Many cruising people have found out the hard way how expensive mobile phones can be abroad. Subscribers pay for incoming calls and if the message divert is left on, large bills can build up even when the phone is turned off. A dial-up internet connection on a mobile would be ruinously expensive, and prohibitively slow. But used properly, a mobile phone becomes an essential item on board – especially within Europe where coverage is so widespread. A new ‘always-on’ internet connection has now achieved virtually world-wide coverage and allows a mobile phone to access the internet at speeds similar to a dial-up connection on a land-line. GPRS (General Packet Radio Service and not to be confused with GPS) can now be installed simply, to interface a laptop to a mobile phone at a reaonsable cost.
(more…)

Andrew Smyth explores the first of the Mediterranean’s three largest islands. To follow Sardinina and Sicily.

Corsica is a place that relishes contradictions. It’s French, but closer to Italy. It’s fiercely independent, yet utterly reliant upon economic support from the mainland. In the winter its mountains are covered in snow, while in the summer it has coastal deserts where rain is almost unknown. The main body of the island is little bigger than Devon, yet it retains its own language and the narrow 20-mile-long peninsula to its north, appears as a finger raised at the rest of its Mediterranean neighbours. With a challenge like that, how could we resist? Corsica is the Mediterranean’s third largest island, yet there can be few places where such contrasts can be found in so compact an area. The bleak dark cliffs of Cap Corse to the north lead down to the white limestone fjord of Bonifacio in the south. The Edwardian frontages of the Ajaccio boulevards on the southwest contrast with the gritty commercial city of Bastia on the northeast. Every few miles the coastline seems to change character, and even the weather can vary wildly from one place to the next. There can be fresh winds on the west coast, gales on either end of the island at Cap Corse and Bonifacio, while the east coast enjoys a gentle breeze. What more could you ask of a compact summer cruising area?
(more…)

While many places in the Mediterranean lay conflicting claims as the location of the adventures of the Odyssey, there is no doubt about the position of Scylla and Charybdis. These twin perils of the Straits of Messina still exist, although the lethal force of the whirlpool of Charybdis, off the Sicily coast, has since been tamed by an 18th century earthquake. The whereabouts of the six-headed monster, on the mainland opposite, is unknown, but her home in the cliffs of Scylla remains to this day. It was here that Odysseus, in his anxiety to avoid his ship being sucked into the vortex of Charybdis, sailed instead too close to the mainland, where Scylla emerged from her cave and plucked six of his men off the deck one in each of her jaws.
(more…)

Trevor and Dinah Thompson prepared their first Adriatic Pilot in 1984 aboard their 26ft junk-rigged Joletta, their home for two years

It started during our honeymoon. We sounded our way into a small river on the Gower Peninsula and found a perfect anchorage behind the dunes, overlooked by a ruined cliff-top castle. We sketched the approach across the beach, took soundings, and worked out the best place to anchor. We shared these notes with friends, and were flattered when they followed our directions and visited the same anchorages.
(more…)

Cruising World profiles this well known company that celebrates a centenary this year

or Imray, Laurie, Norie and Wilson, the Second World War brought an end to two hundred years of chart publication for commercial shipping, and their future looked bleak. At first they turned to fishing boats. Alan Wilkinson, their senior cartographer, recalls: “We got into association with a skipper from Grimsby who used to give us information and we started producing a series of our own charts called Kingfisher. We went right out to Barents Sea and White Sea.” But the Cod Wars eventually killed off that market and they turned to yachting, and adapted their tradition of “packaging” charts to cover popular yachting areas, using numerous large-scale in- sets for the most popular ports. But the big change happened just thirty years ago.
(more…)

After eight years with a motor boat in Spain, Bryan Lewis and Dawn Strawford made the unusual change to sail

Bryan and Dawn have kept Ten Large, their 60ft Moody, in Langkawi island for the past two years and they couldn’t be more pleased with it. They are both relatively new to cruising, and bought the first of their two Princess motor boats in Ampuriabrava in Spain just eight years ago. “We used the boat almost as a caravan and when friends came, we’d go off round the bays, but nothing really very adventurous”.
(more…)

Potential purchasers of properties in the new “Boardwalk” development at Sovereign Harbour, Eastbourne, should soon be having fun living there. This is just part of the ambitious development plans for this fast-growing marina.
(more…)

The South of France east of Marseilles is now virtually out of bounds to anyone seeking reasonably priced waterside properties with berthing. But west of the Rhône there are two new developments about to come on line in the emptier spaces of the Carmague. Port St Louis is known to most Mediterranean cruising people as the place where the Rhône finally arrives at the sea. Its marina is well known for offering relatively cheap over-wintering, and now a new development affords sailors the the comforts of dry land.
(more…)

The cruising world is getting smaller. Low-cost airfares now reach places the others couldn’t, and inter-continental flights are common-place and relatively cheap. In this, and future issues, Cruising World will feature residential and marina developments which offer new possibilities of enjoying the sea, from a boat, balcony or both.
(more…)

Add fifty years of communism to a country so remote from the sea that most of the countries that surround it are themselves landlocked, and it becomes difficult to imagine a place less suited to yachting.
(more…)