A month later, more of the same! What a mushroom season around here!

 It is now November in Istria and we continue visiting our numerous mushroom spots in turn, first for the interesting walks in the very nice forests, and then for the incredible recipes that we are eating everyday based on all sorts of mushrooms. This time, we have been exploring the are around the airport of Pula, just a few kilometres from home...  

And we found another untouched spot, probably too close to the city for having attracted the mushroom lovers looking for unexplored forests, as there is a fierce competition for foraging...

End of sailing season, September 2024, start of the mushroom season, October 2024!

Back to the blog for an update! The sailing season is over for us this year, after 570 nautical miles around Pula. This is not much compared to previous seasons, and can be explained by the number of friends and visitors we had over the summer, with whom we tended to sail locally, relatively bad weather in June and September, and a lot of work on top of that!   

Anyway, we are Mediterranean sailors now, used to the tricks of mooring in any port under any conditions, even if we still miss the Baltic!

A weekend in Brijuni

Even though our house is located just along the coast to Brijuni National Park, we never stopped there because of the "unrealistic prices" for a night in the Brijuni marina, namely 270€ per night for a boat like Belisama.

Belisama in Brijuni Harbour

Yet, with a full load of people on board, like 8 of us with nephews and grand nephews on board, it made sense since the boat mooring cost includes the 35€ entrance to the National Park.  

So we went in...

Back to exploring Venice, June/July 2024

We had accumulated a lot of photos from our explorations in Venice, but didn't have the time to process them. Now that we have a little more time, I've decided to show you a few of the aspects of the city that fascinated us.

Gondolas and squeraroli

Venice's gondolas continue to be handcrafted by the "squeraroli", the craftsmen who own “squeri”, the small shipyards still present in Venice's historic center.

Squero di San Trovaso in Dorsoduro

Pula to Cres Island, 7-11 July 2024

The Polesana Marina where resides Belisama is very close to the Pula arena, one of the best preserved Roman Arena in the world. Any visit to Pula starts with a tour of the Arena, and if you are lucky, you can attend to operas and concert during summer months, alternating with gladiator fights. 

Pula arena

Not to be missed! But more is to be seen along the coast...

Back to Pula, 25-26 June 2024

After almost three weeks wandering around the North Western coast of Italian Adriatic I was left with the task of bringing back Belisama from Rimini to Pula. Seventy-five miles, all together, so not such a big deal. Except that the weather forecast was most unclear...

Out of Rimini marina, waiting on anchor for a favourable weather window...

In theory, it is a a simple task to plan a cruise given the performance of the weather forecast nowadays. Except that they still have problems to take into account the very low scale coastal effects!

To Rimini, 22-24 June 2024

On 22 June, with no wind, we left our marina in Cesenatico at 10am, as our place was already reserved for the next boat. So we anchored in the outer harbour for lunch and then, benefiting from a nascent sea breeze, we set sail for Rimini, our final Italian stopover in these three weeks of Italian sailing. On the way, we're sailing with a traditional Trabaccolo under standing lug sail (the sail is always on the same side of the mast when tacking or gybing), which is making good speed under sail.

Trabaccolo, the traditional trade ship of the Adriatic under standing lug sail

We were going 4 knots under mains sail and genoa with 4 m/s side winds, and he was not giving-up to us!