Every year, for the past 15 years, we’ve asked ourselves where we should cruise next? We would spend all winter researching, discussing, and planning, knowing full well that everything could change once we got back to Berkeley East. Still, we enjoyed the process. But with BE’s return to the United States, our winter routine will […]
Port Everglades, FL Berkeley East first arrived in Port Everglades, Florida in December of 2006. She was born at Queen Long Marine, in Kaohsiung Taiwan, put on a freighter, and shipped to Fort Lauderdale where we jumped aboard our new Hylas 54, and began what we thought would be a two-year cruising adventure. Nearly 15 […]
Genoa, Italy This phrase typically refers to becoming wealthy or successful, so it might seem strange, in a declining economy during a pandemic, that “our ship came in” but it literally did. The BBC Scandanavia docked in Genoa just for us, or more specifically, for Berkeley East. Most people would naturally assume that when we […]
Italy Berkeley East and crew have said “arrivederci” to Italy more times than we can recall. Sometimes out of necessity, often in search of a different country, or new adventure. But throughout the past 11 years, BE continually returned to wonderful Italia. And this year was no exception. While the season was brief due to […]
Italy Back on mainland Italy; back in Gaeta, Berkeley East’s winter marina for two consecutive years. We never imagined a return to our beloved Italia, but COVID thought otherwise, which presented us with an opportunity to revisit some of our favorite places in Italy. And a visit from Chris and Donna gave us the chance […]
Sardinia, Italy We made the 150-mile crossing from Menorca to Sardinia in calm conditions, under the guidance of a full moon. Rather than barreling into darkness (as is often the case with moving at night) Berkeley East bobbed along steadily, the only sounds being the hum of BE’s engine, and the squawk from the VHF […]
Caprera, Italy We have been very disciplined about flying the drone over the last five years and have completed more than 250 flights without incident. While the drone is not overly complicated, there are a lot of moving parts that need to be in sync. To manage this, we have a preflight checklist, just like […]
Balearic Islands, Spain We were in a shop stocking Berkeley East’s wine bilge and asked the clerk for Laurel, a Spanish wine that we were familiar with. He looked perplexed. We repeated, “Law-rehl, from the Priorat, Clos i Terrasses”. At that, his face lit up and he said, ” Low-relle’, si’!”. We knew that many […]
Barcelona, Spain That’s how long it had been since we left Berkeley East in Marina Port Vell, Barcelona Spain, 594 days. By far the longest we had not seen our boat since we launched her almost 15 years ago. Needless to say, we were elated to hear that Spain would be welcoming COVID vaccinated Americans […]
