Dearest Family and Friends,

Wow…. after 5 months of living on land (which is longer than usual), being back onboard ChaliVentures has been quite an adjustment….seems to take longer every year to get acclimated. Do you suppose that means we're getting old? It's been a week since we've been back in good old Marina di Ragusa, along the eastern end of southern Sicily. I actually started writing this ChaliGram 5 days ago, but had no internet yet. The internet STILL isn't right, and I'll have to take a bus into the big(ger) inland town of Ragusa tomorrow to get it fixed, but at least we have SOME means of communicating, albeit expensive.

The flights themselves were fairly stress-free, even though our late departure from Washington, DC meant we missed our tight connection in Amsterdam to Rome. So we had the pleasure of waiting 4 hours in the Amsterdam airport. The next 2 flights were uneventful, thankfully. At least I got to see 2 movies I'd been wanting to see: "Life of Pi" (FABULOUS… did the book justice!!!) and "ARGO" (fascinating story!) Arriving in Sicily was breathtaking, I have to say. With the setting sun, everything was such a gorgeous green! Mt. Etna was covered in clouds, but the rest of this beautiful island looked the way you imagine (green) Ireland to be. Except that Sicily's rugged mountains throughout make it quite unique. Naturally we missed the bus from the airport so we decided to live large and take a cab …. to the tune of $260.00 ya gotta love those holiday weekend rates! Next time I need to be much more cognizant of holidays when I book our roundtrip flights!

It took a whole day to put away all the boat supplies and our 8 month supply of vitamins/medicines etc. into our limited storage space. Too much weight; too many bags: fees! … all in all an expensive return to our floating home. It's pretty windy, and it rained like a sonovagun last night. I need to wait for our canvas to dry and for the wind to stop blowing so I can waterprooof our bimini (aka cockpit roof). That will make things more comfortable.

Our Dutch buddies, Albert & Ineke (whom we visited in Amsterdam last November) returned on Wednesday and Sandy and Martin will be back on the 11th. Other friends will be drifting in throughout the month. We're going to start participating in a "car-share" starting on April 14th so we'll have wheels at least once a week. Until then, it's a matter of riding our bike to the grocery stores in this wee little town of Marina di Ragusa. We'll probably be here in the marina til early May…. depending on the weather and our readiness. Still lots of Spring Recommissioning jobs to do. We're renting a car with Albert and Ineke this week to do a couple of day trips this week here in southeast Sicily.

Our cruising plan this season will be to make our way up to lovely Savona, Italy where we have secured a 2013-2014 winter reservation. (Getting our winter reservation is always step 1 with us, then we work backwards.) Savona is about 25 miles southwest of Genoa, Italy. We spent 10 days there last June and really enjoyed it. We'll be cruising along the east coasts of the (large) islands of Sardinia and Corsica, then Elba, then maybe over to the French coast (again! -- we just love France), then onto Savona. Our PLAN is to put the boat to bed early (early September) then go "land cruising" via train and/or car with Martin and Sandy through northern Italy, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Poland and Romania -- at least -- before turning around and coming back to Savona. We'll probably fly back to the States in early November, per usual. Since the boat is going to be wayyyyyy up in the northern Mediterranean for the winter, we MAY put her on a truck next Spring and ship her across to the Baltic Sea, so we can cruise new grounds in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, etc.…. or not. We'll have to wait and see.

Our 5 months back in the States were action packed: trips to New York; Knoxville, TN; Boulder, CO; Cary, NC. Plus Chuck, Zoey and I did the normal "Annual Medical 500. " Happily, all is well…a clean bill of health for another year. I also had to settle my aunt's estate; Chuck was interviewed a couple of times (we'll let you know when Chuck makes his Aljazeera debut), and in our free time, we renovated our condo (new floors; knocked down a wall; repainted yadayadayada). We had lots of social events with our family and friends, and now…. I just want to rest!

So that's what's going on in our lives. It's blowing like hell right now; it's chilly, and it's supposed to start raining any minute. Not what you imagine when you think of southern Sicily, right? Yesterday was nice though. Chuck just came back from the bakery. He's fuming, because the bread blew overboard while he was re-attaching our bike to the dock cleat.

If you're going to be anywhere near Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, Elba or the Riviera, give us a shout!

Love, Alison, Chuck and Zoey of course

Alison Spinney
Onboard s/v ChaliVentures in…
…Sicily