With the summer starting to wind down, Dream finished up her trip through Croatia and Montenegro, then headed back around the southern tip of Italy and into the western Mediterranean (this is Dream in Hvar, Croatia).

We had a week or two before the next trip so I took the chance to fly up to France and see Vix. It happened to be whilst the Monaco Yacht Show was on, so we caught up with a lot of friends and ate far too much good food.

When I got back to Dream one of the crew had brought me an Apple iphone back from the States so I have been fiddling with that and getting it to work here in Europe.

With a little fiddling I have managed to get the facebook links you see to the right up and running. I have put some more detailed notes on how to do this here.

With the weather getting a little cooler but most of the ports and anchorages nice and quiet, we have spent the last few weeks cruising from the Corinth Canal up to Kotor in Montenegro (see left).

We had a few days to enjoy Montenegro before cruising up through Croatia to Venice, around the time of the Venice film festival.

The last week has been spent on the return trip including two days in Hvar, which is one of the nicer towns we’ve been to in Croatia.

Although we only spent a few days in Turkey we got to see some beautiful spots (and some of the hottest weather we’ve had in a while). Starting our trip in Gocek we visited Marmaris and Bodrum before heading to Santorini in Greece.

Our trip through Greece was also only a few days long but we saw the islands of Mykonos, Spetsai, Hydra and Poros before dropping off our guests in Athens. I then got the chance to drive Dream through the Corinth Canal (see photo) and we headed north again towards Croatia.

This photo of Bonifacio was taken by Jamil who is the deckhand on Dream. We spent a night in Bonifacio during a trip around Corsica at the end of July, before we headed east for the three day passage to Turkey.

Dream will be cruising the SW coast of Turkey and the Greek islands for a week or two before heading back to Croatia and the Adriatic.

The south of France has been hit by one Mistral after another this year and we have been dodging the worst of the bad weather whilst cruising up and down the Cote d’Azur. Dream also visited Santa Margherita, where Vix and I got married, it was a little overcast (see above) but it was lovely to be there again.

Dream recently spent a day or two anchored off Cap Ferrat (see left) where there are some of the most expensive properties in the world.

Vix popped back to the UK for a quick visit but is now back in Antibes and looking forward to starting her new yacht management job in Monaco at the end of the month.

Whilst travelling a fair bit, as you can see from the title of this post, it’s been hard to find a few minutes to take some photos and get them posted here.

After Cavtat Dream headed around the southern tip of Italy and up to Naples on the west coast. We had a few days there so I had the chance to pop home for a very quick visit (about 36 hours, so sorry for not catching up with everyone), before flying down to France to see Vix who is living in Antibes.

Back on Dream we then cruised our way up to the Cote d’Azur and picked up guests in Monaco for a ten day trip. As I write this we are in San Remo, Italy tied up next to Mirabella V (above), the worlds largest sloop. That mast is 90m / 292ft high!

Dream’s first charter of the summer went very well and we were lucky enough to have a day off to enjoy Cavtat, a little town right at the southern end of Croatia, where we did a little wakeboarding and enjoyed the beautiful weather. In another few days we’ll be heading back towards the western Med.

Cavtat is only a few miles from Dubrovnik which has an amazing old fortified port. We were there at the same time as six cruise ships so there were thousands of tourists making it a little crowded to say the least.

In the busy few days leading up to the start of the summer season, I was lucky enough to have the chance to take a boat trip around the canals of Venice.

As Vix and I found out last year it really is an amazing city.

There is a lot of restoration work being done at the moment, and many of the ‘Palazzo’ need considerable TLC to get them back to the way were in Venice’s glory days, but with a new flood prevention barrier being built at the entrance to the lagoon hopefully Venice’s future is safe despite worries over global warming.

I have just signed up with Joost, the online TV service from the guys who came up with skype. So if anyone has a fast internet connection and wants an invite email me or add a comment to this post.