In the sentiment of my blogging and general -living the dream- mentor Mary, things have been too good to waste time reporting on them! (or too hot to sit at a computer)
In fact, by a near miracle of coincidence, that very same Mentor Mary and her hubby Larry on Berkeley East happened to be sailing up the Ionians as we were sailing down, so despite years of not planning it, we had a mini Hylas Rendezvous in Paxos, Greece. Amante is on the the left, and the one month older, but looking brand new Berkeley East is to the right.

The miraculousness comes from a few factors:

1) Neither of us plan super far in advance (we don't plan at all) without ready back-out plans, plans b,c, and for us often even d. Then weather makes us do something else anyway.

2) We picked an anchorage that they have not been in and we spent 4 nights here last year, so we were the experts on this spot. What makes this more odd, is that we are simply following their cruise plan from 3 years ago (almost maniacally, I sometimes complain, but Neal reminds me that they went to all the trouble to write it down and then SHARE it with us, so we pretty much are following them anchorage by anchorage through the Med), and

3) They STILL agreed to meet up with us, not call the Coast Guard and report us as stalkers.


Those of you who remember, Larry and Mary invited us to a week of sailing Berkeley East in September 2011, and that trip helped us decide to bring Amante to the Med. Larry and I share birth weeks, so after a week of sailing and sweating in Sicily together, we celebrated birthdays, and hopefully, we can do it again this year, on Amante. We owe these guys very much. Grazie, BE!

Vanessa