Winter Home – Cartagena

For the past two winters, we docked in Licata, Sicily. This winter, we chose Cartagena, Spain. We arrived in September with Dad and Jeff, and over the past five months we have had a few visitors and some intermittent land travels. The longer we’ve been here, the more we’ve come to love it. Here’s why… […]

Sitting with Uncertainty

I’m a planner. An implementer. Give me a project or a destination, and I kick into high gear. But ask me to dream up a grand vision or hand me a blank tile in Scrabble, and I freeze up. Stupid, but that’s the way it is. Conor is much stronger at the latter, which is likely […]

What did you do today?

One of the things we absolutely love most about having Sabática is that we have been able to share the lifestyle, adventures, and amazing places with so many family and friends. It’s incredibly special when the majority of our guests would never normally experience anything like it. This can absolutely be said of my dad, […]

Spain – Plan B

As usual, we had many guests arriving and grand plans. Also per usual, the weather dictated something different. We were greatly looking forward to exploring the Balearic Islands, as were two groups of our guests. Unfortunately, with the timing and inclement weather, we ended up sticking to the coast of mainland Spain instead, not that […]

Perspective

My dad has always told me that in life you have to keep things in perspective. Cruising along on a boat on a vast sea is a great way to see that one is but a mere drop on this earth. When you can see majestic mountains, ancient towns, beach vacationers, huge variety of ships, […]

Mission Impossible?

We left Sardinia on a mission. We had three and a half weeks and around 700 nautical miles(!) to cover before we were due to collect our next guests in Barcelona. This trek would see us traversing the coastline of the Italian and French Rivieras and crossing the wild Gulf of Leon. We chose to […]

Irish Family and Circumnavigation

Well, we did it. Around 450 nautical miles. Five (leisurely) fabulous weeks. We 100% circumnavigated our first island and then some. We couldn’t get enough of Sardinia. To help us finish our cruise around Sardinia, we were joined by Conor’s brother (Darragh), our sister-in-law (Cathy), and our two Irish nephews (Cormac and Luke). Cormac was […]

Our Favorite Place in Italy

At this point, we’ve traveled fairly extensively through Italy. As an elderly Italian man once said to us, though, you could live ten lifetimes and still not see all that Italy has to offer. He’s probably right. Vacationers flock to Italy for good reason – the food, the natural beauty, the history, the culture, the […]

Texans in Sardinia

We were looking forward to collecting my brother (Lonny), sister-in-law (Nicole), nephew (Ben), and cousin (Jon). Ben had never been aboard Sabática before, but everyone else was a repeat customer. 🙂 Of course, we had grand plans – We’d collect them from the northeastern city of Olbia, spend time in the beautiful and popular Maddalena […]

The Strait of Bonifacio

We had one week to go before we were due to collect our next crew in Sardinia. The main obstacle in our way was the Strait of Bonifacio, a narrow body of water (11 km / 6.8 miles wide) that divides the French island of Corsica and the Italian island of Sardinia and separates the […]