Images from the Summer Season

We are now back in San Remo, Italy after a busy but enjoyable summer season cruising all around Southern Italy, Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica. Since joining Solea we have travelled over 3500 nautical miles, visiting many different places along the way. Here is a selection of pictures from our summer.

Colin Wakeboarding Kate Wakeboarding in Sardinia

Panarea, Aeolian Islands

Stromboli Volcano blowing

Solea underway near Panarea

Colin & Arend watching the Stromboli Volcano erupt

Kate & Amelia

Sunset at Panarea

Kate kitting up in the martian suit for a fire drill!

A Hotel in Calabria where we escaped to for a long weekend away in August! Colin next to our dinky car we rented for our getaway!
As we found ourselves down some very small streets we were quite grateful we rented such a small car!

A Busy Month!

We can't quite believe it is a month since we last updated our blog! The time has flown by. After leaving Kotor we travelled to Siracusa in Sicily (pictured below) and spent a couple of days there getting the boat ready before the Owner and friends arrived for a one week trip around Sicily, before heading up to Naples. The temperature reached 46 deg C and there was hardly any wind so it was unbearable at times.
After leaving Siracusa, we motored around the bottom of Sicily to Trapani before going onto the Aeolian Islands at the North of Sicily. The picture below was taken whilst on anchor off Panarea. The volcano on Stromboli can be seen blowing a little on the left. We then headed up to Ischia before arriving in Naples at the beginning of July.

We had 24 hours after the last guest left to turn the boat around before 8 charter guests arrived for a one week trip around the islands off Naples. We were lucky to have great weather for the first four days of the charter and cruised around the Pontine Islands (Ponza is pictured below).

After heading back down to Capri the wind and sea state started to pick up. We had 40 kts of wind with a swell up to 3 metres at times. We ended up staying on anchor in Capri for a couple of days until the weather improved. We were obviously in the best anchorage as there were boats joining us from left, right & centre, including the 140m Rising Sun!

Due to the large swell we were not able to lift the tender and put it on deck to I drove it from Capri to Naples. As there was still quite a swell running I spent most of the trip tucked in behind Solea! The RIB is 7.8m and does 30kts. It is a pleasure to drive!

We had three days in Naples, giving us two days to clean the boat and a day off before picking up our next charter - 10 guests for two weeks.

Pictures of Kotor

The town of Kotor and the surrounding area is stunning and unspoilt. There were only three large yachts at the town quay, including Avella (33m) who were moored next to us, plus a handful of smaller yachts. The people were all very friendly and the majority spoke English. The town is full of short narrow streets leading to small squares.

The prices are incredibly low and we could hardly believe how cheap things were, especially food and drink. Kotor is quite a popular place for tourists so its amazing that the prices have still been kept low.
We left the town of Kotor at 1.30pm and motored out of the 'fjord' towards the Adriatic. The trip to Siracusa, Sicily will take us about 42 hours, so we should arrive first thing Tuesday morning

Kate and the Captain watching the ferries crossing ahead of us!

Arrived in Kotor, Montenegro

After an overnight passage we arrived in Kotor, Montenegro at 9am this morning. It is stunning! We have this afternoon and tomorrow morning off so after lunch we will be going off to explore Kotor.

The plan is to leave Kotor at 2pm on Sunday and head to Siracusa, Sicily where we are due to pick up guests on Wednesday.

Summer Season Underway

We left San Remo on Saturday 16th June and headed for Brindisi, Italy, where we were due to refuel before going onto Kotor in Montenegro. Solea is not stabilised and not long after leaving we started to roll and when the wind and sea state started to pick up it started to get a little uncomfortable. Thankfully once we were past Cap Corse the conditions started to improve. As we were doing well for time we anchored off Panarea on Monday afternoon for a couple of hours.

We enjoyed a lovely crew lunch outside followed by a quick swim and some sunbathing. The water was a bit chilly and there were quite a few jelly fish so we didn't stay in for too long!It was a nice way to break up the trip and at 4pm we set off again, going through the Messina Straits at sunset. We arrived in Brindisi at 9am on Wednesday morning.

Our plans of a quick stop were soon changed when we heard that a prospective buyer wanted to come and look at the boat so we had to quickly get the boat looking good for a viewing on Thursday afternoon!

The port of Brindisi is very commercial and seemed to take a long time to get anything done. It was quite amusing when we went to refuel as we had a fire engine, the police, an oil sludge truck, a garbage lorry, fuel tanker and the yacht agency all on the dock! A bit different to the normal fire extingusher next to the fuel pump!

We left Brindisi (where nothing is easy!) on Friday afternoon and motored overnight to Kotor, Montenegro. A place none of us have been to before so all looking forward to it.

Solea in San Remo

We spent our first week onboard Solea securely tied to the dock in San Remo, whilst we got our heads around the boat! It was great to have this time to go through everything. I am lucky as the old Mate is onboard until the end of June but unfortunately for Colin, the previous engineer has already left so he doesn't get a handover. He is figuring it all our for himself, once again!The boat is very different to what we are used to and everything is of commercial size so its going to take some getting used to!

I celebrated my 29th birthday whilst in San Remo and was suprised by the crew with balloons and banners in the crew mess as well as some lovely presents and an awesome chocolate birthday cake. We went out for dinner in the evening to celebrate.

As we were pretty busy we only managed to get a quick look around San Remo. We did get to meet up with some of the crews on the other boats and on our last night we enjoyed sundowners on the rocks behind the boat.

New Job, New Adventure!

We arrived in Palma last Monday and just as we have started to get settled into our rented apartment we have to pack up and fly off again! But it's good news as we have got a new full time job together on an interesting boat!

We will be joining Motor Vessel Solea (below) in the San Remo, Italy next Friday. She is a 36m converted research vessel and is both charter and private. We have always wondered about working on a boat like this so it is fantastic to now have the opportunity and it will make a change from sailing yachts for a while. We will be joining as Mate and Engineer and will be cruising around Croatia, Malta, Sicily and Southern Italy for the Summer.

You can see more pictures and read about the boat's history on www.mvsolea.com. We fly to Nice in the early hours of Friday 8th June to start our new adventure!

Heading Back To Palma

After working on Mirabella3 for the winter season we decided it was time to move on. Before leaving the Caribbean we were lucky enough to enjoy a couple of nights at a lovely hotel on the beach (and next to the runway, so Colin was in his element!).

We are currently back in the UK before flying onto Palma to do some relief work. Whilst in York we enjoyed a day of dinghy racing on the river and even managed to beat the other two boats in our class!

A Well Overdue Update!

It's been a while, so here is an update on what we have been up to.

Throughout March we were kept busy on Mirabella3 trying to get on top of all the maintenance jobs ready for the crossing back to the Med. We were based in St Maarten during that time so we both managed to buy new gadgets!

Whilst the boat underwent a paint job in St Maarten we took four weeks off and it's been fantastic!

We first flew to the UK where we enjoyed a few days in York before heading off to South Africa for three weeks. We stayed in Joburg for a few days, then couple of nights in the Midlands before flying down to Cape Town.

We had a great time catching up with family and friends as well as days out to the Winelands, a game reserve and a helicopter flight over the Cape Peninsula. This is something we have always wanted to do and it didn't disappoint us!

The last few days of our holiday were spent in York, plus a quick visit to Ullswater in the Lake District.