knitting, and the fiber arts traditions she encounters wherever we go. She found a weaver in the Azores, spent time at Harris Tweed mills in Scotland while I was moving Pandora to Spain, and has her eye on what the textile culture of the Mediterranean might have to offer. We often experience the same trip very differently, which I think makes the two blogs worth reading together.

If one of you is more gung ho about cruising perhaps a look at what we do to make it fun for us both will be helpful. Brenda describes herself as a reluctant sailor, which is fair enough — she prefers a quiet anchorage to a passage, and a yarn shop to a chandlery. But she has put in a lot of miles with me over the years, going all the way back to when we were in high school messing around in boats together. I don’t take that for granted.

If you have cruised these waters and have thoughts on anchorages, marinas, or places not to miss, I’d genuinely welcome hearing from you. There’s a lot of ground to cover and I’m still very much in the learning phase on Mediterranean cruising.

I hope that our posts will help pave the way for others to explore new areas so wish us luck as we prepare for what will surely be the biggest adventure so far in decades of cruising together.

More to come, for sure…