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Time to go South

Imagine looking out at the world from the deck of a boat, looking over the blue-green sea to tiny coves in bays on tiny islands. Perhaps just off the French coast near Marseille or in the fabulous Porquerolle archipelago. Imagine watching cuttlefish and flying fish and dolphin. Saint Tropez calls you but you turn south to Corsica and its magnificent mountains.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in a space 33 feet long by 10 feet wide? Imagine it: a bedroom, a shower and toilet, a living area with a cosy settee, a kitchen and a balcony all squeezed into that space. Then imagine inhabiting this space with another person for six months; then shape the space in your head until it resembles a boat: pointed at the bedroom end, fat in the middle and square at the back of the balcony.

Now try to picture the beautiful turquoise water in the Costa Smerelda on the northern coast of Sardinia and throwing your anchor into a deserted bay. Cupping your hands to scoop up water and letting the molten turquoise trickle back through your fingers. Or hovering under water and being surrounded by a moving wall of fish.

You might want to pull out the sails and sail from Sardinia to Palermo in Sicily. In Palermo you can explore the fabulous architecture or shop on the Via della Roma – if you are wealthy. Maybe you will enjoy the excitement of the legendary whirlpools of the Messina Straights where, in Nelson’s time, the Admiralty issued warnings about the forces lurking in the sea and Odysseus fought Charybdis and Scylla. The Messina straights that, once you are whooshed through, opens the way to the foot of Italy and on to Greece.Maybe you can imagine seeing the hundred thousand million stars far out at sea as the Milky Way meanders through the velvet black night sky. Or the moon, bright red like a fire on the horizon, climbing into the dawn sky. Maybe you want to see and smell a volcano. And perhaps you can imagine the feeling of seeing Greek islands north of Corfu after a voyage of six months. Maybe…

And if you can imagine any of these things then come into our world; it's Time to go South.

Ann Berry is an avid diarist. She has travelled widely starting as a kibbutzim in her university days and continuing throughout her life. She began sailing also in university and has shared ownership of two sailing cruisers since the late ‘90s. Everywhere Ann travels she details in a series of diaries that form the basis of blogs and the book Time to go South. She has written numerous article for sailing periodicals.

Our Amazon Author page is here: amazon.com/author/berrydavid

David Berry is passionate about writing. He has written over fifty articles for the popular computer, electronics and sailing magazines. He also enjoys writing short stories and has written two novels based on his career as a designer of naval systems. Sailing entered his life at the comparitively late age of forty initially in dinghies on the local lake then flotillas in Greece and Croatia before he and Ann bought their first cruising yacht; a 27 foot Sabre. He wrote Time to go South when he thumbed through Ann’s diaries one day and found himself laughing aloud at the memories it invoked.