Europe Cruising

Since our return to Santa Teresa di Gallura on the north coast of Sardinia on 10 June, Starr has traveled to Bonafacio and Cala Rondinara in Corsica, and down the east coast of Sardinia to Cagliari in the south. From Cagliari we jumped off to Sicily, traveling through the Egadi Islands off the west coast, to Cefalu on the north coast, northeast to the Aolian Islands, south through the Straits of Messina to Siracusa on…

By Peter Trogdon: A Voyage at Sea M/V Starr: Le Rochelle, France to Palma, Spain As I woke to the familiar rolling motion and the drone of the large diesel engine I could sense it was already daylight. I had no idea what day of the week it was, but from the sun’s two warm glowing spots on my cabin wall I knew our direction. I knew, while I was sleeping, we had made “the…

La Rochelle 1 May 2004 (All times listed: Greenwich Mean Time) As I am writing this, I am sitting in the Pilothouse traveling NE from Gibraltar to Ibiza in the Islas Baleares. It is 0700, sunny, with light winds out of the NW and calm seas. Each day it becomes warmer as Spring becomes more pronounced and as we proceed further into the Mediterranean Sea. Today is the first day that I have had the…

When we left Ft. Lauderdale last in June to cross the Atlantic we planned to land in La Coruna on the Northwest corner of Spain. During the passage we changed our plans and decided, instead, to land at La Rochelle on the Bay of Biscay on the West Coast of France. We picked La Rochelle because whenever we mentioned that we were going to visit, friends and strangers alike would wax poetic about how La…

STARR arrived in La Rochelle on July 6, 2003. On our second day in this charming seaside town we went to Le Marche, the year-round daily farmers market, and decided to make La Rochelle our home base for the remainder of the year. We were partly tired from just finishing our Atlantic crossing and we were partly weary of the past two years of constantly moving across the huge distances of the South Pacific from…

La Rochelle became our base for cruising in the Bay of Biscay, North to Brittany. While we visited many of the beautiful islands between La Rochelle and Southern Brittany, the Ile de Re, Ile de Yeu and Belle Ile, our best times were spent cruising up the many rivers to the old market towns that once were the lifeline of commerce in France. The Bay of Biscay is very shallow, many places there is barely…

The World is divided into two kinds of people and I want to be completely honest with you. I am a “cat person”not a “dog person”, but Comme Vous is a sneaky little fellow. He clowned his way into my heart, and now I am completely smitten; J’adore Comme Vous. The first week after we arrived in La Rochelle we met Comme Vous and son maitre, Jean Claude, on the docks in L’Ancien Bassin des…

STARR arrived in La Rochelle on July 6, 2003. On our second day in this charming seaside town we went to Le Marche, the year-round daily farmers market, and decided to make La Rochelle our home base for the remainder of the year. Partly we were tired from just finishing our Atlantic crossing and partly we were weary of the past two years of constantly moving across the huge distances of the South Pacific from…