Lindisfarne – Forgus 37 – 7,5t (over 9t fully equipped)
Summary from five months sailing, Turkey – Slovenia
April –  September 2003


Kemer – mid April
Lindisfarne was left on the hard in Kemer, Turkey, last November.
Now coming back we found a healthy and well looked after boat just to launch and get ready.
It was still unsettled weather before the summer started.
After saying goodbye to old and new friends we set of for another five month of exploring in the Med.

EMYR
During the winter we agreed to precipitate in the East Mediterranean Yacht Rally that would take us to Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Egypt in a group of 60 boats. But in time for the start the route for the rally had changed due to the Iraq-US war. We choose to sign off and went to Cyprus instead after going a bit further east along the Turkish mainland

Cappadocia.
As soon as the boat was in order and fully provisioned and the weather was favourable we started heading due east. First goal was Cappadocia, a fantastic area about 300 km inland.
The sceneries, the people and the well organized public transporting system made the trip well worth three days off boat.

Cyprus
We visited both sides of Cyprus just in time as an agreement between Turkish and Greek Cyprus took place. It was mostly a change that made it possible for the Cypriots to cross the border and unite with relatives. For us coming from the sea it was in fact no change of formalities. We spent some nice days in different harbours and anchorages and saw a lot of the island.

Turkish mainland coast going west
After Cyprus we sailed along the Turkish mainland, first south coast and then east coast all the way to the Greek island Lesbos in the Aegean Sea. Sailing in Turkish waters at this time was easy and we found lots of interesting places and the people were very nice.

Greece
Last year we entered the Greek islands east of Peloponnesus via the Corinth Canal. This time we made the trip west on the south side of Peloponnesus and found lots of small beautiful places. Among them Monemvasia, which is a small island similar to Gibraltar in profile. The island has a fantastic old village where the time stopped many hundred years ago and on top of the island is a monastery.
Coming around the south tip of the mainland we entered the Ionian Sea where the islands are green in opposite to most of Greece. We sailed among the islands for three weeks before heading north.

Adriatic Sea
This is the last part for this year and was completely new for us. We didn’t stop in either Albania or Montenegro, instead went directly to Croatia.
Croatia has a long coast with lots of bays, villages, marinas and anchorages. The downside is that this is the main area for mid Europe yacht owners. It is a big business trailing big boats to Croatia and Slovenia each summer.
Although we didn’t find it overcrowded as we mostly stay on anchor.

Trailing Lindisfarne back home – September
Quite late in our planning we found out that we wanted to have Lindisfarne back at our home yard for the winter. This second period of test sailing for a longer period had made us certain to continue to plan for long time cruising, and for that we needed to bring the boat back to be able to do all alternations we have in plan…
The trailing business is full of operators and we found one with an excellent driver who took Lindisfarne safe all the way to Gothenburg. Not cheap but compared with taking the boat all the way along the coast back to Sweden would have cost us 5-6 weeks plus lots of fuel and marina fees.

Summery – two seasons of test sailing
No doubts – we will plan for leaving on a long term sailing as soon as possible.
Total 3500 nm 5 months
Year 1998-2003 = 17 780 nm

See – Album – some pictures from 2003

Annika & Björn
Lindisfarne
www.sailaround.info