Sailing Kujira

Part One: applying for the visa Sometime in late 2019; For weeks or even month now, I have been trying to find a solution to allow Kim, as a New Zealander, to stay in Europe for more than the 3 months allowed by the Schengen tourist visa. The rule is simple: you can stay inside the Schengen area only up to 3 months within a time frame of 6 months. Pretty much all the country we have planned to visit or stay in are part of the Schengen area: Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Germany, Malta. Only Turkey and Croatia are left as escape options but the latter is meant to join the Schengen area later this year leaving very little options for visitors / sailors to cruise the Med for an extended amount of time.  One evening over dinner, I again tell Kim my frustration about this restriction and the only 2 options I have found. The first one is an old agreement post world war 2 which entitles Kiwis and Australians to stay in most European cities for up to 3 months. When the Schengen area was cr...

     Maybe one day I'll tell the story on how we got there, but it is a long story and I have been to busy or lazy to keep track of all the adventures we had on the way. Right now we are being tossed around by a slope sea, a head wind and a head current. It is by no way what people would call a dangerous weather, or as a matter of fact a bad weather either. The seas are just sloppy and with very little wind we are struggling to get any momentum out of our 14 tons whale, aka KUJIRA. Kim feels a bit nauseous and I am reflecting about choices I made in the past couple years. If travelling by boat is like that, the next few years are going to be very uncomfortable... It is Wednesday the 11th of May 2022 and we have finally left La Grande Motte / Grau du Roi and its flamingos after more or less 5 months of refitting an old Amel Maramu 198 which, fortunately, wasn't meant to be a project boat. We are under a self imposed time frame so we turned left as we left the port and star...