Sea Change

Before we left Genoa we did some serious Genoa shopping. We are filled to the gunnels with pasta, delicious cheese and proscuttio and enough delicious vegetables to feed a large Italian family for a week. We also did a trip to Iikea and have bed slats , yet to be installed plus much miscellany. We were unable to find any cutlery in Porto Rico to replace the awful set on board so were excited by the wall full of cutlery. "That's the one!" Ange said excitedly,"No, look at this one!" I replied. Luckily we were looking at the display version and the boxed set of the same cutlery.

We are now in Le Grazie, a pretty little anchorage next to La Spezia. There are three boats rafted up together next to us where they are having a 30th birthday party. We have had a couple of friends join us, who had to get up at five am to fly out from England so hopefully exhaustion will allow them to sleep through it. They are very experienced cruisers, not sailing themselves this summer as one of them has a hand injury, but we are talking of doing an overnight passage with them to give us experience for the one we need to do between Sardinia and Sicily.

We have had a couple of wild days coming down the coast from Genoa, to Santa Maguerita de Ligure, then to Sestri Levante, then here. Yesterday we had three metre swells and 29 knots at one stage. We were both on antio-biotics which make you seasick on land so took it very hard, especially when the anchorage we had planned to stay in yesterday was too rough so we had to continue another three hours to here. The boat seemed very safe though and our extensive herb garden and new potplant escaped unscathed. We have stayed in some beautiful places, and saw Cingua Terra looking very spectacular from the sea.

Its funny to hear of snow storms down south in New Zealand when have had our first swim in the Med today. Slowly turning into little brown monkeys is still our hopeful plan!! My favourite shorts have ended up around my ankles a couple of times, luckily nowhere very public.