Where we are now...
29 October 2009 | Palermo, Sicily
T-Shirt weather
Well, its been some time since we were able to update the blog. Our internet access since the start of the trip has been intermittent at best, and non-existent at worst! How niave we were to think that we would have free wi-fi in most marinas! Dream on... Anyway, we crossed from Bonifacio in Corsica to Sardinia on 11 October. The crossing was interesting in that our auto-pilot and navigation system failed as we left! At least we only had about 15km to go. We had to hand steer all the way in the wind and rain - not so pleasant. It turned out that we had dislodged the electrical connection due to all the clutter in the cupboard!! Well we have to have a glory hole somewhere on the boat!
Thanks to hand-held GPS we managed to arrive at St. Teresa, Sardinia, without incident. We met a very interesting Norwegian couple there who had spent 4 years sailing. They had crossed the Atlantic 3 times and circumnavigated the globe twice since retiring. What they didn't know about sailing and life aboard wasn't worth knowing. They gave us some good tips for places to winter, and pointed out the best of the Greek islands to visit.
Next stop was a small Marina - Port Rotondo, which had almost completely closed down for the winter, apart from a very expensive shop selling women's clothes (not the practical sailing type - more like flimsey silk skirts!) and ornate wine glasses - very handy for boat life (!), and one restaurant. We had 2 bowls of pasta and a pizza for the handsome price of 93 euros!!!!! Anyway, needless to say that it was a marina "to be seen" in during the high season, for the rich and famous. They probably would have moved us on if we had arrived in August! There were some lovely sailing boats there though, including a couple of old large wooden boats.
We experienced the full force of the severe Med winds here - 55 knots (90 to 100mph) in the marina itself. It was truly something else. More amazing than the wind strength though was that one boat actually left for a day's sailing in it! We all stood and watched them leave with mouths wide open - very fool-hardy. When they did come back they managed to hit 2 other boats trying to berth...some people hey!
On the whole we didn't really take to Sardinia. We much preferred Corsica. We've been amazed at the lack of English spoken generally since arriving in Italy and communication has been an issue. In one marina (Arbatax, Sardinia) as we were mooring in a cross-wind, the harbour master ran up to us and threw our ropes away from the pontoon as he was telling us to go somewhere else. Probably the rudest person we've met so far on the trip.
Weather in Sardinia was bad for much of the time....the hi-light for us was arriving at Cagliari and meeting a really lovely Dutch family with 3 kids, a Dutch retired couple (who were a mind of information) and an Irish couple doing the same trip as us. It was a great little community and Niamh really enjoyed having friends to play with. She learned a handful of Dutch words within the first day!
We left Sardinia for Sicily on 26 October. Unfortunately no wind and so apart from about an hours sailing, we had to motor all the way. 293km took us 28 hours.