Dearest Friends and Family,

This is how I ended my last ChaliGram: "We hope to get out of here, all repaired, by the end of August at the latest. We'll mosey on down the coast before hopping over to Sicily, and going down the east coast along the straits of Messina, then around the SE corner and eventually into our winter destination at Marina di Ragusa. We have LOTS of friends who are going to be there, so it'll be like old home week."

Well, the last sentence is true. But we did NOT do what we thought we'd do. Welcome to the world of cruising.

(For many of you who are on Facebook, a lot of this will be old news, since I tend to update Facebook much more frequently than I send out ChaliGrams. It's a very effective and efficient way of sending out quick updates!)

We didn't get out of Gaeta until September 2nd. Our time on the hard wasn't tooooooooo bad. Or else maybe we're just getting numb to it. No fridge (just ice), no air conditioner (just fans), no toilet (just a bucket), and a 12' ladder to go up and down to town, to the laundromat, to the shower/bathrooms. Finding bags of ice for the fridge proved to be a very expensive proposition....about $5.50/1kg bag (2.2 pounds!) highway robbery!!!! Needed 2 bags a day. The repairs were done satisfactorily, so now we just start the game of getting reimbursed by the other guy's insurance company. It's supposedly "in the works." Upon launch, we met an American gal, Jayne, who'd just arrived in her boat and who has lived in Italy for 27 years. She was lovely and full of very useful information, since she's been cruising a long time around here. She also had a good refrigerator repairman whom she called to come take a look at ours. Happily, he fixed the problem, and so now our fridge works while we're underway and using our motor. ICE CUBES! hooray!!!!! Needless to say, we were anxious to get moving after being in Gaeta for 4+ weeks, but, we only got as far as Salerno (located in the "arm pit" of the Sorrento peninsula, where the Amalfi coast is), were weather bound for 4 days.

By this time, we had pretty much decided that we better play it safe and leave the European Union, so we could re-enter and re-start our 18 month VAT-free holiday (a requirement for non-EU registered boats--unless of course we WANTED to pay a ~22% tax on the value of your boat! uhhhh, no thanks!) Not that ANY official in the last 7 years has ever mentioned this restriction, nor asked us to prove we hadn't exceeded our 18 months..... but what with the economic situation in Italy, and the fact that the govt. recently imposed a new tax for ITALIAN boats, it just seemed like it wouldn't be a big stretch for the Customs Dept. to figure out that there could be a gold mine in fines/fees/taxes among all the non-EU boats in their waters. We WERE going to just wait til next Spring, but based on the (bad) luck we've had this season, we decided to play it safe.

SO! instead of "moseying down the Italian coast to Sicily," we did a 3 day/330 mile non-stop passage to Tunisia, having to MOTOR 52 of the 54 hours it took us (but ohhhh, those 2 hours of sailing were total BLISS!) An expensive trip, fuel-wise. Fortunately, fuel is much cheaper in Tunisia than in the EU, so we filled up there. In case you're wondering...... yes, we were in Tunisia when the whole Islamic world reacted 'rather emotionally' to that awful video from America about Mohammed. What was I just saying about our bad luck? Foreign countries frequently equate an individual nutcase in America (home of free speech, sort of) with AMERICA and all AMERICANS. Sadly, it's probably the same way that Americans perceive all Islamists by the nutbag, radical Islamists who give their religion a bad name. The good news is that we were in Yasmine Hammamet which is a vacation resort town. Nobody there seemed to care about what was happening in Tunis. Plus, speaking French and walking Zoey gave me good cover. No one would think an American had taken her dog on vacation to Tunisia for heaven's sake! We took the American flag off the stern of our boat. No point in attracting attention, right? We ended up staying in Tunisia longer than intended because ..... WEATHER. A Mistral was blowing out of the Gulf of Lion (France), which affected the whole western/central Mediterranean. By last Sunday, we felt the seas would be calm enough, yet we'd still have some wind so we could SAIL for a change directly to our final destination of Marina di Ragusa, Sicily. And sail we did. It was glorious. It reminded us how much we enjoyed sailing, which after the previous two long passages of almost total motoring, we'd forgotten! Typical Mediterranean conditions.... either too much wind which brings horrible waves, or no wind at all. But, we lucked out this time, and the seas weren't even too bad. The 2 nights we were on passage, there was no moon. As such, we had a rather spectacular view of the stars. Just gorgeous. And of course I just love the sunrises and the sunsets at sea. I'm NOT crazy about having to dodge and weave our way through the shipping channels, and the straits of Sicily are VERY BUSY. And lucky us, we got to transit the straits both going TO Tunisia and going from Tunisia to Sicily. oh boy. But.... a little stress makes those 3 hour watches just fly by! "Are we on a collision course? Must I take evasive action?, or will that giant container ship pass in front of us/behind us?" gulp.

We arrived in the little town of Marina di Ragusa on the south coast of the eastern side of Sicily on Tuesday morning at 7:30AM to a welcoming committee of some of our old cruising pals. It was GREAT! The words, "CHEAP NEW MARINA" spread through the Mediterranean Cruising Community like wildfire, and so this marina is already crowded with lots of cruisers whom we've met over the last 7 years. We're moored right next to our good friends Martin and Sandy on Mystique, whom we hadn't seen since May, 2010 when we left Marmaris, Turkey....same with Johann and Eva, our Scandanavian-Canadian friends onboard "Northern Lights" who are just down the dock from us. Albert and Ineke, our Dutch friends on "Joshua" were also here, although they went home to Holland the day we arrived. We'd seen them and cruised together earlier this season. So, it really is like old home week here. Friday night happy hour last night probably had over 50 people! And there are lots more to come. I think the largest percentage of cruisers here are American, then Brits, then French and German, with a few Swedes and only a couple of Dutch. It's a large marina. We need our bike just to go over to the office or the shower block. The town is a vacation town with a beautiful soft sandy beach, lots of restaurants, hotels, several grocery stores and a Tuesday farmer's market. Martin and Sandy participate in a "car-share", whereby a bunch of cruisers share in the monthly cost of a long-term car rental. As soon as someone goes home, we'll join, too. Having access to wheels makes a big difference, if for nothing else, then getting all those heavy items (gin, tonic, scotch, beer, cokes, juice, you know, the important stuff) from the grocery store...

We'll be arriving in the states on Nov. 7th by way of Amsterdam, where we'll be visiting with Albert and Ineke in their little town of Harlingen for a few days. We plan to be back in our land-based home in Virginia for 4.5 months this time, so, we'll look forward to seeing many of you while we're back!

Happy Autumn!



LINK to PHOTOS:
https://picasaweb.google.com/chaliventures/ChaliGram126ItalyTunisiaSicily?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCN2Qm-y6tKyEoQE&feat=directlink