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Tag Archives | Nordhavn
[KensBlog]Anchored at Es Grau, Island of Menorca, Spain
[KensBlog]Anchored at Es Grau, Island of Menorca, Spain
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Passagemaking with a Nordhavn 2015-08-04 21:29:53
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[KensBlog]A Smooth Passage from France to Spain
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[KensBlog]A Smooth Passage from France to Spain
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Passagemaking with a Nordhavn 2015-08-03 21:14:53
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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……
