Having spent most of the past six years cruising the eastern Med aboard our Nordhavn 46 passagemaker, Envoy, “what do you do all day?” is the question commonly posed by family and friends.
We don’t feel the need to be constantly “doing things”, sometimes it’s nice just to feed visiting ducks
Before going to the Med we spent over 25 years cruising the north-east coast of New Zealand’s North Island, mostly between Whitianga and Whangaroa, when many of our days were filled with fishing and diving. Even when setting off for a few weeks we’d only take meat for the first night out, knowing the rest of the time ample delicious bounty from the sea would feed us.
The Med seems to have plenty of fish. Now this seems a controversial statement, but virtually every coastal town or village we’ve visited has its own commercial fishing fleet and a fish market displaying species ranging from sardines to swordfish.
Most of the larger villages have a fish market
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But we’ve observed very little leisure fishing in the Med and most fishing boats use long lines or nets, so we’ve mostly given up fishing except for trolling to put the occasional tuna on our table.
We don’t spend much time fishing, but our late friend Brian caught this small tuna, trolling a lure
We do plenty of snorkeling in the Med’s largely pristine clear waters, but in most areas you can only scuba dive in an organised group; this is to protect the many easily-accessible historic relics.
Get the picture? We have plenty of time on our hands compared with our NZ boating – how do we fill it?
So here’s another controversial statement. While the North Island’s north-east coast has some stunning coastal and offshore island natural scenery (as does much of the Med), in our opinion there are very few coastal towns or villages offering much of interest to see. Yes we enjoy visiting Whitianga, Coromandel, Oneroa, Tryphena, Warkworth, Whangarei and Russell, but even some of this pick of the crop are losing part of their olde worlde charm to over-development. On the contrary the northern Med coastline and offshore islands have countless delightful towns and villages, dripping with atmosphere and loaded with quirky shops, rustic tavernas and historical features to explore.
When you anchor off a Med village there’s always heaps to see ashore (off Cefalu, Sicily)
Tavernas don’t come more rustic than Alibaba’s in Turkey
The dynamics of living on a boat overseas are quite different to going away for a few days or for the summer holidays in your own country. For a start you have to navigate yourself safely through unfamiliar waters without the support structures we take for granted in NZ such as Coastguard, VHF-radio trip reports and weather Nowcasting. Then you need to do time-consuming routine things like replenishing stores, laundry and the maintenance that back home you’d leave until your return to the marina.
So what does a typical Med cruising day look like?
It always starts with checking the anchor, bilges, fresh water tank levels and engine room. This takes from 30 minutes to about an hour, depending on what needs attention; for example topping fluids, adjusting vee-belts or running our diesel polishing system to fill our day tank. After checking the latest weather forecasts online, next on the agenda is nearly always a swim. What we do next depends on whether we’re going to remain at anchor or cruise somewhere.
At anchor we run the generator for about 90 minutes to charge our batteries, run our refrigeration and heat our hot water tank. Sometimes we extend the generator’s running time to do some laundry and operate the water maker. After breakfast we usually spend several hours using our RHIB to explore the nearby coastline and interesting areas ashore.
Buying supplies is very different overseas – you can’t drive your car to a familiar supermarket and load up! With our granny shopping cart in tow we first have to find a shop then locate the items we need among the unfamiliar and foreign-language printed goods. To complicate matters large supermarkets are rare so we generally have to visit several shops to buy all we need. In countries like Turkey, Greece and Italy the shopping process is regarded as one of life’s pleasures rather than a chore, and involves tasting different delights such as olives, cheeses and salamis while bantering with shop assistants and other customers.
In most Med countries food shopping is a pleasure rather than a chore
Very often the owner-operated shops will then offer a complimentary glass of wine in appreciation of your custom, and more discussion follows. Finally we have to hump our purchases to the RHIB and take them out to Envoy. To reduce the need for mammoth shopping expeditions we nearly always buy small quantities of heavy stuff like vegetables, milk, beer, coke and wine when going ashore.
Humping supplies back to Envoy using the RHIB – note all the small commercial fishing boats
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Back on board we allow one or two hours daily for the ever-present maintenance, then 1800 hours will generally find us in the cockpit, cold beer or wine in hand reflecting on the day’s activities and making some plans for the next few days before we fire up the barbecue for dinner.
If moving on we up-anchor after our swim and get under way before we have breakfast – one of the advantages of a stabilised displacement hull is that you can do most everything underway except in particularly rough waters. We find the next exotic location, and do it all over again!
