Francesca

Morning swim 🏊‍♂️. Morning sail. Which was wonderful! ⛵️ Then motoring back to base, back past the Cinque Terre 🏠🏞. A really nice voyage exploring the Ligurian coast with an amazing gang of people and great food! 🍝

Camogli is my favourite place 🤩 on the coast I think. Stunning village with cute little shops and great restaurants. They have a very cute little book shops with tons of choice and terraces for kids to play ball etc.. We had dinner at Molo 16, they have really amazing food I highly recommend it. Predictions were for 70cm waves but it was well over 2m, still didn’t stop me from falling asleep a few times on the way after the massive meal. Camogli is not very sheltered in the bay and have few to no spaces at all in the harbour so we trekked it back to Rapallo to be inside the wall⛵️ We still had a bumpy night but nothing stopped my sleep 💤 Note to self, always close the hatches before you leave port/bay no matter what the forecast say

Around the cost from Rapallo to Portofino there are some stunning houses and yachts. Stopping in Portofino can be tricky, mega yachts titanic size moore up in the tiniest bay you have ever seen whilst us plebs are left to anchor outside of the port without being in the way of ferries and other traffic. Portofino is gorgeous and very small, there is a castle and church at the top with beautiful views. Things tend to be pricey so maybe try and aperitivo instead of a full meal there. If you are in tune vein for splashing out 💰 you can try to get a place at Cracco (hugely renown Italian chef) which opened a restaurant there. Also get your binocular out for celebrity spotting (we saw Tommy Hilfiger yachts for instance). Make sure you carry on from here until Camogli (gorgeous and more authentic place) and you can stop to San Fruttuoso on the way where you can see a beautiful abbey and a +2m height Christ sank in the sea that you can see on good visibility days from the boat or scuba to it. It was placed there to honour the death of Dario Gonzatti one of the first Italian scuba divers who died during an immersion in 1947.

So we have been “Smart working” as the Italians call it for the last 3 weeks in Italia. We are keen to move here A) So that I can improve my Italian and B) Because I have fallen in love with the sea and have never spent any time living on it! So we will be here until mid September 😍 We are in Fezzano a small village 30 minutes from Cinque Terre, 10 minutes from PortoVenere and 15 minutes from La Spezia in Liguria. It has been amazing to swim and explore the small Villages before and after work. Of course I am keen to get as much sailing in as possible and my plan was to find crewing opportunities or sailing clubs and sail as much as possible in the evenings and weekends - Turns out there is not as much demand for recreational crew in the beautiful med vs December in England so it has been difficult to find opportunities. There is a great FB group however called BLA BLA sail where you can find chances to join skippers on their boats for a decent price (About €80 a day). The trick is to find a boat where you actually get the sails up! A lot of the boats seem to be pleasure cruises more than sailing :-/. We found a great boat and arranged 3 days sailing the Ligurian coast. It was nice to leave from Fezzano Marina having been staring at the Marina for weeks dying to get on a boat. The day started with Prosecco, salami, and sea bass Ravioli as all sailing trips should 🇮🇹🍝🍾. We sailed out of the gulf of poets. So called as the area was a favourite spot for Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, George Sand, Petrarch and many more. It was great to see all of the marinas and villages we have been exploring from the sea! Dodging the expensive boats and Mussel buoys hanging around Portovenere we lost The wind and motored up the Ligurian coast getting a close up view of Cinque Terre the beautiful colourful houses nestled into the hill side as can be seen in Wolf of Wall Street and the recent Disney Pixar Luca. We are settling in for the night on Anchor in Rapallo, there will 100% need to be a tender trip ashore for Gelato 😍🍦. I have also started reading Frankenstein in Honour of Mary Shelley and was surprised to see that it begins with a sailors tale!