There are a lot of things we love about a traveling lifestyle – the list is far too long to type here. If we did type it, though, one thing that would appear at the very top would be experiencing a touch of local life in the foreign places we go. It’s easy to be a “tourist” and see the sites and taste the food, etc., but to really get to know a place you have to go further than the tourists go, you have to go off the beaten path, you have to take more than a superficial interest in the culture, and most importantly you have to spend time getting to know local people. When we’re able to take those extra steps, the rewards for us over the years have been remarkable, and we’ve formed some of our most lasting and valued relationships this way. These people have shown us the world through a different lens, they’ve given us perspectives about life that fundamentally change the way we see things, and in doing so, they’ve expanded our minds, they’ve humbled us, and they’ve made us care about people and cultures everywhere, not just those close to home.

The reason I babble on about this here is because we’ve had just such an experience over the past few days Rapallo, thanks to the Pelloso family (to which our friends Lisa and Mara belong). By train, they took us to the Cinque Terre fishing villages, which are a must-see for anybody coming to this part of Italy. But the real fun began when they invited us to a family dinner at their hilltop home just outside Rapallo. This is where the Pelloso family ran a family business making olive oil, and today the house still has all the original production equipment in perfect working order – they could make oil tomorrow if they were so inclined. We learned about the olive oil machinery, the family’s local shoe companies, and the cliff-diving uncle known as “Tarzan”. We finished off the night at a local tavern telling sailing stories and getting so drunk that we forgot to wake up yesterday morning to leave for Monaco! Grazi (thanks) to the Pelloso family for such an amazing time – it was difficult saying arrivaderce (goodbye).

We’re now back on track after sailing most of the night towards Monaco and arriving there a few hours before sunrise. We threw the anchor just outside the harbor, snagged a few hours good sleep, got the sunrise pic inside the Monaco harbor, and are now on the motor in windless conditions heading for St. Tropez. We’re looking forward to a relaxing evening there tonight because we’ve got a big two-day passage to the Balearic Islands in Spain that begins tomorrow morning. Unfortunately this means we won’t have time to infiltrate a French family on this trip, but we’re feeling far too Italian for that right now anyway.

It’s been another few days of serious saling since we said goodbye to our parents on the gorgeous Isla d’Elba and headed north towards mainland Italy. This is the Portofino / Rapallo area where Europe’s rich and famous come to play, and it’s a fascinating experience to be here rubbing shoulders with them. “Exchanging glances” is probably more accurate than “rubbing shoulders”, but whatever, the point is that if we weren’t creative we could quickly blow a big hole in our budget being this far up north. But we’ve learned how things work here in the Med, and we know that where the harbor boundary ends, so does their right to charge us the expensive mooring fees. So while the big boys pay hundreds or thousands of euros per night to moore about a tenth of a mile away, here we sit on our anchor just beyond the harbor limits. Many budget sailors avoid these northern parts of the Med and our advice to them is to become more assertive about claiming their space on the anchor and to just do it. Forget about what anchorages are marked on the maps, forget about what the pilot books say… just find a sheltered spot, drop the anchor, back down on it to test the holding, and enjoy your free lodging because it’s 100% legal (we think) and nobody’s gonna say a thing.

We’re lucky to have our Italian friends Lisa and Mara here to show us around the place because they make us feel like locals instead of tourists. Yesterday it was Portifino and Rapallo, and today we’re off to see Cinque Terre. We could easily spend a couple weeks here exploring and photographing this incredible part of the Italian coast, but unfortunately that will have to wait until next time. We’re running out of time in this Mediterranean summer, and on Sunday morning we need to head west for the French Riviera, which luckily is less than a day’s sail from here. We can’t wait to “exchange glances” on Sunday night with our elite mega-yachtie neighbors in Monaco and St. Tropez who will be moored on the other side of the harbor boundary from us. And if the feeling isn’t mutual, well, frankly we don’t care.

Einstein said “Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity. .. and I’m not sure about the universe”. We can only guess about the universe, but after today we’re pretty sure he’s right about the stupid human part. That’s because we’re at the surreal site of the Costa Concordia shipwreck; itself the result of perhaps one of man’s most incredible examples of mind-bending idiocy, where Captain Schiatto drove a 300 meter cruise ship with 8 meters of draft into a rocky Italian bay about 1 meter deep. Why? So he could wave to a friend. The 300 meter half-submerged ship carcass sitting at the mouth of the Giglio harbor’s entrance may be compelling evidence that Einstein’s theory of human stupidity is as accurate as his others.

But the big story for us in the past 24 hours hasn’t been the shipwreck but rather the weather. After sending our blog post yesterday afternoon the weather forecast went from wrong to…. ya, you guessed it…. more wrong. As we entered the second half of the 85 mile passage from Corsica to Giglio, the wind kept building to 28 knots as a massive storm cell burst above us. Just as the lightning, torrential rain, and wind were all at a peak, a critical pin that holds the autopilot control arm onto the rudder snapped, causing the boat to lose its autopilot functions and forcing us back out on the deck to take shifts at the helm (steering wheel) for the rest of the passage. We landed safely last night, but because there are no services in Giglio, we spent the afternoon today fabricating a new pin in our mini workshop in the engine room.

The benefit in all this foul weather nonsense is that the photo opportunities are amazing. If anybody ever asks me for advice on how to take photos it would be this: look for nice big clouds, then find something to put in the foreground (doesn’t really matter so much what it is).

We got a late start to Isla d”Elba thanks to our autopilot repair, but we’re now underway with Giglio fading into an incredible sunset behind us and both sails full in very fast conditions. We’re trying to race around another storm system about three miles off our port side and so far we’re on track to…. well I better not say anything just yet.

Well, here we are again in the middle of one of our sailing rampages where we move huge distances over a few days to get to another part of the med. This time our decision to sprint north about 400 miles was driven mainly by the unusually good 20+ knot winds which have been blowing steadily to the north for the past few days. When we saw this in the weather forecast it was like being offered a free ride to northern Italy… and a free ride to northern Italy is something nobody should ever decline.

When we left Malta a few days ago, northern Sardinia (a big island to the west of Italy) was our destination. To break up the long passage we stopped for two nights in Trapani, Sicily, then hopped on the back of a big wind system yesterday morning for the 220 mile ride to Sardinia. This is the type of sailing we dream about. With 25 knot winds pushing us from the rear quarter, we cruised out of Trapani and crossed 180 miles over the next 24 hours, a new personal record. We also hit a top speed of 16.3 knots (17 mph) of boat speed, which is also a personal best, and we believe the fastest this boat has ever gone (although Gibby may correct us on that).

As we finish up this leg, with Sardinia now emerging from the haze on our port (left) side, we can’t help but notice that again we’ve seen not a single other sailing boat the entire way here. It seems the pace of our program, and the distances we are now covering probably puts us in a small group of the most aggressive cruisers in the med. Most yachties out here spend several months in each country, so it takes them years to see it all, while others blast across the southern route without seeing the most interesting parts tucked up in the north. We start to wonder if Tamarisk might see more of the Med this year than any other cruising yacht.

The greatest thing about these longer passages is the confidence we build from them. Before we started this trip in April, we had such little experience on the open water (neither of us had ever done an overnight passage) that the idea of a circumnavigation seemed a distant dream. That is no longer the case – we are starting to feel in control of this mission and understand that we can deal with the challenges when they arise and learn what we need to along the way. It would have been a mistake to wait until we were “ready”. We only have one life, and we’re glad we didn’t waste too much of it “getting ready”.