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Tag Archives | Nordhavn
Passagemaking with a Nordhavn 2015-08-03 21:14:53
BOATING ETIQUETTE
In New Zealand we’re fortunate that the majority of skippers have some degree of competence and sense of courtesy to others, and that we have a sensible and reasonably enforced set of Navigation Safety Rules.
But cruising around Mediterranean countries it’s an entirely different story and we frequently observe poor behavior on the water ranging from the discourteous to the downright dangerous – for example failure to observe collision regulations, crew bow riding on high speed vessels, anchoring too closely, and speeding or water skiing between anchored vessels and close to swimmers.
Most aggravation that occurs seems to revolve around anchoring, speed, wakes, jet-skis and noise and I’m going to take a light-hearted look at these issues.
The first people in an anchorage have priority and should expect skippers of later arrivals to respect their space and peace as much as possible. But this doesn’t mean they can have the anchorage all to themselves; how often have you slowly cruised into an anchorage to see one or two other skippers standing on deck, unsmiling, with hands on hips and negative body language intently watching your every move? You approach their stern and drop your anchor about two metres behind them.
“Why don’t you drop your anchor in my cockpit?” is sometimes asked aggressively.
I’m often tempted to reply, “yeah I was aiming for it but missed”.
There is nothing wrong with laying your anchor immediately astern of another boat or even close alongside it, as your own vessel will drop well back behind them respecting their space and privacy.
Sometimes you will anchor your boat safely clear of and in front of another whose skipper will yell out, “hey your boat’s over my anchor.” There’s nothing wrong with being over someone else’s anchor, provided you move your boat if necessary when they want to retrieve it. This is not to be confused with laying your anchor or chain over the top of somebody else’s, an understandably annoying practice.
It can be a good idea to buoy your anchor in rocky anchorages so that if it gets fouled you can retrieve it more easily (though this doesn’t always work). However some skippers have the annoying practice of using buoys wherever they anchor, probably with the aim of keeping other vessels away. The problem here is that as boats move position with tide and wind changes the buoy’s line can foul another boat’s running gear. Buoyed anchors and stern anchors have no place in a busy anchorage where all boats must be able to swing freely, and if another vessel’s anchor buoy becomes a hazard you should politely ask her skipper to remove it.
Nowadays we see much larger planing vessels than were apparent several years ago and most of these cause considerable wakes. Unfortunately many skippers helming this type of boat seem to have more money than sense or experience and a regular widespread problem is planing boats approaching anchorages at a speed just off the plane, pushing up huge wakes, their skippers seemingly oblivious to the fact they will cause every vessel at anchor to roll alarmingly. Good seamanship requires approaching an anchorage at a speed which will cause the smallest possible wake.
We now see ever larger high speed planing boats putting up dangerous wakes
In the Med people driving dinghies or jet skis at high speed or water skiing within a few metres of anchored vessels is a major problem, and extremely dangerous since people are often swimming around their vessels. In six years cruising here we’ve never seen any type of action by authorities to prevent this.
Many boaties enjoy listening to their music over a few drinks in the evening as they recount the day’s events, but these days there are so many high-powered sound systems that an anchorage can sound like a raging battle of the bands. If a nearby boat was anchored first and has a good sound system, why not listen to their music rather than try to drown it out with yours?
Many people like to enjoy themselves and make a bit of noise until a reasonable hour, but if you intend to party loudly all night long, best anchor well away from others.
Boating remains one of the great pleasures in life and can be made that much more enjoyable if all observe regulations, show consideration to others, keep their cool and avoid confrontation.
Cefalu to Sardinia
Chart of our cruise from Sicily to Sardinia
I am always a bit anxious about our first overnight trip of the season and I am not quite sure why. With our array of instruments, including 2 radars, 4 GPS, AIS, night vision and depth finders, it is as safe as cruising during the day. The issue is that you don’t get much sleep. If you are on a 5 or 6 day passage, you get into kind of a rhythm. We normally do 3 hour shifts at the helm from 6 pm until 6 am. After a few days, you develop the ability to fall asleep shortly after your 3 hr shift and wake up to do another 3 hours later with no problem. Doing it for just one night leaves you kind of beat the next day. the 12 to 3 shift and the 3 to 6 shifts are probably the worst because getting up at midnight or 3 am after having only a few hours rest is unnatural.
One of the questions people always ask us is “How do you prevent yourself from falling asleep at the wheel”. Well, it is not easy! Fortunately we installed a device called Watch Commander.
As you can see in the picture, it has a timer switch on it. We normally set it for 20 minutes. Before the twenty minutes expire, you need to push the red reset button or a subtle alarm goes off, loud enough to wake you, but not everyone else on the boat. Should the alarm continue to beep for more than 20 seconds, the LOUD alarm goes off, and that will wake EVERYONE on board. It is a good thing because if the person at the helm cannot shut off the first alarm within 20 seconds, it means that they are not there or incapacitated. Let’s say that during the night the helmsman decided to step outside for some fresh air and somehow fell over the rail and into the sea. If the shift had just started, it could be 3 hours before they were discovered missing, leaving little or no chance of finding them. If the watch commander is used, only 20 minutes would have expired, making the chance of recovery much better. Also, on seabird, we are supposed to wear inflatable vests if going outside at night with a strobe light attached.
When we installed it, I connected it to the circuit breaker on the compass light so that no one could figure out how to turn it off. While on one trip,we had friends aboard who found the device distracting and while on their shift, traced the wire to the compass light circuit breaker and shut it off. Needless to say, when we discovered this, we “spoke to them”, reminding them that while at sea on Seabird, it is not a Democracy and we set the rules.
Having said all of that, a beautiful moonlit night cruise with flat calm seas is a delight. Well, the weather gurus promised but in this case did not deliver. Late in the day, the waves started to build. We were heading directly into it which meant the bow would be pitching up and down, making the trip uncomfortable and eliminating any possibility of sleep! Then, on the radar…….
Storms. All of the red that you see in the above picture of our radar indicate storms. Storms unfortunately can bring much higher winds and lightning. We have been through them many times before but my fondness of them has not grown one bit. On top of that, if the rain is heavy enough, it just about obliterates any radar targets out there, leaving you to fly blind. Fortunately, most of the big boats that could squash me like a grape have an AIS (Automatic Identity System) which will show up on my chart plotter in any weather with position, speed, course and most importantly, CPA (Closest Point of Approach). The small boats, which I could squash, usually don’t have an AIS and I am also worried about them. In this weather, they should not and probably aren’t out here in this.
Interestingly enough, there was not all that much wind. If you had not experienced it before, you might wonder how it could be so rough with so little wind. These are referred to as swells. In New England, where we grew up, swells could be very large, but with long spaces between them, causing little discomfort. In other places, like the Med, the swells can be large, with almost no space between them and no apparent wind pushing them.
The other things we have experienced here in the med that we did not see much of elsewhere were conflicting wave patterns. On this trip, we had big, choppy swells coming from the south/southeast and in addition to that, a good size chop coming from the northeast. This produces these pointy waves that Seabird does not like one bit, nor does the crew! On this trip, the seas were 7 to 12 feet of pointed ugliness.
The night was predictable. Unless you can sleep while being slammed up and down in the bed with all of the noises that accompany that, it would be a long night. On the off shift, all you can do is lay there on your bed with your eyes closed hoping to get a few moments of shuteye before the 3 hour alarm goes off. At midnight, my iPad annoyingly beeped at me. I dragged myself out of bed, splashed some water on my face and went into the engine room to do the 3 hour check. Just a not: VERY few times have I gone into the engine room for that check and found anything amiss. We have a checklist of about 25 items to verify. Odd smells, loose or missing belts, high temperatures, fuel flow problems, leaks. For those few times myself or Carol have found a problem, it has been worth going down there. Good periodic maintenance prevents problems. This time, everything was fine and I went up to the pilot house to take my watch from my tired and bleary eyed wife. In 3 hours time, I would be equally bleary eyed.
My shift went just fine, but the weather never improved. I was not surprised when Carol came up at 3 am slightly less bleary eyed and said that she had not slept much. I did another engine room check and hit the hay for another 3 hours of trying to sleep on the roller coaster.
I have never ceased to be amazed at the ruggedness of these boats. They can be slammed mercilessly for days at a time with hardly a complaint. WE may complain, but we never hear a peep from the boat. We have been through much, much worse for much longer periods on Seabird, so, even though it was uncomfortable, I knew she would get us home, as she did this time.
As the sun rose and we got closer to Sardinia, the weather started to improve. We were tired but happy to see land.
In my previous email, I complained about med mooring. Carol corrected me the other day. I do hate the “slime lines”, but we can get through that. The real problem is our Passarelle, which we use for getting on and off of the boat while med moored. Deploying it and keeping it in place is a full time job in bad weather. It was not really well thought out. Had I given it more thought, I would have heaved the hundred pound thing overboard and gotten one of the attached systems with a hydraulic lift. They are not cheap, but would have made our stay here in the med more enjoyable. I also would have installed a vertical rope windlass, even a hand operated one, to use for hauling in and tightening the slime line one we were in the slip.
Our big beast of a Passarelle. It is welded aluminum and nearly indestructible except that
Carol and I nearly self destructed several times getting it off of the roof and onto the dock.
We landed in Sardinia at a town called Villasimius. It is on the southwest corner of Sardinia and has a beautiful marina, one with a few restaurants, a decent marine store and some nice shops. Once we were tied up, connected to shore power and registered at the office, we made the decision to do our touring later, after a well deserved rest.
Our marina in Villasimius
We spent the next day touring the town of Villasimius. It was about a two mile walk which took us mostly by pretty homes and a few farms. One of the farms we went by had these cute little miniature horses.
Minature horses in Villasimius. Who told the people of Sardinia that bangs are back in style?
The town was a surprise. It was very upscale. You can always tell by the type of cars that you see in the town. In this one, it was probably 50% Mercedes, Audis and BMWs. Interesting, in the land of Ferrari, Lamborghini and Maserati, you rarely see one of them. The people that can afford them are buying German. Anyway, I could tell that if you wanted to live there, even for the summer, it was going to be expensive. Not that we people on boats are suffering too much! If I had to burn a single memory into my brain about the town, it would be how clean it was. I didnt see a scrap of paper on the street. It seems that the more trash cans that are available in town, the less trash on the street. In Japan, it was the quite the opposite. You NEVER saw a trash can on the street, but everyone knew that the trash was your responsibility and you were supposed to bring it home with you.
The next day, our friends Bill and Janet arrived on their boat, Airstream. Its funny, we met briefly in Turkey and lost track of them until Italy. Even though we had our own individual cruising agendas, for several months we ended up in the same location. When Bill was in the Marines over 40 years ago, he had a drill seargent with the same last name as me (not exactly, but close enough so that when he overheard me giving my name to the customs agent, he asked if I was related). Turns out it was my cousin Sonny! Fortunately, even though it was basic training on the famous Paris Island “resort”, Sonny was not too mean to Bill and he was happy to make my acquaintance. In Villasimius, we had dinner several nights.
Although we liked the marina, we were hoping to stay at a place with a little more to do, so we moved on to the town of Cagliari, a two hour cruise from Villasimius.
Cagliari is the capital of Sardinia. The attraction for us is that the marina is in the center of town, which meant restaurants, shops and good people watching. We really liked the town, but it was either not that spectacular or it was just time to leave Italy. I think it was a little of both. We loved Italy and the people who lived there, but we were also looking forward to moving on to Spain and the Balearic Islands, our next cruising grounds. So, a few days after arriving in Cagliari, we set out for our next overnighter to Mahon, a small city on the western tip of Menorca, the first of the Spanish Balearic Islands.
Next up: Mahon, Menorca.
a few more pics:
A view of our marina in Cagliari from high up
A city street in old Cagliari
The cruise ship Queen Elizabeth as it departs Cagliari in back of our boat.
And last but not least….
Look, I am not a complainer. I could not be charactarized by anyone who knows me as
a “foodie”. My tastes are very simple. You might even call it “truck driver food”.
Many years ago, my brother in law Chip, who was also my good friend and fellow boater,
established “Cheeseburger Sunday”. It is every Sunday and I look forward to my
Cheeseburger. You can imagine my glee when I saw the sign in Cagliari that advertised
the best Cheeseburgers in town. I pictured a big, fat, juicy half pound job and my mouth was watering
just thinking about it. You canjust imagine my disappointment……..
Cefalu to Sardinia
Chart of our cruise from Sicily to Sardinia
I am always a bit anxious about our first overnight trip of the season and I am not quite sure why. With our array of instruments, including 2 radars, 4 GPS, AIS, night vision and depth finders, it is as safe as cruising during the day. The issue is that you don’t get much sleep. If you are on a 5 or 6 day passage, you get into kind of a rhythm. We normally do 3 hour shifts at the helm from 6 pm until 6 am. After a few days, you develop the ability to fall asleep shortly after your 3 hr shift and wake up to do another 3 hours later with no problem. Doing it for just one night leaves you kind of beat the next day. the 12 to 3 shift and the 3 to 6 shifts are probably the worst because getting up at midnight or 3 am after having only a few hours rest is unnatural.
One of the questions people always ask us is “How do you prevent yourself from falling asleep at the wheel”. Well, it is not easy! Fortunately we installed a device called Watch Commander.
As you can see in the picture, it has a timer switch on it. We normally set it for 20 minutes. Before the twenty minutes expire, you need to push the red reset button or a subtle alarm goes off, loud enough to wake you, but not everyone else on the boat. Should the alarm continue to beep for more than 20 seconds, the LOUD alarm goes off, and that will wake EVERYONE on board. It is a good thing because if the person at the helm cannot shut off the first alarm within 20 seconds, it means that they are not there or incapacitated. Let’s say that during the night the helmsman decided to step outside for some fresh air and somehow fell over the rail and into the sea. If the shift had just started, it could be 3 hours before they were discovered missing, leaving little or no chance of finding them. If the watch commander is used, only 20 minutes would have expired, making the chance of recovery much better. Also, on seabird, we are supposed to wear inflatable vests if going outside at night with a strobe light attached.
When we installed it, I connected it to the circuit breaker on the compass light so that no one could figure out how to turn it off. While on one trip,we had friends aboard who found the device distracting and while on their shift, traced the wire to the compass light circuit breaker and shut it off. Needless to say, when we discovered this, we “spoke to them”, reminding them that while at sea on Seabird, it is not a Democracy and we set the rules.
Having said all of that, a beautiful moonlit night cruise with flat calm seas is a delight. Well, the weather gurus promised but in this case did not deliver. Late in the day, the waves started to build. We were heading directly into it which meant the bow would be pitching up and down, making the trip uncomfortable and eliminating any possibility of sleep! Then, on the radar…….
Storms. All of the red that you see in the above picture of our radar indicate storms. Storms unfortunately can bring much higher winds and lightning. We have been through them many times before but my fondness of them has not grown one bit. On top of that, if the rain is heavy enough, it just about obliterates any radar targets out there, leaving you to fly blind. Fortunately, most of the big boats that could squash me like a grape have an AIS (Automatic Identity System) which will show up on my chart plotter in any weather with position, speed, course and most importantly, CPA (Closest Point of Approach). The small boats, which I could squash, usually don’t have an AIS and I am also worried about them. In this weather, they should not and probably aren’t out here in this.
Interestingly enough, there was not all that much wind. If you had not experienced it before, you might wonder how it could be so rough with so little wind. These are referred to as swells. In New England, where we grew up, swells could be very large, but with long spaces between them, causing little discomfort. In other places, like the Med, the swells can be large, with almost no space between them and no apparent wind pushing them.
The other things we have experienced here in the med that we did not see much of elsewhere were conflicting wave patterns. On this trip, we had big, choppy swells coming from the south/southeast and in addition to that, a good size chop coming from the northeast. This produces these pointy waves that Seabird does not like one bit, nor does the crew! On this trip, the seas were 7 to 12 feet of pointed ugliness.
The night was predictable. Unless you can sleep while being slammed up and down in the bed with all of the noises that accompany that, it would be a long night. On the off shift, all you can do is lay there on your bed with your eyes closed hoping to get a few moments of shuteye before the 3 hour alarm goes off. At midnight, my iPad annoyingly beeped at me. I dragged myself out of bed, splashed some water on my face and went into the engine room to do the 3 hour check. Just a not: VERY few times have I gone into the engine room for that check and found anything amiss. We have a checklist of about 25 items to verify. Odd smells, loose or missing belts, high temperatures, fuel flow problems, leaks. For those few times myself or Carol have found a problem, it has been worth going down there. Good periodic maintenance prevents problems. This time, everything was fine and I went up to the pilot house to take my watch from my tired and bleary eyed wife. In 3 hours time, I would be equally bleary eyed.
My shift went just fine, but the weather never improved. I was not surprised when Carol came up at 3 am slightly less bleary eyed and said that she had not slept much. I did another engine room check and hit the hay for another 3 hours of trying to sleep on the roller coaster.
I have never ceased to be amazed at the ruggedness of these boats. They can be slammed mercilessly for days at a time with hardly a complaint. WE may complain, but we never hear a peep from the boat. We have been through much, much worse for much longer periods on Seabird, so, even though it was uncomfortable, I knew she would get us home, as she did this time.
As the sun rose and we got closer to Sardinia, the weather started to improve. We were tired but happy to see land.
In my previous email, I complained about med mooring. Carol corrected me the other day. I do hate the “slime lines”, but we can get through that. The real problem is our Passarelle, which we use for getting on and off of the boat while med moored. Deploying it and keeping it in place is a full time job in bad weather. It was not really well thought out. Had I given it more thought, I would have heaved the hundred pound thing overboard and gotten one of the attached systems with a hydraulic lift. They are not cheap, but would have made our stay here in the med more enjoyable. I also would have installed a vertical rope windlass, even a hand operated one, to use for hauling in and tightening the slime line one we were in the slip.
Our big beast of a Passarelle. It is welded aluminum and nearly indestructible except that
Carol and I nearly self destructed several times getting it off of the roof and onto the dock.
We landed in Sardinia at a town called Villasimius. It is on the southwest corner of Sardinia and has a beautiful marina, one with a few restaurants, a decent marine store and some nice shops. Once we were tied up, connected to shore power and registered at the office, we made the decision to do our touring later, after a well deserved rest.
Our marina in Villasimius
We spent the next day touring the town of Villasimius. It was about a two mile walk which took us mostly by pretty homes and a few farms. One of the farms we went by had these cute little miniature horses.
Minature horses in Villasimius. Who told the people of Sardinia that bangs are back in style?
The town was a surprise. It was very upscale. You can always tell by the type of cars that you see in the town. In this one, it was probably 50% Mercedes, Audis and BMWs. Interesting, in the land of Ferrari, Lamborghini and Maserati, you rarely see one of them. The people that can afford them are buying German. Anyway, I could tell that if you wanted to live there, even for the summer, it was going to be expensive. Not that we people on boats are suffering too much! If I had to burn a single memory into my brain about the town, it would be how clean it was. I didnt see a scrap of paper on the street. It seems that the more trash cans that are available in town, the less trash on the street. In Japan, it was the quite the opposite. You NEVER saw a trash can on the street, but everyone knew that the trash was your responsibility and you were supposed to bring it home with you.
The next day, our friends Bill and Janet arrived on their boat, Airstream. Its funny, we met briefly in Turkey and lost track of them until Italy. Even though we had our own individual cruising agendas, for several months we ended up in the same location. When Bill was in the Marines over 40 years ago, he had a drill seargent with the same last name as me (not exactly, but close enough so that when he overheard me giving my name to the customs agent, he asked if I was related). Turns out it was my cousin Sonny! Fortunately, even though it was basic training on the famous Paris Island “resort”, Sonny was not too mean to Bill and he was happy to make my acquaintance. In Villasimius, we had dinner several nights.
Although we liked the marina, we were hoping to stay at a place with a little more to do, so we moved on to the town of Cagliari, a two hour cruise from Villasimius.
Cagliari is the capital of Sardinia. The attraction for us is that the marina is in the center of town, which meant restaurants, shops and good people watching. We really liked the town, but it was either not that spectacular or it was just time to leave Italy. I think it was a little of both. We loved Italy and the people who lived there, but we were also looking forward to moving on to Spain and the Balearic Islands, our next cruising grounds. So, a few days after arriving in Cagliari, we set out for our next overnighter to Mahon, a small city on the western tip of Menorca, the first of the Spanish Balearic Islands.
Next up: Mahon, Menorca.
a few more pics:
A view of our marina in Cagliari from high up
A city street in old Cagliari
The cruise ship Queen Elizabeth as it departs Cagliari in back of our boat.
And last but not least….
Look, I am not a complainer. I could not be charactarized by anyone who knows me as
a “foodie”. My tastes are very simple. You might even call it “truck driver food”.
Many years ago, my brother in law Chip, who was also my good friend and fellow boater,
established “Cheeseburger Sunday”. It is every Sunday and I look forward to my
Cheeseburger. You can imagine my glee when I saw the sign in Cagliari that advertised
the best Cheeseburgers in town. I pictured a big, fat, juicy half pound job and my mouth was watering
just thinking about it. You canjust imagine my disappointment……..
Milazzo to Cefalu, Sicily
I am kind of waiting for the shoe to drop. We have had nothing but flat calm water and perfect temperatures since leaving Marina di Ragusa. We have not even used the air conditioning once yet. On top of that, the boat is running just perfectly. I hope I am not jinxing myself.
This was our course to Cefalu, still on the island of Sicily
We had yet another perfect trip of 64 miles to Cefalu. The water out here is so clear and calm. Schools of Dolphin who seem to spot our boat from a great distance do an about face from wherever they are going and do a beeline for our bow. For the next ten minutes or so, between 2 and 10 of them will swim just under the surface a few feet on either side of our bow. Every so often, one or more will turn sideways and look up at you with that smirk that Dolphins seem to have. Watching them do that and then leaping out of the water convinces you that they are intelligent and very aware, almost trying to show off.
Dolphins – for some reason they seem to be attracted to our bulbous bow on Seabird
We were getting close to the our final waypoint on the trip and Carol quipped “uh, where is this marina?” We were very close and it was not what we were expecting, at all. The course pointed us to a cement pier with a few raggedy, bobbing, floating docks off of it. The whole place was exposed directly to the open water and if a wind were to come out of the Northeast, Seabird would turn those puny would be docks into floating mush. Carol actually thought we should leave, but it was later in the day and we really did commit to staying there. I thought that as long as the weather experts stayed expert, we would not have a problem.
The dock you see in the photo is the hefty one. Where Seabird is, it drops down to
a flimsy floating dock.
The docking situation was a classic Med Moor, where you back into the allotted space, tie two lines to the dock and then pick up the “slime line”. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, a slime line is really a mooring line that you attach to the bow of the boat to keep the stern away from the dock. That line is tethered to a cement block some distance from the bow of the boat, and you need to pull it piano wire tight. The “slime” part comes from the way the line is attached to the dock from the cement mooring. It usually has been lying in the mud and God knows what else before you pick it up in the slip. It is handed to you by the dock hand and you then work your way up to the bow with it to secure it to the cleat. By the time you are done, you are usually spotted with mud and water. This is why we prefer the side tie with conventional dock lines.
So….we finish tying up to the saddest excuse for a dock we have ever been to and go to the marina office to check in. Marinas around here are usually categorized by “Charge Bands”. We usually see Charge Band 4, 5 and 6, the 6 being the most expensive and usually reserved for exclusive marinas or special destinations. This place was neither. It was advertised in the guide we used as a Charge Band 5, but, that was a very optimistic rating. I would have given it a 2, but the town was so charming, I raised it to a 4. At a 5, the nightly rate should have been $125, but I was shocked to find that he wanted $200! Since we were already tied up, I begrudgingly accepted it but said we would leave in the morning.
Shortly after that, our friends Bill and Janet called. They were about an hour behind us. I asked him what they were charging for his 42 foot sailboat and he said “$50”. What??!! I stomped up to the office and asked why I was being charged 4x as much as a boat that was only 25% smaller than Seabird. He responded “seabird is BIG boat”. I said “yeah, but not 4x as big”. He then went to the owner and voiced my complaints and the owner agreed that if I stayed 3 nights, he would lower two of the nights to $100 per night. Ok….I was still getting fleeced, but it was now a low level fleecing and I left the office with some of my pride intact, sort of.
The town of Cefalu, as I mentioned, is charming. It was about a 10 minute walk from the marina and I guess you could call it a “typical” Sicilian seaside village, if there is such a thing. It was built on a hill with narrow streets barely wide enough for one car to skim by you, brushing your clothing as casually as could be. Walkers generally have the right of way, but even those tiny little cars they drive weigh 2000 lbs, so we generally yield! In addition, per usual, it seems that every other business on the street is a restaurant or a cafe.
Trying to pick a restaurant in a place like this is difficult. The menus all look so good and the aromas coming out of each place make you want to choose them all. It is especially difficult for me because Italian food is kind of my thing. So, we usually end up choosing, as we did this time, a place with exceptional atmosphere, overlooking the beach and a good rating on Trip Advisor.
Of course, the food was spectacular and, as in the case of everywhere in Sicily, a relative bargain! I suspect one of the reasons for the low pricing might be their food transportation costs. The last photo in the blog is an example of their innovative thinking…..
We spent a good part of each day walking through the narrow streets of Cefalu. You always find something new that you have not seen before. All of these towns in Sicily seem to have a large town square, a grand cathedral being the centerpiece surrounded by cafe’s and outdoor restaurants. The cathedral, in this case, was just this week named a Unesco Heritage Site. Pretty spectacular.
The Cathedral in Cefalu
Our last day at the marina proved the weather gurus wrong. There was not a huge amount of wind, but a good size swell started to develop from the Northeast. With no protection from any sort of breakwater, our boat started to pitch a bit in the berth, stretching the slime line and our swim platform started creeping perilously close to the dock. In addition to that, our passarelle, basically a fancy name for a boarding plank, started dancing on the dock, threatening to pulverize the electrical post next to it or detach itself from the boat and then deep sixing itself. We decided it best that we disconnect the electrical cord from the dock and pull up the passarelle. Having done that, my only fear left was that the slime line would give out, sending the 70 ton Seabird into the flimsy floating dock. So, since we had no intention of getting off of the boat again, we loosened the two stern lines, giving us an additional 4 feet of slack, then tightened up the greasy slime line as taught as we could make it. We were now a minimum of 8 feet away from the dock with no more worries.
We had 225 miles to our next destination, Villasimius, Sardinia, so we scheduled our departure from Cefalu at 7am the following morning. At 8.5 knots, we can usually cover up to 110 miles on a day trip. This was going to be a 17 hour trip and an overnighter. We actually enjoy an overnighter with a full moon and calm seas. You don’t always get what you want…..
Next Blog: Cefalu to the island of Sardinia
a few more pics from Cefalu…….
Italy seems to have lots of wild cats. Every once in a while we find these
kittens that have not learned to be skittish yet.
this is a very common sight from this season. Calm seas and beautiful
sunsets
Our morning walk usually resulted in spectacular views
Seaside view of Cefalu. Just around the corner is a beautiful beach
this was taken during our departure from Cefalu in the morning
And last but not least…….
You now know the secret to low fish prices in the restaurants in Sicily. Normally, from the dock to the restaurants
means wholesalers, agents, refrigerated delivery trucks etc. Not is Cefalu. We watched this guy make several
trips from the fishing boat at the pier that caught these to the individual restaurants. Notice there is no
“Wide Load” sign on the bike……
Milazzo to Cefalu, Sicily
I am kind of waiting for the shoe to drop. We have had nothing but flat calm water and perfect temperatures since leaving Marina di Ragusa. We have not even used the air conditioning once yet. On top of that, the boat is running just perfectly. I hope I am not jinxing myself.
This was our course to Cefalu, still on the island of Sicily
We had yet another perfect trip of 64 miles to Cefalu. The water out here is so clear and calm. Schools of Dolphin who seem to spot our boat from a great distance do an about face from wherever they are going and do a beeline for our bow. For the next ten minutes or so, between 2 and 10 of them will swim just under the surface a few feet on either side of our bow. Every so often, one or more will turn sideways and look up at you with that smirk that Dolphins seem to have. Watching them do that and then leaping out of the water convinces you that they are intelligent and very aware, almost trying to show off.
Dolphins – for some reason they seem to be attracted to our bulbous bow on Seabird
We were getting close to the our final waypoint on the trip and Carol quipped “uh, where is this marina?” We were very close and it was not what we were expecting, at all. The course pointed us to a cement pier with a few raggedy, bobbing, floating docks off of it. The whole place was exposed directly to the open water and if a wind were to come out of the Northeast, Seabird would turn those puny would be docks into floating mush. Carol actually thought we should leave, but it was later in the day and we really did commit to staying there. I thought that as long as the weather experts stayed expert, we would not have a problem.
The dock you see in the photo is the hefty one. Where Seabird is, it drops down to
a flimsy floating dock.
The docking situation was a classic Med Moor, where you back into the allotted space, tie two lines to the dock and then pick up the “slime line”. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, a slime line is really a mooring line that you attach to the bow of the boat to keep the stern away from the dock. That line is tethered to a cement block some distance from the bow of the boat, and you need to pull it piano wire tight. The “slime” part comes from the way the line is attached to the dock from the cement mooring. It usually has been lying in the mud and God knows what else before you pick it up in the slip. It is handed to you by the dock hand and you then work your way up to the bow with it to secure it to the cleat. By the time you are done, you are usually spotted with mud and water. This is why we prefer the side tie with conventional dock lines.
So….we finish tying up to the saddest excuse for a dock we have ever been to and go to the marina office to check in. Marinas around here are usually categorized by “Charge Bands”. We usually see Charge Band 4, 5 and 6, the 6 being the most expensive and usually reserved for exclusive marinas or special destinations. This place was neither. It was advertised in the guide we used as a Charge Band 5, but, that was a very optimistic rating. I would have given it a 2, but the town was so charming, I raised it to a 4. At a 5, the nightly rate should have been $125, but I was shocked to find that he wanted $200! Since we were already tied up, I begrudgingly accepted it but said we would leave in the morning.
Shortly after that, our friends Bill and Janet called. They were about an hour behind us. I asked him what they were charging for his 42 foot sailboat and he said “$50”. What??!! I stomped up to the office and asked why I was being charged 4x as much as a boat that was only 25% smaller than Seabird. He responded “seabird is BIG boat”. I said “yeah, but not 4x as big”. He then went to the owner and voiced my complaints and the owner agreed that if I stayed 3 nights, he would lower two of the nights to $100 per night. Ok….I was still getting fleeced, but it was now a low level fleecing and I left the office with some of my pride intact, sort of.
The town of Cefalu, as I mentioned, is charming. It was about a 10 minute walk from the marina and I guess you could call it a “typical” Sicilian seaside village, if there is such a thing. It was built on a hill with narrow streets barely wide enough for one car to skim by you, brushing your clothing as casually as could be. Walkers generally have the right of way, but even those tiny little cars they drive weigh 2000 lbs, so we generally yield! In addition, per usual, it seems that every other business on the street is a restaurant or a cafe.
Trying to pick a restaurant in a place like this is difficult. The menus all look so good and the aromas coming out of each place make you want to choose them all. It is especially difficult for me because Italian food is kind of my thing. So, we usually end up choosing, as we did this time, a place with exceptional atmosphere, overlooking the beach and a good rating on Trip Advisor.
Of course, the food was spectacular and, as in the case of everywhere in Sicily, a relative bargain! I suspect one of the reasons for the low pricing might be their food transportation costs. The last photo in the blog is an example of their innovative thinking…..
We spent a good part of each day walking through the narrow streets of Cefalu. You always find something new that you have not seen before. All of these towns in Sicily seem to have a large town square, a grand cathedral being the centerpiece surrounded by cafe’s and outdoor restaurants. The cathedral, in this case, was just this week named a Unesco Heritage Site. Pretty spectacular.
The Cathedral in Cefalu
Our last day at the marina proved the weather gurus wrong. There was not a huge amount of wind, but a good size swell started to develop from the Northeast. With no protection from any sort of breakwater, our boat started to pitch a bit in the berth, stretching the slime line and our swim platform started creeping perilously close to the dock. In addition to that, our passarelle, basically a fancy name for a boarding plank, started dancing on the dock, threatening to pulverize the electrical post next to it or detach itself from the boat and then deep sixing itself. We decided it best that we disconnect the electrical cord from the dock and pull up the passarelle. Having done that, my only fear left was that the slime line would give out, sending the 70 ton Seabird into the flimsy floating dock. So, since we had no intention of getting off of the boat again, we loosened the two stern lines, giving us an additional 4 feet of slack, then tightened up the greasy slime line as taught as we could make it. We were now a minimum of 8 feet away from the dock with no more worries.
We had 225 miles to our next destination, Villasimius, Sardinia, so we scheduled our departure from Cefalu at 7am the following morning. At 8.5 knots, we can usually cover up to 110 miles on a day trip. This was going to be a 17 hour trip and an overnighter. We actually enjoy an overnighter with a full moon and calm seas. You don’t always get what you want…..
Next Blog: Cefalu to the island of Sardinia
a few more pics from Cefalu…….
Italy seems to have lots of wild cats. Every once in a while we find these
kittens that have not learned to be skittish yet.
this is a very common sight from this season. Calm seas and beautiful
sunsets
Our morning walk usually resulted in spectacular views
Seaside view of Cefalu. Just around the corner is a beautiful beach
this was taken during our departure from Cefalu in the morning
And last but not least…….
You now know the secret to low fish prices in the restaurants in Sicily. Normally, from the dock to the restaurants
means wholesalers, agents, refrigerated delivery trucks etc. Not is Cefalu. We watched this guy make several
trips from the fishing boat at the pier that caught these to the individual restaurants. Notice there is no
“Wide Load” sign on the bike……
Captain’s Log New Zealand to Fiji July 20, 2015
CAPTAINS LOG JULY 20, 2015 – FIJI #1
BULA! From Fiji.
Our last blog was posted from Lake Taupo as we were heading back to Auckland on the last leg of our five week tour of New Zealand. After driving on two lane roads through the beautiful farmland of the central North Island, passing the thermal fields, volcanos, and geologic wonders of the island, we drove back to Auckland and spent a week walking the city and enjoying the Chinese New Year’s Festival held in the center city. Hundreds of students from China come to New Zealand over this holiday to enjoy a respite from the Chinese winter, like their American counterparts in Ft. Lauderdale. These are rich, young and “beautiful” people of the People’s Republic; Prada, Gucci, and Versace are on full display along with a certain arrogant aloofness that seems common to the young and privileged regardless of the state of their origin. In Auckland City Center the Chinese government sponsors a huge cultural festival featuring colorful classical dances, ancient traditional puppet shows, and food from all over China; it was all very interesting.
We flew back to the U.S. on March 2 to attend the wedding of the daughter of two of our dearest friends. The wedding was held in Beaver Creek, Colorado, and attended by many of our lifelong friends. It was quite an adjustment having traveled across many time and altitudinal zones. We shared a luxurious apartment with our daughter and son-in-law, spent a day or two skiing, dined at beautiful restaurants, and spent an afternoon snowmobiling in the alpine splendor of the Rocky Mountains. It was a great time.
After the wedding we returned to Ann Arbor to attend to the renovation of our home and to file our tax returns. On the bright side, we had been invited to speak to the historic Detroit Yacht Club on Belle Isle, and our Rotary Club in Ann Arbor. These events were a lot of fun for us, as it gave us a chance to meet other boaters and to show our friends in Ann Arbor exactly what we had been doing over the past year. Unfortunately in the midst of a hurried visit home, Rebecca’s father began to quickly fail; two weeks later he regrettably passed away.
I returned to New Zealand on April 9 to move Argo about 25 miles north of Auckland to Gulf Harbor Shipyard at Whangarparaoa, and to oversee the maintenance work that was scheduled. She was slow and not very agile on her short passage north after six months in the Viaduct Marina. As we latter leaned, Viaduct Harbor is notorious for heavy marine growth and when Argo was pulled out of the water it was evident that she had become home to a shocking amount of crusty bivalves. This is all to be expected as boats need to be hauled about every 18 months to remove marine growth from their bottom and through-hulls. After she was cleaned up, Argo received a new coat of bottom paint and her propellers were coated with a special paint to inhibit marine growth and make them more slippery. At the same time other repairs were made including waxing the hull. We also had to clean the two forward fuel tanks of a silicone sealing substance that had fallen into the tanks during the boat’s construction and posed the potential of clogging the fuel lines. This required a technician to remove the access covers from the tanks, don a hazmat suit, crawl inside the tanks and scrub all the surfaces. After he was done, all the fuel onboard was removed and polished in special centrifugal filters. At this point Argo was beautiful from top to bottom, and the travel hoist came to lift her off her supports and put her in the water, ready for our trip north to Fiji. All of this took a couple of weeks.
As the work was coming to an end, I escaped to the Lake Taupo Lodge for a few days of fly fishing in one of the world’s greatest trout habitats. The area is designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of its beauty and geological importance. Three cone shaped volcanoes lie on a flat plain made of ancient volcanic debris. The largest volcano is snowcapped most of the year, and the other two lie on a path a few miles apart in line with Lake Taupo. Lake Taupo is a fresh water lake about 240 square miles in size, and occupies the sunken caldera of an extinct volcano that exploded 26,500 years ago. The eruption, perhaps the largest in history, is known as the Oruanui eruption and ejected about 1170 CC kilometers of material into the atmosphere. Scientists speculate that this eruption may have started the last ice age. Today the lake is the tranquil home to huge brown and rainbow trout (put there about 100 years ago from stock obtained in Scotland and California) that feast on crayfish and spawn in the Waitahanui, Tongariro, and the Tauranga Taupo Rivers. My fishing adventure began on the Tauranga Taupo River; my guide drove us to his cabin on the river that he leased from the Maori, then we put on waders and spent the day tramping along the banks and in the river casting for elusive trout. It was a beautiful day spent in a rocky, forested area that is as pristine as second growth forests can be. The old growth forests of New Zealand with their huge Kauri trees were chopped down during the last century, and the current forest is only a fraction of what it once was, but it was nevertheless quite lovely and the trout seem to flourish here. We fished using wet flies and strike indicators, casting out to deep pools where the big fish lie. Unlike our ocean fishing practice of using heavy line and steel leaders to bring big, toothy fish aboard Argo, here we used very light line and tackle to give the fish a fighting chance. These fish are big and strong, and put up quite a fight as they try to escape by dance down the river on their tail. It is easy for them to break the line or throw the hook, so some measure of skill is required to sense their taking of the fly and to gently bring them to the net. It didn’t take long before I had a 5-6 pound rainbow on the line. Getting it to the net and then removing the hook so that it could be released to go about its life unharmed required a fair degree of finesse.
The next day we drove about ninety minutes to the mountains above Napier to the Waipawa River. This river is also a very famous trout stream that we fished using a raft to transport us to various spots along the river. Our float lasted for about six hours. Our fishing was very productive; I caught at least 15 large fish, all educated and then released. The river worked its way toward the ocean cutting a gorge through limestone cliffs that hundreds of millions years ago were part of the ocean floor on the Pacific tectonic plate, and before that, part of the original continent of Pangea. As we passed the cliffs, we could see fossils and large volcanic rocks embedded in the limestone from ages past. Above the cliffs were sheep and cattle station pastures; here grass is grown as a crop as earnestly as we grow corn. The largest sheep and cattle ranch in New Zealand (75,000 acres) that had been owned by a prominent family for generations was recently sold to a Chinese person.
The next day I drove back to Auckland, past huge stainless steel pipes glittering in the bright sunshine carrying geothermal energy that the Kiwis’ use for heat and electricity. On the way I picked up Rebecca at the airport. She had remained for an extra two weeks in Michigan to help her mother following her father’s death. Tired but anxious to see Argo again, we drove the fifty or so miles to back to Whangarparaoa.
The next morning I arose to complete my ADL’s; I was shocked to find blood in my urine. Alarmed, we went to the local hospital (of course it was a three day holiday), but nothing could really be diagnosed there. The next morning the same thing, so we quickly arranged to return home and scheduled an examination at the University of Michigan. There we learned that I had bladder cancer, an excision of the lesion was performed within ten days and followed by six weeks of immunotherapy. After the last dose, we have a six week break until the next biopsy, so we had Tyler, our New Zealand friend Ted Dixon, and a professional captain, Paul Mabee, bring Argo up to Fiji where we met her after an 11 hour flight from LAX.
Fiji is an island nation made up of 322 islands, a hundred of which are inhabited. Most of the population (under 900,000) lives on the largest two islands, Viti Levu and Vanua Levu. The islands are volcanic in origin and lie 1,100 miles directly north of New Zealand and 400 miles west of Tonga. The smaller, more remote islands of the Lau Group lie 200 miles east of Viti Levu and are sparsely populated. People of the Lau Group live a traditional way of life. Visiting these islands requires permission of the village chief, which can be obtained after completing “Savusavu”, a ceremony of respect and supplication requiring the presentation of Kava, which comes from the Yaqona bush. Kava is a root that when washed and pressed by hand in a large bowl produces a magenta, muddy colored drink that yields a numbing, relaxing effect. Kava is reputed to be an aphrodisiac for women, but it puts men to sleep. West of Viti Levu lies the Yasawa Islands, where fancy resorts accommodate the tourists of Australia, New Zealand and increasingly China. Between two of the islands lies the Blue Lagoon, made famous by the Brooke Shields’ movie bearing its name. In the old days Fijians were warriors with a fierce reputation. Aside from cannibalism, Fijian warriors practiced “fire-walking”, an historic ritual wherein young men actually walked on hot stones heated by a fire that may have been used to roast human beings! Today only chicken and pork are roasted, but young men still fire-walk for the entertainment of tourists.
Argo is now moored next to Dragonfly, a large yacht owned by the founders of Google (not sure if it is one or both owners) at Denarau Marina near Nandi. We must be in the high rent district. Anchored out in the bay is an even larger yacht owned by a Russian. Eli, our agent here who is handling the formalities of that yacht too, told us that the couple lives aboard with a dog. They have two veterinarians, two nurses, and a security detail on board for the dog. Recently the dog had some sort of eye problem and they flew the thing to Honolulu in a private jet with its full entourage! Nice to know how the other .0000000000001% of the population lives!
Thanks for reading our blog and keeping in touch with us. We’ll update our blog and load some new pictures next month after we are back in the land of bandwidth.
Randy and Rebecca
Captain’s Log New Zealand to Fiji July 20, 2015
CAPTAINS LOG JULY 20, 2015 – FIJI #1
BULA! From Fiji.
Our last blog was posted from Lake Taupo as we were heading back to Auckland on the last leg of our five week tour of New Zealand. After driving on two lane roads through the beautiful farmland of the central North Island, passing the thermal fields, volcanos, and geologic wonders of the island, we drove back to Auckland and spent a week walking the city and enjoying the Chinese New Year’s Festival held in the center city. Hundreds of students from China come to New Zealand over this holiday to enjoy a respite from the Chinese winter, like their American counterparts in Ft. Lauderdale. These are rich, young and “beautiful” people of the People’s Republic; Prada, Gucci, and Versace are on full display along with a certain arrogant aloofness that seems common to the young and privileged regardless of the state of their origin. In Auckland City Center the Chinese government sponsors a huge cultural festival featuring colorful classical dances, ancient traditional puppet shows, and food from all over China; it was all very interesting.
We flew back to the U.S. on March 2 to attend the wedding of the daughter of two of our dearest friends. The wedding was held in Beaver Creek, Colorado, and attended by many of our lifelong friends. It was quite an adjustment having traveled across many time and altitudinal zones. We shared a luxurious apartment with our daughter and son-in-law, spent a day or two skiing, dined at beautiful restaurants, and spent an afternoon snowmobiling in the alpine splendor of the Rocky Mountains. It was a great time.
After the wedding we returned to Ann Arbor to attend to the renovation of our home and to file our tax returns. On the bright side, we had been invited to speak to the historic Detroit Yacht Club on Belle Isle, and our Rotary Club in Ann Arbor. These events were a lot of fun for us, as it gave us a chance to meet other boaters and to show our friends in Ann Arbor exactly what we had been doing over the past year. Unfortunately in the midst of a hurried visit home, Rebecca’s father began to quickly fail; two weeks later he regrettably passed away.
I returned to New Zealand on April 9 to move Argo about 25 miles north of Auckland to Gulf Harbor Shipyard at Whangarparaoa, and to oversee the maintenance work that was scheduled. She was slow and not very agile on her short passage north after six months in the Viaduct Marina. As we latter leaned, Viaduct Harbor is notorious for heavy marine growth and when Argo was pulled out of the water it was evident that she had become home to a shocking amount of crusty bivalves. This is all to be expected as boats need to be hauled about every 18 months to remove marine growth from their bottom and through-hulls. After she was cleaned up, Argo received a new coat of bottom paint and her propellers were coated with a special paint to inhibit marine growth and make them more slippery. At the same time other repairs were made including waxing the hull. We also had to clean the two forward fuel tanks of a silicone sealing substance that had fallen into the tanks during the boat’s construction and posed the potential of clogging the fuel lines. This required a technician to remove the access covers from the tanks, don a hazmat suit, crawl inside the tanks and scrub all the surfaces. After he was done, all the fuel onboard was removed and polished in special centrifugal filters. At this point Argo was beautiful from top to bottom, and the travel hoist came to lift her off her supports and put her in the water, ready for our trip north to Fiji. All of this took a couple of weeks.
As the work was coming to an end, I escaped to the Lake Taupo Lodge for a few days of fly fishing in one of the world’s greatest trout habitats. The area is designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of its beauty and geological importance. Three cone shaped volcanoes lie on a flat plain made of ancient volcanic debris. The largest volcano is snowcapped most of the year, and the other two lie on a path a few miles apart in line with Lake Taupo. Lake Taupo is a fresh water lake about 240 square miles in size, and occupies the sunken caldera of an extinct volcano that exploded 26,500 years ago. The eruption, perhaps the largest in history, is known as the Oruanui eruption and ejected about 1170 CC kilometers of material into the atmosphere. Scientists speculate that this eruption may have started the last ice age. Today the lake is the tranquil home to huge brown and rainbow trout (put there about 100 years ago from stock obtained in Scotland and California) that feast on crayfish and spawn in the Waitahanui, Tongariro, and the Tauranga Taupo Rivers. My fishing adventure began on the Tauranga Taupo River; my guide drove us to his cabin on the river that he leased from the Maori, then we put on waders and spent the day tramping along the banks and in the river casting for elusive trout. It was a beautiful day spent in a rocky, forested area that is as pristine as second growth forests can be. The old growth forests of New Zealand with their huge Kauri trees were chopped down during the last century, and the current forest is only a fraction of what it once was, but it was nevertheless quite lovely and the trout seem to flourish here. We fished using wet flies and strike indicators, casting out to deep pools where the big fish lie. Unlike our ocean fishing practice of using heavy line and steel leaders to bring big, toothy fish aboard Argo, here we used very light line and tackle to give the fish a fighting chance. These fish are big and strong, and put up quite a fight as they try to escape by dance down the river on their tail. It is easy for them to break the line or throw the hook, so some measure of skill is required to sense their taking of the fly and to gently bring them to the net. It didn’t take long before I had a 5-6 pound rainbow on the line. Getting it to the net and then removing the hook so that it could be released to go about its life unharmed required a fair degree of finesse.
The next day we drove about ninety minutes to the mountains above Napier to the Waipawa River. This river is also a very famous trout stream that we fished using a raft to transport us to various spots along the river. Our float lasted for about six hours. Our fishing was very productive; I caught at least 15 large fish, all educated and then released. The river worked its way toward the ocean cutting a gorge through limestone cliffs that hundreds of millions years ago were part of the ocean floor on the Pacific tectonic plate, and before that, part of the original continent of Pangea. As we passed the cliffs, we could see fossils and large volcanic rocks embedded in the limestone from ages past. Above the cliffs were sheep and cattle station pastures; here grass is grown as a crop as earnestly as we grow corn. The largest sheep and cattle ranch in New Zealand (75,000 acres) that had been owned by a prominent family for generations was recently sold to a Chinese person.
The next day I drove back to Auckland, past huge stainless steel pipes glittering in the bright sunshine carrying geothermal energy that the Kiwis’ use for heat and electricity. On the way I picked up Rebecca at the airport. She had remained for an extra two weeks in Michigan to help her mother following her father’s death. Tired but anxious to see Argo again, we drove the fifty or so miles to back to Whangarparaoa.
The next morning I arose to complete my ADL’s; I was shocked to find blood in my urine. Alarmed, we went to the local hospital (of course it was a three day holiday), but nothing could really be diagnosed there. The next morning the same thing, so we quickly arranged to return home and scheduled an examination at the University of Michigan. There we learned that I had bladder cancer, an excision of the lesion was performed within ten days and followed by six weeks of immunotherapy. After the last dose, we have a six week break until the next biopsy, so we had Tyler, our New Zealand friend Ted Dixon, and a professional captain, Paul Mabee, bring Argo up to Fiji where we met her after an 11 hour flight from LAX.
Fiji is an island nation made up of 322 islands, a hundred of which are inhabited. Most of the population (under 900,000) lives on the largest two islands, Viti Levu and Vanua Levu. The islands are volcanic in origin and lie 1,100 miles directly north of New Zealand and 400 miles west of Tonga. The smaller, more remote islands of the Lau Group lie 200 miles east of Viti Levu and are sparsely populated. People of the Lau Group live a traditional way of life. Visiting these islands requires permission of the village chief, which can be obtained after completing “Savusavu”, a ceremony of respect and supplication requiring the presentation of Kava, which comes from the Yaqona bush. Kava is a root that when washed and pressed by hand in a large bowl produces a magenta, muddy colored drink that yields a numbing, relaxing effect. Kava is reputed to be an aphrodisiac for women, but it puts men to sleep. West of Viti Levu lies the Yasawa Islands, where fancy resorts accommodate the tourists of Australia, New Zealand and increasingly China. Between two of the islands lies the Blue Lagoon, made famous by the Brooke Shields’ movie bearing its name. In the old days Fijians were warriors with a fierce reputation. Aside from cannibalism, Fijian warriors practiced “fire-walking”, an historic ritual wherein young men actually walked on hot stones heated by a fire that may have been used to roast human beings! Today only chicken and pork are roasted, but young men still fire-walk for the entertainment of tourists.
Argo is now moored next to Dragonfly, a large yacht owned by the founders of Google (not sure if it is one or both owners) at Denarau Marina near Nandi. We must be in the high rent district. Anchored out in the bay is an even larger yacht owned by a Russian. Eli, our agent here who is handling the formalities of that yacht too, told us that the couple lives aboard with a dog. They have two veterinarians, two nurses, and a security detail on board for the dog. Recently the dog had some sort of eye problem and they flew the thing to Honolulu in a private jet with its full entourage! Nice to know how the other .0000000000001% of the population lives!
Thanks for reading our blog and keeping in touch with us. We’ll update our blog and load some new pictures next month after we are back in the land of bandwidth.
Randy and Rebecca
Malta to Siracusa, Taormina and Milazzo
Our Stay in Malta was brief and we did not do much in the way of exploring other than taking a taxi a few times to town for groceries. The grocery stores in Malta are completely unlike the European ones in that they stock more American goods. Cereals, potato chips, condiments, REAL roast beef, you name it. We really stocked up. After that, we had nothing more to do except to set out for Siracusa, Sicily and then on to Taormina, a picturesque anchorage on the eastern side of Sicily within viewing distance of Mt Etna and with a romantic mountaintop village.
Sunset in Siracusa Harbor
The trip from Malta to Siracusa was pleasantly uneventful. Seas were flat calm for the entire 85 mile trip. We arrived at the anchorage mid afternoon and actually dropped our anchor in the exact spot that we did last year. Siracusa is a near perfectly protected anchorage if you pick the right spot. We dropped anchor in 25 feet of water and spooled out 175 feet of chain, which is way too much, but I sleep well at night that way.
Last Christmas, Carol bought me a drone with a built in video camera. I had used it quite a bit over land but for some reason I was hesitant to try it over the water. The wind was at 0 knots and I figured if I was ever to do it, now was the time. It was fun, but I was so nervous that the video was kind of crappy, so, I won’t post the link here. I tend to get braver as time goes on, so stay tuned!
Our friends Bill and Janet on Airstream, who we met while in Turkey a few seasons back, were also anchored in Siracusa. Through them we were introduced to another family, Bill and Judy on BeBe, who had their Granddaughter Elizabeth along with them for a few months. They in turn introduced us to yet another couple, Suzanne and Bob, which gave us a perfect excuse for a party aboard Seabird!
The Cocktail Party
That lead to dinner the following night at our favorite Siracusa restaurant, La Tavernetta da Piero. It really is nice meeting new cruising friends. It is interesting, because back in Connecticut, our former home cruising grounds, sail boaters and power boaters were like the Hatfields and the McCoys! They had their marinas and we had ours. I have no idea how that started, but it was long before we got into boating. It may have been the tendency of power boaters to pass sailboats close by at 25 kts and sailboaters tendency to cut us off in a channel. When we started cruising, things changed. Most of our friends that we met along the way owned sailboats and we have had a lot of fun. Of course, at Seabird’s cruising speed of 8 knots, I would be hard pressed to throw a 6 inch wake!
Taormina
The Cruise to Taormina was a short one at 48 miles. I had mentioned before that we had no mechanical issues. I had forgot about the battery issue. Toward the end of last season, the battery that starts our generator and emergency wing engine was starting to fail. On my list of springtime repairs was to replace it. As it turned out, getting a large 8D size battery was an issue and we had to settle for two smaller ones connected together. After the repairs were done and the mechanics had left Marina di Ragusa, the engines still barely turned over and started. I decided that I probably never had a bad battery and it was probably something else. After tracing the wires I found the problem. One of the tiny wires connected to the starter was chafed and touching the oil filter, causing a partial short circuit. I felt really stupid for not having checked that out initially but I repaired it and it was working fine now so not to dwell on it………
Taormina is a special place. It is a mildly protected anchorage as long as the wind is not coming from the South, Southeast or East with a beautiful mountaintop ancient city towering above you and an active volcano just off in the distance. While there, we rented a mooring from our friend George, who operates his business “Yacht Hotel” from his sailboat in the mooring field. Yacht Hotel is not a hotel at all, but a mooring field for small and large boats. It is aptly named, however, because of the price (gulp!) he charges per night. For a mooring ball in the most spectacular anchorage in all of Sicily, it costs 80 Euros per night. Well guess what? In prime season, you need to call well in advance to secure a spot there and just after our departure from Taormina he was planning on adding more mooring balls to meet demand. This is truly capitalism at its best. Supply and demand sets the price. I recommend it wholeheartedly as a stop.
The City of Taormina on the hill
Straits of Messina
After staying in Taormina for two nights, it was on to our next stop, Milazzo after passing through the Messina Straits.
Traversing the Messina straits is VERY interesting. First of all, you have ferry boats going back and forth all day from Sicily to the Italian mainland, crisscrossing your path all the way up. Secondly, and most important, is the current, which can run 4 to 5 knots in either direction. You might think it is a tidal situation, but since the Mediterranean has very little tide, it has to be something else. To make a point, the tide is ALWAYS flowing into the med from Gibraltar. That seems strange, but the Med is such a large area that the evaporation rate is huge, so water from the Atlantic is always pouring into the Med. slowly at low tide and fast at high tide to replenish what is lost.
On one side of the Messina Straits is the Tyrrhenian Sea and on the other side is Colder and saltier Levantine intermediate water. The explanation gets very complex and wordy, but in short, the small changes in tide from Gibraltar cause huge current variations that are difficult to predict and have been studied since the days of Homer.
If you are interested in a more thorough explanation of this phenomenon, this link below will take you to an explanation:
http://www.internalwaveatlas.com/Atlas2_PDF/IWAtlas2_Pg199_StraitofMessina.pdf
We have been fortunate going through three times and had at least most of the trip going with us. It is a very wild ride for sure! You would think it would be fun getting a 4-5 knot push from the current, but it is not! The current is not always straight and you encounter counter currents and whirlpools intermittently, which creates havoc with the steering system.
Milazzo
We arrived in Milazzo in late afternoon. We arrived in the harbor and called the harbor master on channel 9 as directed. He motored out in his small inflatable and directed us to enter the basin between two boats. Seabird is 19 feet, two inches wide. I have never been afraid to squeeze through a tight space, but it looked to me like he was directing me through an opening about 17 feet wide. I know a little bit of Italian, but not the words for “Too narrow!!,”. Finally, after 10 minutes of Carol and my sign language, a light bulb went off in his head and he directed is around the outside corner to, for us, docking heaven: a side tie!
Seabird with our treasured Side Tie against the dock in Milazzo
It was a nice, but expensive marina. I don’t know what else to say about the place.. The town was a nice stopover and we had dock water to wash the boat. The guy in front of us on a gorgeous 80 foot sailboat asked for a tour of the boat and he told us that If we wanted to sell it to him, he would buy it. I don’t know what his infatuation with Seabird was, especially coming from his beautiful, sleek sailboat. That just NEVER happens to us when we actually WANT to sell a boat.
Our plan was to stay for a couple of nights, then move on to another small port on northern Sicily, Cefalu.
Next blog….Seabird gets fleeced…….
A few more pics…
Our friends Bill and Janet aboard Airstream in the Messina Straits
A cliffside home in Milazzo, Sicily
Periodically, during the month, in Siracusa, they close an entire street
and cover it with artwork made of flowers. It is a huge project, very
beautiful, and sadly, gone the next day.
Mt Etna as seen from our boat while moored in Taormina
This is a view from the harbor we anchored in
while in Taormina
On the streets of Taormina, Sicily. To get to the
top from the harbor, the road meanders back and
forth and the houses are terraced.
Siracusa in the Background
You can cruise the world this way…or that way……
This ship is called “The World”, aptly named because that is all it does. It continuously circles the globe. It is basically a huge floating condominium complex with homes starting at over $1,000,000 each. On top of the purchase price you pay a large maintenance fee. The Sicilian Coast
Guard kicked us out of our favorite anchoring spot here in Siracusa harbor because this
beast was arriving and wanted our spot. I didnt argue…
And last but not least…….
While our boat was out of the water being worked on in Marina di Ragusa,
The marina was kind enough to rent us one of their apartments at a
bargain price! This picture was taken from our balcony. There were some-
times as many as 8 of these bulls in the yard at any given time. This was
as close as I wanted to get. It was the way that they stared at you…..
Malta to Siracusa, Taormina and Milazzo
Our Stay in Malta was brief and we did not do much in the way of exploring other than taking a taxi a few times to town for groceries. The grocery stores in Malta are completely unlike the European ones in that they stock more American goods. Cereals, potato chips, condiments, REAL roast beef, you name it. We really stocked up. After that, we had nothing more to do except to set out for Siracusa, Sicily and then on to Taormina, a picturesque anchorage on the eastern side of Sicily within viewing distance of Mt Etna and with a romantic mountaintop village.
Sunset in Siracusa Harbor
The trip from Malta to Siracusa was pleasantly uneventful. Seas were flat calm for the entire 85 mile trip. We arrived at the anchorage mid afternoon and actually dropped our anchor in the exact spot that we did last year. Siracusa is a near perfectly protected anchorage if you pick the right spot. We dropped anchor in 25 feet of water and spooled out 175 feet of chain, which is way too much, but I sleep well at night that way.
Last Christmas, Carol bought me a drone with a built in video camera. I had used it quite a bit over land but for some reason I was hesitant to try it over the water. The wind was at 0 knots and I figured if I was ever to do it, now was the time. It was fun, but I was so nervous that the video was kind of crappy, so, I won’t post the link here. I tend to get braver as time goes on, so stay tuned!
Our friends Bill and Janet on Airstream, who we met while in Turkey a few seasons back, were also anchored in Siracusa. Through them we were introduced to another family, Bill and Judy on BeBe, who had their Granddaughter Elizabeth along with them for a few months. They in turn introduced us to yet another couple, Suzanne and Bob, which gave us a perfect excuse for a party aboard Seabird!
The Cocktail Party
That lead to dinner the following night at our favorite Siracusa restaurant, La Tavernetta da Piero. It really is nice meeting new cruising friends. It is interesting, because back in Connecticut, our former home cruising grounds, sail boaters and power boaters were like the Hatfields and the McCoys! They had their marinas and we had ours. I have no idea how that started, but it was long before we got into boating. It may have been the tendency of power boaters to pass sailboats close by at 25 kts and sailboaters tendency to cut us off in a channel. When we started cruising, things changed. Most of our friends that we met along the way owned sailboats and we have had a lot of fun. Of course, at Seabird’s cruising speed of 8 knots, I would be hard pressed to throw a 6 inch wake!
Taormina
The Cruise to Taormina was a short one at 48 miles. I had mentioned before that we had no mechanical issues. I had forgot about the battery issue. Toward the end of last season, the battery that starts our generator and emergency wing engine was starting to fail. On my list of springtime repairs was to replace it. As it turned out, getting a large 8D size battery was an issue and we had to settle for two smaller ones connected together. After the repairs were done and the mechanics had left Marina di Ragusa, the engines still barely turned over and started. I decided that I probably never had a bad battery and it was probably something else. After tracing the wires I found the problem. One of the tiny wires connected to the starter was chafed and touching the oil filter, causing a partial short circuit. I felt really stupid for not having checked that out initially but I repaired it and it was working fine now so not to dwell on it………
Taormina is a special place. It is a mildly protected anchorage as long as the wind is not coming from the South, Southeast or East with a beautiful mountaintop ancient city towering above you and an active volcano just off in the distance. While there, we rented a mooring from our friend George, who operates his business “Yacht Hotel” from his sailboat in the mooring field. Yacht Hotel is not a hotel at all, but a mooring field for small and large boats. It is aptly named, however, because of the price (gulp!) he charges per night. For a mooring ball in the most spectacular anchorage in all of Sicily, it costs 80 Euros per night. Well guess what? In prime season, you need to call well in advance to secure a spot there and just after our departure from Taormina he was planning on adding more mooring balls to meet demand. This is truly capitalism at its best. Supply and demand sets the price. I recommend it wholeheartedly as a stop.
The City of Taormina on the hill
Straits of Messina
After staying in Taormina for two nights, it was on to our next stop, Milazzo after passing through the Messina Straits.
Traversing the Messina straits is VERY interesting. First of all, you have ferry boats going back and forth all day from Sicily to the Italian mainland, crisscrossing your path all the way up. Secondly, and most important, is the current, which can run 4 to 5 knots in either direction. You might think it is a tidal situation, but since the Mediterranean has very little tide, it has to be something else. To make a point, the tide is ALWAYS flowing into the med from Gibraltar. That seems strange, but the Med is such a large area that the evaporation rate is huge, so water from the Atlantic is always pouring into the Med. slowly at low tide and fast at high tide to replenish what is lost.
On one side of the Messina Straits is the Tyrrhenian Sea and on the other side is Colder and saltier Levantine intermediate water. The explanation gets very complex and wordy, but in short, the small changes in tide from Gibraltar cause huge current variations that are difficult to predict and have been studied since the days of Homer.
If you are interested in a more thorough explanation of this phenomenon, this link below will take you to an explanation:
http://www.internalwaveatlas.com/Atlas2_PDF/IWAtlas2_Pg199_StraitofMessina.pdf
We have been fortunate going through three times and had at least most of the trip going with us. It is a very wild ride for sure! You would think it would be fun getting a 4-5 knot push from the current, but it is not! The current is not always straight and you encounter counter currents and whirlpools intermittently, which creates havoc with the steering system.
Milazzo
We arrived in Milazzo in late afternoon. We arrived in the harbor and called the harbor master on channel 9 as directed. He motored out in his small inflatable and directed us to enter the basin between two boats. Seabird is 19 feet, two inches wide. I have never been afraid to squeeze through a tight space, but it looked to me like he was directing me through an opening about 17 feet wide. I know a little bit of Italian, but not the words for “Too narrow!!,”. Finally, after 10 minutes of Carol and my sign language, a light bulb went off in his head and he directed is around the outside corner to, for us, docking heaven: a side tie!
Seabird with our treasured Side Tie against the dock in Milazzo
It was a nice, but expensive marina. I don’t know what else to say about the place.. The town was a nice stopover and we had dock water to wash the boat. The guy in front of us on a gorgeous 80 foot sailboat asked for a tour of the boat and he told us that If we wanted to sell it to him, he would buy it. I don’t know what his infatuation with Seabird was, especially coming from his beautiful, sleek sailboat. That just NEVER happens to us when we actually WANT to sell a boat.
Our plan was to stay for a couple of nights, then move on to another small port on northern Sicily, Cefalu.
Next blog….Seabird gets fleeced…….
A few more pics…
Our friends Bill and Janet aboard Airstream in the Messina Straits
A cliffside home in Milazzo, Sicily
Periodically, during the month, in Siracusa, they close an entire street
and cover it with artwork made of flowers. It is a huge project, very
beautiful, and sadly, gone the next day.
Mt Etna as seen from our boat while moored in Taormina
This is a view from the harbor we anchored in
while in Taormina
On the streets of Taormina, Sicily. To get to the
top from the harbor, the road meanders back and
forth and the houses are terraced.
Siracusa in the Background
You can cruise the world this way…or that way……
This ship is called “The World”, aptly named because that is all it does. It continuously circles the globe. It is basically a huge floating condominium complex with homes starting at over $1,000,000 each. On top of the purchase price you pay a large maintenance fee. The Sicilian Coast
Guard kicked us out of our favorite anchoring spot here in Siracusa harbor because this
beast was arriving and wanted our spot. I didnt argue…
And last but not least…….
While our boat was out of the water being worked on in Marina di Ragusa,
The marina was kind enough to rent us one of their apartments at a
bargain price! This picture was taken from our balcony. There were some-
times as many as 8 of these bulls in the yard at any given time. This was
as close as I wanted to get. It was the way that they stared at you…..
