MEDITERRANEAN CRUISING NOTES
We moved aboard in August 2006 in Florida and are currently cruising the Mediterranean.We are used to arriving in a new region without knowing where the best anchorages and harbours are to be found. Equally important to us is where to find groceries, butane, a wifi connection, a laundromat, a chandlery and a couple of good restaurants.
When we cruised the Caribbean we found this type of information readily available from the many well-written, quirky, cheap and amusing cruising guides. The cruising guides are part pilot, part travel guide and part restaurant guide.
It was very convenient to have all this information available in a single source.
We have not found the same combination of useful information in a single source for most of the Mediterranean - despite there being many more sailors in the Mediterranean than the Caribbean.
Rod Heikel/IMRAY publishes an excellent albeit expensive set of pilot books that pretty much list every good and bad anchorage in the Mediterranean. Unfortunately this can quickly equate to too much information on marginal anchorages and not enough on what is equally important to us;
Where to go, where to avoid, what to do and where to do it. How to decide where to go when there are a hundred anchorages listed?
Wiley Nautical's Cruising Companions are far more useful to us and contain all the information we need. Unfortunately so far they only cover portions of the Greek Islands
Our Moonstruck website provides a good indication of the places that we have found interesting and why. The purpose of these Cruising Notes is to supplement the commercially available anchorage information with our own observations, and to add useful information about onshore facilities.
This is not intended to be a comprehensive guide. We assume that any cruisers in these waters are using Heikel and Wiley Nautical already. We will only 'write-up' an anchorage or harbour if we have visited it ourselves and we feel that we have something to add to the information available elsewhere.
DISCLAIMER:
This Cruising
Notes guide is provided as a free service. The information is believed
accurate at the time the location was visited but the author has taken no
additional steps to verify the accuracy of this information, or to ensure
it is up to date and therefore shall in no way be responsible for any
consequential, incidental, or exemplary loss or damage resulting from the
use or misuse of any material for navigation or any other purpose.
No publication can
replace good judgment, experience and firsthand knowledge and the prudent
mariner will not rely on any single aid to navigation.