First Sail

Rewarding ourselves at lovely local café 100m from marina. The food here is stunning.

What’s behind door number 1?

Believe it or not, we are tidying up. First we pull everything out… Here I am about to open the last lucky dip locker.

Another shopping expedition into town. Unexpected purchase was parking ticket for missing one of their confusing rules. I was just glad to squeeze into a rare carpark in the tiny streets designed for horses.

Very excited to see if the boat actually moves and leave the marina!

Portovenere looks better today and from the deck of our own boat

Remember these cliffs for later.

Colour tones are about the wind temperature for today…

Time to break out the tools again… Outboard service before first start.

Yes, this is me going slow. Need to hold on when going fast!

Kids turn

Favourite photo of the boat so far.

Kids turn at school work in bomb site

Got very excited to see our initials on huge container ship. Then noticed they come into La Spezia every second day.

Favourite activity on home gym.

Exploring the church on the point on first shore adventure.

Amelia’s Titanic impression. Not shown is the heart stopping moment for Shannon when she realised Amelia was on the edge of a sheer 300’ drop. Remember cliff picture above…? Not much Health and Safety in Italy.

A few of the lifejackets we inherited onboard.

Not a bad view for the evening.

Looks pretty good in the morning too.

Yay, the sails work too! 7.2 knots close hauled at 35-40 degrees into 17 knots is not too shabby baby for our cruising cat.

Way too windy to try and get back into the marina so we had lunch in San Terenzo.

Explored some back alleys trying to get to view point.

Nervometer off the scale for first attempt at berthing with the wind calmed down to a mere 18knot cross wind… Ended up spot on. Phew.

Warning. Objects in picture are closer than they appear.

Nice of the Navy base next door to provide a couple hours of entertainment.

Little bit of relaxing DIY removing a cupboard intruding into head space when walking into the hulls. Shannon bumped it one too many times.