This year we have Charlie and Andy aboard DreamCatcher. Hostess, Charlie, is an accomplished dinghy sailor who has competed for North Wales and also taught at competition level. Her parents own a hotel and she has recently been working in another 5-star hotel, so is no stranger to hospitality. Andy has also been involved with boats from a very young age and was helm and navigator for the Llandudno RNLI lifeboat until joining us, so you’ll be in very safe hands. He’s also a keen rugby player and is hoping Wales will be OK without him (fortunately George North is standing in!).

Matt and Joy are in charge of Kallista, and met whilst working aboard sailing flotilla yachts in Greece. Matt has been sailing since he was 10 and became really hooked after participating in a Tall Ships race. He started out as a yacht engineer and moved to skippering three years ago, so is already right at home with the technical side of running a yacht. Joy started sailing at the age of five and has raced in RS600, RS800, Fireball and Spitfire classes. She’s also an accomplished needle worker and has exhibited her work in the UK and in Paris – she even bought a quilt with her to work on over the summer.

Aboard Kishti we have Justin and Helen who’ve just returned from a circumnavigation aboard their own 46ft yacht, which they’ve owned for eight years. Before taking time out to sail around the globe they ran a boarding school as Headmaster and wife team – a job that can only be done by those who love people and have the skills to get along with everyone. Helen is also a qualified nurse, but returning from their travels they realised they couldn’t give up their new, more adventurous lifestyle and return to their previous work.

Everyone’s now getting to grips with their boats and practicing things such as welcoming guests aboard and safety demonstrations. On Sunday Matt and Joy cooked and served lunch and dinner, yesterday it was Justin and Helen’s turn, and today Charlie and Andy before we all relax at a team beach barbeque tomorrow!

What we’re really excited about is to be working with the Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust. The Trust is the official Race charity and Dark Star’s owner has generously donated her to the charity for four days, including for the race itself, so we’ll have on board a group of young people, as well as Ellen herself.

The Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust takes young people aged 8-24 sailing in order to help them regain their confidence following treatment for cancer. It takes a long time to recover from cancer, even after medical treatment has ended, and by taking groups of youngsters sailing for four days, the Trust enables them to reassert their independence, mix with their peers and gain a sense of control over their lives. It is probably the first time they’ve been away from their parents since diagnosis and during that time they can become hugely isolated, spending a lot of time in hospital and with adults rather than people of their own age. A sailing yacht provides a testing, but safe and supportive environment where they can become absorbed in a new adventure.

The young people aboard Dark Star will all have spent an initial four days on a smaller yacht with the Trust (normally 38-48ft), but at 90ft Dark Star is going to feel entirely different. It’s the first time the Trust has had the opportunity to provide a group of youngsters with the experience of a race start in the bigger IRC class. What a day it’s going to be for everyone. It’s hard to say who’s more excited at the moment: the Trust, Dark Star’s crew, her owner, or me.  I guess at the end of the day though, the excitement will belong to the young people on board. Hopefully, I’ll be aboard the chase boat with my camera and a very large lens, so there should be plenty of pictures to remember it by! In the meantime, here’s a few taken aboard the Trust’s own yacht with her crew enjoying the freedom of sail.

There were a number of trips to Corsica and Rich, who has been Skipper of Kishti for the past two years, took the fantastic photos below of Marina d’Elbo and Cap Rossu. Corsica never fails to delight with its rugged coastline and turquoise water bursting with fish. Even in the middle of summer there is still complete tranquillity to be found away from any crowds.

The Ligurian coast of Italy has also started to feature more on our guests’ itineraries. Several new marinas have now opened, which has made this coastline accessible to large yachts, adding Imperia and Loano as places to overnight on the way to Portofino. Dark Star also sailed the Cinque Terre region and on down to Porto Venere and Livorno, from where guests visited Pisa. Trish takes credit for the photos of Italy below that she took during the trip.

In October, as we packed away Kishti, Kallista and DreamCatcher for the winter, Dark Star went into the paint shop for the yachting equivalent of a facial – a hull re-spray. She emerged a month later on a grey November day with a very shiny, dark blue hull and left almost immediately for sunnier climes in the Caribbean. Rich and Lottie, who many of you will know from Kishti, have now taken over Dark Star as Captain and Chef/Chief Stewardess from Matt and Trish, who are currently enjoying a yacht-free winter on dry land for the first time in five and a half years.

But it doesn’t end here, we’re just re-grouping after the UK Bank Holiday weekend and all yachts getting ready to receive either new guests or their owners for the first couple of weeks of September. The weather is still fabulous and, as you can see from the photos I took yesterday, the Cote d’Azur really does love up to the name coined by poet Stephen Liegeard in 1887, with vivid blue sea and sky, perfectly set off by the rocky coastline and umbrella pines.

From St Tropez to Toulon, the coastline is wild and natural with craggy inlets which create the classic patchwork shades of blue and turquoise as you look down from the high capes. A succession of anchorages, some suitable for overnight stays, allow you to enjoy beaches and coves that otherwise can only be reached on foot via the ‘Sentir Littoral’, which runs along the whole coast and itself provides a pleasant diversion for a morning ashore. The snorkelling is also particularly good here, and who can resist a swim in that turquoise water?

Covering little more than a square mile, Port Cros has been a National Park since 1963. It’s a thickly forested hilly little isle, criss-crossed by tracks and trails for walking and edged with sandy bays and high cliffs. The village of Port Cros itself is no more than a few buildings lining the back of a dusty quayside, with an eclectic mix of small boats, yacht tenders, canoes and dive vessels tied up to the various floating pontoons. Its stately row of date palms and a couple of hillside forts contribute to the impression of an island in the French Caribbean.

Another similarity is that, along with the other islands in the group, Port Cros was  inhabited by pirates for some four centuries. Originally belonging to the monastery of St Honorat (situated on an island just off Cannes), the monks failed to prevent the Saracens from carrying off the islands’ inhabitants in 1160 and in the 1500s the pirates were regularly attacking French ships and even pillaged the nearby naval port of Toulon on one occasion. Francoise 1er built the forts in an attempt to become allies with the pirates and tame them, but his troops simply became pirates themselves, and later rulers had to re-build them.

Today, the island has a relaxed and unpretentious air to it; the quayside bars have no ‘lounge’ music, the yachts are mainly of the sailing variety and flip flops are the order of the day. Those who want to be seen are elsewhere, those in Port Cros are here to get away from it all. Watch our video and sail with Dream Sailing to Port Cros to see for yourself.

There’s good snorkelling, including an underwater trail to follow, and the area is a popular dive spot. Stephane at Sun Plongee offers guided dives. For eating and drinking ashore, I recommend l’Hostellerie Provencale – great fish, a tropical kind of ambiance and a lovely sunset view.

Crew members who can already ski or wake board were clearly in their element, whilst those for whom it’s still early days were less convinced that this weekend was billed as fun! However, here at Dream Sailing we know our guests love to have a go at wakeboarding and ringoing with the inflatables, especially the children, and everyone needs to know what it involves. Before we take guests out, we also need to discover all those little problems such as corroded zips on gear bags – not much good getting ready to go wakeboarding and then discovering you can’t get the tow line out of the bow bag!!

Not everywhere along the coast is suitable for water sports and in some areas such activity is strictly controlled, so we went off to Theoule-sur-Mer, a beautiful bay close to Cannes which is ideal. It’s a tiny place which presents the perfect Riviera vista to admire from a yacht: terracotta villas, crenellated towers, palm trees and bright dashes of bougainvillea. We also discovered a great beach bar called the Marco Polo – the ideal spot for aperos before your skipper comes to collect you by tender for dinner aboard.

Later in the evening, a small but dedicated band decided more wakeboarding was on the cards. Stef from DreamCatcher experienced a renewed rush of determination to learn to get up on a wakeboard and Rich from Kishti can never refuse an opportunity to get in the water, so off they went. By the end even the nav lights were on, but Stef managed her first 50 yards or so standing up and they were finally allowed home.

Sunday morning showed the Riviera at it’s best: azure blue sky, crystal clear water and the promise of a good breeze for sailing later. But first, a short trip around to the village of Port Cros itself. This is a tiny gem of a place, more than a little reminiscent of the French Caribbean; relaxed and unpretentious with it’s old fort on the hillside and row of tall palm trees in front of a few little bars and restaurants.

Next an exhilarating sail back to the mainland, anchoring in the Bay of Cavaliere for lunch, before heading back to Port Grimaud. As you’ve probably guessed, it’s a tough life being a test guest, but you do have to do some work – during and at the end of their stay on board, our testers do have to make observations and deliver feedback to their crew. They have high expectations, just as our real clients do, so weekends like this present crews with situations and challenges that they will have to deal with throughout the summer.

Brigitte kindly shared her expertise and passion for the wines with us, teaching everyone how to select appropriate wines to suit both the occasion and the food they are to accompany. This was all followed by a tour of the ‘cave’ to see how the wines are produced and a classic French lunch of bread and cheese, accompanied of course by a glass or two of rose!

It was a beautiful day to travel up into the countryside of Provence: blue skies, roses in full bloom amongst the vines (they are planted as a warning signal as they succumb to any pests before the vines do), and meadows full of poppies. A great way to discover the centuries of tradition, the importance of the ‘terroir’ (soil, slope aspect and so on) and the hours, weeks and years of dedicated effort that goes into producing a bottle of wine. Our guests can certainly look forward to some very enjoyable quaffing this summer.

It was back to work afterwards and the yachts are now sparkling. Everyone has also had a go at serving lunch and dinner aboard as well as being guests for each other, so we’ve all eaten very well this week. Sails are going back on today and tomorrow and then it’s parking practice for the new skippers (with lots of fenders to hand!).

As well as all the hard work, there’s been time to relax with a welcome dinner at the now famous ‘Monique’s’ restaurant, which opened specially just for us last Wednesday, and a beach barbeque with tag rugby tournament. The rugby went down so well that I think we may have a crack team looking to challenge the yard staff and probably the marina staff when we get to Port Grimaud. We even have a mascot – a large soft toy dog which Rich rescued from the recycling corner of the yard. He’s yet to be named, but it looks like he’s now a permanent crew member and is due for an honorary whirl in the washing machine before his next appearance!

The Dream Team beach party