Sailing Talisman Archive – Page 2

Talisman finally heads south from Scotland, bound for Camerey Sur Mer, France. This is our first big passage and we bring Iain Hunter of Hunter Yacht Deliveries with us. Iain did all the heavy lifting in terms of getting the boat back into working order af...

After making the run from Troon, Scotland to Camerey Sur Mer, France, we head out across the Bay of Biscay to A Curuna and then Bayona, Spain.

We begin settling in to the cruising lifestyle. Bayona is a charming town with lots to do, so we get to it, taking a walking tour and also visiting the castle. This posting is more about the town and less about sailing. We'll alternate episodes between get...

After months of hard work, we finally manage to get our dog to the boat. It's a wonderful time for both Wendy and myself, and of course for Doc, who probably thought we'd abandoned him. Starting in Baiona, Spain, we head for Vigo, pick up Doc, then cruise ...

Leixoes, Portugal: The Doc dog is settling in nicely and we visit the city of Porto to see the Graham's port distillery. But our plans for departure are interrupted.

Boat maintenance is an ongoing thing when your're cruising. Here in this short video we repair a fairlead that failed catastrophically.

No sugar-coating it. Our wonderful Golden Retriever of 13 years is gone. We mourn daily.

After our disastrous stay in Leixoes, Portugal (losing Doc), we swallow hard and head south to Cascais, which turns out to be the perfect respite.

We leave Cascais, Portugal and head 128nm south to the lovely town of Lagos.

In this departure from sailing down the Atlantic coasts of Spain and Portugal, we take time for a minor upgrade. This is a project video, showing install and wiring for the Fusion Audio wired remote control product. A bit about how these things go into a b...

We continue heading south toward warmer weather and finally find the beaches we were told of.

We leave at 2:00 am from Rota, Spain for a passage down to Gibraltar. See our Patreon page at: https://www.patreon.com/sailingyachttalisman

Following our major furler failure, which damaged our sails and scared the crap out of us, the furler becomes the center of attention for a full rebuild.

This is more of a maintenance video, as the Hood Formula electric mainsail furler we disassembled in the previous episode is reassembled, painted, installed, and used. There is a real skill set to using in-mast furling systems of all types, and I list some...

We see a weather window to leave Gibraltar for Ceuta, but then get hammered on both ends.

We get a full tour of the Amel Super Maramu, a classic bluewater cruiser. This is the boat made famous by Brian and the rest of the crew on s/v Delos, and is much beloved worldwide. Of course we had to show off Talisman too.

We finally head east and north, across a long expanse of Mediterranean open water. It's a big passage, nothing like our short shakedown across the Strait of Gibraltar. We pass through weather fronts and sail during the night dodging shipping traffic.

We finally tackle a finicky Fischer Panda genset that's been shutting itself down prematurely. I'm sure some viewers will see too much time spent barking up the wrong trees, but the point is to show how hard it can be to diagnose problems.

We get up early to make a long day run to Alicante, Spain. The sailing conditions were epic, and although we were close hauled for the first half, later it was beam-on and fast. What a joy it was!

We take our two friends, Shanna and Kelly, aboard for a passage over to the Balearic Islands. From Ibiza town (as opposed to Ibiza island) we head over to Palma de Mallorca and the Oyster Brokerage outpost there. As promised, the Oyster folks totally took ...

We add some new Raymarine i50 and i60 (wind, speed, depth) instruments to our system. These plug directly into the new SeaTalkNg backbone and eliminate the last vestiges of the legacy ST1 system. Here's how we did it.

Talisman continues east, landing in Menorca.

Talisman's wonky bilge pump wiring is finally addressed.

A long open water passage from Minorca to Carloforte, Sardiana. But along the way, a favorable tidal stream and brisk winds shortens our trip by almost 12 hours, leading to an almost dark arrival. The channel into Carloforte is notoriously tricky and it's ...

It's hop skip and jump up the southeastern coast of Sardinia.

From the Island of Sardinia we head across open water to Rome, on the mainland of Italy.

We leave Rome and head east under growing winds to the small island of Ponza, with its one small town and protected, Roman-built harbor. Talisman lies at anchor in an adjacent cove while we explore. You step back centuries in time.

We arrive at Procida, just off Naples, to find ourselves in the midst of a huge party.

Talisman continues east, reaching Capri and the famed Amalfi coast. Life is good. Having lived aboard the boat for almost a year, and covering over 4000 nautical miles, the daily groove of sailing from place to place is starting to seem normal. The small ...

More easting for Talisman. We motor-sail from Sapri, Italy to Tropea, where they have a nice marina and repair facilities. Tropea is getting us close to the mouth of the Strait of Masina, the heavy shipping zone that separates mainland Italy from Sicily, a...

It's rare that we post a title like this one, and we count that as a good thing. Watch the nitty-gritty of an almost disaster, including an overview of how Navionics does charting on modern chartplotters and devices. Finally, it's our 15th wedding annivers...

As the title says, it's time for a big hop and the 3-on-3-off watchkeeping rotation that we all love so much. Our trip begins with the dreaded currents of the Strait of Mesina, where we dodge ferry and fishing boat traffic. Then it's out into the wild blue...

From summer of 2018, a short (but sweet) episode where we make a stop at the small harbor of Fiscardo, on the Greek Ionian island of Kefalonia. We take an afternoon to dinghy to the adjacent bay to observe the technique of long-lining. Back in town, Talism...

As we enter the early summer of 2018 in Greece, we find some real gems. We're still learning the habits of Talisman, our Oyster 485 sloop, but she's a rugged and spirited boat. She doesn't steer in reverse very well, but with practice things start to come ...

Sailing in Greece is so much fun. The bareboat and charter operations take up a lot of room, but we like having people around and the mood is universally festive. For this portion, in the middle of a week of dead wind we actually find an afternoon of 20 kn...

Talisman finally gets some bruises. No matter how hard you try, these are the types of things that eventually happen. We've been cruising full time for almost a year now, and this is the first issue of the kind. Join us for some fast sailing and a close ca...