Croatia had been thought of as a possibility in the autumn of 2002.  Arthur and I talked about it in the Blue Lady.  Albie and June were keen to go in their new boat and gradually the initial idea started to evolve into a plan.  In November while visiting Rudi in San Francisco I sat at his computer overlooking the Bay and sent an e-mail to all my sailing friends outlining the plan and asking for volunteers.

I floated the idea to Tim that the regular Easter Cruise this year could be a one way trip from Antibes to Rome and he jumped at the idea and it wasn’t difficult to persuade four others to join us.  Easyjet makes it easy to fly one way to Nice and then Rome back to Luton.  All we had to do was get Compromis from Antibes down to Rome in a week.

Rarely have I been utterly stumped putting a cruise together but this time I was looking at a big hole when out of the blue two friends, Tim Snelling and Ian Chearman, both phoned to say they would love to come for a month starting at Rome.  Later Ian phoned and asked if his friend Stewart might come for the first two weeks and I was only too happy to have another crew member.  It was a great adventure and two articles “A Day Out in Ischia” and “Strombolli” come from this part of the trip.

Mike Travis’s mother is Italian and lives in Fano. He was keen to fly out to Ancona on the east coast of Italy, sail to Fano and then on to Venice.  Peter Townroe and Mike J also wanted to come on that leg.

Liz was going to fly down to Venice at the beginning of June.  Liz’s Canadian cousin Margaret e-mailed to say they would love to come to Venice and then have two weeks cruising Croatia.  Tim wanted to bring Anne for a week, Ian and Enid wanted to come for two weeks and suddenly the plan breathed into life.

The icing on the cake was when Sue and Richard signed up for the trip from Croatia to southern Italy and a young Australian couple, Kate and Andrew, asked to sail up the west coast.

Liz and I would have three and a half weeks on our own in Croatia, over a week sailing round the foot of Italy and as it turned out, from Livorno across the Golf of Genoa back to Antibes.

Thanks everybody.

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