Currently in Alcudia, Mallorca, and feeling like we’ve touched a milestone in our cruising having closed the circle since leaving here and navigating around the east Med.

It was 14 months ago we cast off from Mallorca to head east and link up with the East Med Rally. 

In the period since we’ve spent 9 months on the boat essensially sailing.  We've covered 7,474 nautical miles on the way and enjoyed visiting Sardinia, Sicily, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Croatia, Italy and of course, the Spanish islands themselves.

For the statistically minded, we've also consumed 3,680 litres of fuel, and had the engine running for for 868 hours.  Often that’s been simply to charge the batteries (it averages around 3 hours per day), but it does show our consumption has been 3 litres per hour and approx .7 litres per mile covered.

Low spots?  Truly none. 

High spot?  Hard one this, but possibly sitting on a Croatian restaurant balcony and looking down enjoying a telented young couple singing for all the patrons, in the street below.

What no one could see except us, was that over a high stone wall off the street and behind the couple, an eight year old girl in a floral dress was dancing her heart out to the music.  As she spun around all alone, eyes closed, arms raised, toes going, she was clearly in another more magical world.  And just for those same five minutes - so were we.

Where we’d avoid if we were to do it again?  If I had to chose, probably Israel.   

Where we’d revisit? Definitely Croatia.

What’s next for us? 

Well first, a few jobs to get Swagman back to top form and prep her for the adventures of getting over to the Caribbean.  Full engine / sail drive service, get her out of the water to sort the keel coating, add on electronic man-overboard gizmo, and a long list of other tasks.  It’s looking like Lagos in Portugal is the best place for us to get it all done, so our plans are to meander back across the Balearics, on to Gibraltar, then Lagos for early September.

Cheers

JOHN