Arriving back to the UK just as Storm Bert was in full swing, swiftly followed by Storm Darragh, really reminded us of one of the reasons we embarked on our adventure! However it's been great to see friends and family, attend a few parties and buy some hard to get boat parts.
We have also had time to discuss plans for next year. We came back home partly to better align our first 90 Schengen days of 2025 with warmer weather as we intend to go a little bit further north early in the season and don't want to go while the colder weather and storms were around. We have a broad plan for the start of 2025.....
When we get back to Turkey we will have 20 or so days left on our visa, half of that will be taken up on boat jobs, mast out, haul out, change anodes and polish etc. We will then have a week or so in Turkish waters before heading over to Greece and taking 6 weeks to cruise the southern Cyclades and the West coast Peloponese, arriving in Corfu area in mid April. Hopefully it isn't too crowded in Greece at that time. From there we can hop across to Albania and cruise north to Montenegro, remaining in those two countries as long as we find them interesting. They are both outside Schengen, which is really helpful. From there we may pop into Croatia (inside Schengen zone) but the intention is to return to Turkey again, taking a further 6 weeks via the Corinth canal and the northern Cyclades. We should arrive there in mid July, depending on how long we stay in Montenegro/Albania. After that, no plans yet. We will have to remain in Turkey until we 'earn' our Schengen days back, but an ambition is to sail into Istanbul, how cool would that be!! We can't do that until Autumn due to the prevailing Meltemi winds in the summer so some detailed planning work around visas is neccessary. We also need to decide where to winter next year, our broad plan to go to Tunisia is suspect as the marinas are full already! Which reminds me to get onto a waiting list if such thing exists...
We'd love to hear of any suggestions regarding must see places to visit on the above route, so please comment if you have some. Otherwise, you now know where we will be, let us know if you fancy a visit onboard for a few days. It would be great to see you.
We have Christmas and New Year, followed by grim January weather, to look forward to before heading back to Turkey. We will try to write a couple more blogs before then prior to our most interesting boat jobs starting!
Happy Christmas!
