Something new everyday

Since we started sailing a month ago, I have been trying to put in place a new ‘routine’ mode for the family, to match our new life style. The only routine that we were able to establish so far is to get up at 7 am and to go to bed around 11 pm (9 pm for the kids and lights off at 10 pm). This is still very basic and I am afraid that we will not be able to keep this routine when we will have night navigations. We’re still working on this.

Everyday we adapt our journey to our environment, everyday we have a new challenges and/or surprises. One day we found a floating garbage bag (full, yiiiick). We picked it up and we took it to the next marina.

Two weeks ago, we were in Porquerolles in France without a dinghy, we spent 4 days around the island until we got our new dinghy – this might sound like it’s nothing, but being on a boat without dinghy is like being locked at home.

Porquerolles is beautiful and we enjoyed it, the beaches and the island’s village. We never stopped in Porquerolles in the last 4 years. The last time was when we first visited Soledad (our sail boat) before buying it.

Once we got our new dinghy in Bormes-les-Mimosas, we stayed in the marina for 3 days due to windy conditions. We tested our new dinghy, enjoyed this quiet Marina, did our laundry and built up the provisions for the next days.

From Bormes we went to Antibes, it was beautiful to sail in the Esterel (the red cliffs). In Antibes, we spent time with friends and family. Around us were by the biggest yachts of the world (it was Cannes’ film festival and Monaco’s GP), it was a good time to leave for some more quiet places.

Then we left France for Italy. We are sailing in the Ligurian sea ; we added a couple of map and links in our blog’s home page for you to follow our trip. We are enjoying Italy, the coast is beautiful (but the water is… dirty, to say the least), finding an anchorage in Luguria is difficult: the coast goes down deeply in the sea and the areas with shallow waters are filled with sewer pipes. We got good tips from the sailors in Facebook groups, big thanks to the french group. We are using also using navily to find the anchoring spots. It’s not been windy at all for the last week, so we progress at low speed but we have plenty of time to try good areas.

Spending all the day together in the boat with the kids is not always easy, I would like them to sleep more (i.e. earlier), but we are not able to manage them to go to bed earlier or to take a nap during the day, we are still very slow with the sleeping rituals.

We have also realised that they are not very resolutive, they are asking us to do many simple things for them, probably because they have always been assisted in that way – it is always faster/easier to give them what they want instead of asking them to find what they are asking for. As we have time now, we are asking them to come with proper solutions. We are already seeing some small improvements.

They are still excited about helping us when sailing (hoisting sails, closing the lazy-bag, etc.) and they are doing quite well with all the ropes and monitoring others boats on the AIS.

We are all getting adapted to the school hours, depending on our day we do before sailing, during sailing, after sailing or we replace school by a cultural visit as we did in Antibes when we visited Picasso museum.

Practising Yoga is helping me to keep zen and enjoy the family and the beautiful trip. I found my yoga spot in the boat and as soon as I can, I practice. I tried the stand up paddle but water is still cold for me to practice regularly.

Yesterday, we had a new incident: the water pump failed (we were no longer able to have fresh water on board), actually it stopped working during our daily navigation. Hopefully, my super handy husband had a replacement for it, he changed it on the go. Then at night, he took time to finish the work correctly.