Winter in Sicily

We found a large and friendly, international liveaboard community in Marina di Ragusa –  many from Holland [gosh it was quiet when the Dutch girls left!!] & UK, several from USA, Scandinavia, Canada, Germany, Belgium, Australia,  Spain & France, and a distinguished sprinkling from Malta,  Switzerland, Turkey, New Zealand,  Lebanon, Argentina, Iceland – and Sicily, of course!

  

I've done the fans and half the sole boards!

The marina is well spread out, making a bike or scooter extremely useful, even to get to the heads & showers.  There was very little swell inside, even in a gale, and fouling was far, far less than reported in other sites along the coast.  There are a reasonable chandlery and other yacht services – all of which take their time – an exceptionally helpful travel agent – RAVI – owned & run by Antonio, a bar, two meeting rooms available for social activities or any job that needs space.  To top it all, the office ~ run by Enza and manned by the delightful and helpful Fabiana, Silvia & Kay.

A note of caution – really DO wait for the marinieros to guide you in, especially if you draw more than 2m. – there is a shifting shoal patch and the entrance can get shallow. All essentials can be got in the village  [there’s a great little ironmonger where you’re frequently given a bag of organic tomatoes when you go to buy a battery or a pot of glue] a Eurospar supermarket, bakeries, gelaterias and quite pricey restaurants which stay open all year.  Also  an excellent pizzeria near the marina entrance which delivers during the winter months.  We had no personal experience of the boatyard, which is run by a different company, but it’s expensive, you can’t live on board when on the hard and there were a couple of boats damaged there during our stay  – Licata sounds a better bet if you want to be out of the water. 

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 But management is changing, apparently.  Very easy to reach Ragusa, Comiso Airport & Catania by bus – indeed this year, the marina were giving one complimentary return trip to Comiso Airport for each crew.

Marina di Ragusa, main square

If you were inclined and didn’t have too long a list of jobs, there were frequent social events ranging from to yoga classes, splicing lessons, karaoke nights and various nationalities hosting evenings of their own food & music.  Mike gave a talk on the salvage from HMS EDINBURGH one evening – I’m proud to say, there was standing room only in the meeting room, which means over 50 people.  Others shared useful knowledge about sailing in other  countries in the Med.

I attended Italian conversation lessons with Silvia, but fear I didn’t make much progress apart from in Italian gastronomy.  Attempts to steer the chat towards “please lay some acetone aside for me next week” were short lived, and we were back discussing some unknown [to me] veg in the market and how to cook it, or the merits of the wood-fired bakery in Via Dandolo.

The bill here was ALWAYS €5!

We consumed vast quantities of Vitamin C once the new orange crop started – delicious!

We were pretty busy.  Mike spent many uncomfortable & frustrating hours attending to the caulking in the cockpit & round our deck hatches [with great success – no more leaks] and there was all the usual servicing and checking – not to mention cleaning, polishing and endlessly removing coatings of the Sahara from any exposed surface.   I still prefer it to the green lichen growth of Argyll!!  

We commissioned a new helmsman's seat, which has certainly been a success on passage - but I need to increase the padding on the cushions I made, according to my seat bones and those of one of our guests!

The Sailing Nomads [directed by Marcel – looking like a handsome, scheming Bond villain - from his keyboard] produced two or three entertaining evenings – by the third, in a packed local restaurant, they were jolly good – sailors joined by the marina office staff & some bemused locals watching all the old rockers boogeying away to 60’s & 70’s classics.  As Mike and I walked back to the boat, we were passed by two of the teenage boys from yachts, scooting along.  One said to the other “Well, I don’t REALLY mind seeing old people dancing….”.  They were out of range before we heard anything to hurt our feelings!

Tommy - a close neighbour, 

There’s a real feeling of respect for others doing roughly the same thing, but in a huge variety of boats and ways – you don’t seem to get any of that one-upmanship sometimes experienced in home sailing communities – perhaps because we do all rely on each other away from our home ports, no matter what the budget or size of the vessel.  Whenever you had a query, needed help or advice, a tool or information, someone would come forward with it. 

Jean Paul, our closest neighbour, who literally got me out of a jam when Mike was up the mast one day!
Good to have a muscular mountaineer as a friend.

 I did a couple of stitching jobs for friends, Danielle from Nyctea managed to get our SSB radio  talking to my computer [which means useful information and the ability to use email far out to sea] by sheer dogged determination long after my brain had turned to porridge, Rick & Barbara from Far Out lent me “Big Red” – a winch attachment which basically electrifies it and enabled me to whizz Mike up & down the mast & shrouds with far less effort, Dave lent us a diesel pump so we could empty our tanks into drums, install taps at the bottom of them and measure it slowly on its return so we now know what the inches on the Tank Tender relate to [the fuel tanks are hull shaped, so this had been a mystery], Steve lent Mike his Sea Searcher magnet [twice…. the second time for his favourite screwdriver] Hospitality & many kindnesses from other people, including food parcels waiting for us when we’d been away .  It was fun to see friends we’d made in Lisbon – Plane Song, Lady Kathleen and Bella Luna - and we made a good variety of new ones and look forward to seeing you in other countries. 

We went back to UK 3 times to see family & for me to get a small knee op.  Mike went to Hong Kong to see son Jamie and we had a fascinating few days in Malta.

John & Jos O’Driscoll came over from UK & we had a good road trip to Etna – we were lucky with the lack of cloud – including a day on the train which goes round her base.  She had had quite a busy winter – flames spouting out when we were flying in from UK  [happily the ash blew away to the North!] – but is now dozing smokily again.

Etna from  our Agriturismo in

the orange groves to the South

Etna from Taormina

I planned a trip to Palermo’s Teatro Massimo as Mike’s belated 70^th present which is going to have its own post  - “The Best Laid Plans”….. as will our visit to Malta.

Lungo di Mare, Marina di Ragusa

So my trusty bike is folded away - many, many kilos of groceries later.......

Just about ready to go!

Perhaps next year’s winter jobs list won’t be so long, but Mike has already started writing it…..