TO THE MED VIA THE FRENCH CANALS

Let’s go to the Med!’ my wife and I decided one fine day. And it all sounded so easy. After all, we had sailed down to the West Country several times in the 12 months since we bought Zelda, our Freedom 33, and felt we had got the measure of the boat. Sailing to the Med would be the same, just a bit longer, surely? But of course preparing a boat to sail 70 miles from your home port is completely different to a 700-mile voyage ranging from the Atlantic coast to the inland waterways. At times just getting to the start line has felt like a full-time job, alongside a real full-time job and family life. At least we had the right boat for the project. When we bought our 1982 Freedom 33, one of the considerations was that we might want to head off to the Med in stages, and therefore we needed a boat that could be left unattended. We had narrowly averted several charming-but-impractical wooden boats and ended up with a boat with vast accommodation for her length and minimal varnish on deck – both important factors in an affordable home-from-home that might end up being parked in some distant destination.

But then Brexit happened, followed by Covid. Suddenly, sailing to the Med seemed incredibly complicated and, for