Sardinia or Tunisia! Time for a decision!
We were nixed in both our previous attempts to get to Sardinia and the weather forcast this time is for little or no wind for the first part of the 176nm NNW course with head winds for the last part of the 30 some hour passage.
Yasmine on the other hand is only 117nm in a SSW direction with favorable winds.
We'd heard from several people who'd come from Tunisia which is where we'd originally planned to visit, who'd informed us the popular uprising was over and the new regime were intent on stability and anxious to bring tourism back to normal for the dozens of 5 star hotels sprinkled along the miles of sunny beaches there.
We'd been offered a berth at 25 % of the price of Cagliari, Sardinia which kind of made the decision easier to make and so after a leisurely lunch we cast off, said goodbye to the European Union and headed for the friendly coast of North Africa.
Pure sailing over the past several weeks has been a rarity with a mere single day, way back in northern Greece providing a favorable sailing breeze and the muted hum of our powerful diesel has been our constant companion on this voyage.
An easy overnight sail with a fantastic, broad reach over the last 40 or so miles powering Chinook over 9 knts produced the kind of addictive euphoria which keeps sailors coming back for more and saw us at the entrance to Port Yasmine by early morning.
We tied up alongside the reception quay using the marina’s brochure as our guide and I stepped ashore armed with “boat papers” and passports and prepared for formal admission into Tunisa hoping a smile and a friendly “Bon Jour” would smooth the way.
The Port Police, Marina Authorities and Customs are conveniently located in the same building which really eased the usual schlepping around for the appropriate office and even though the multi lingual customs officer was required to the board and inspect Chinook, his visit was both humorous and polite with his admiration of our below decks wood work clearly complimentary.
The local language is Arabic with a strong French secondary though the French accent is almost completely absent but most of the staff there spoke English as well, some very well.
To be continued.

Our long time friends and restaurateurs Vince and Connie are both Italian, more specifically Vince is Sicilian with Connie hailing from Calabria near the heel of the boot. Coincidently this summer they'd planned to tour Italy including Sardinia, culminating with a reunion with Vince's brothers and sisters and large extended family, who reside in the south west coast of Sicily in the Marzamimi area.
Since we'd be roughly in the same geographic area at an overlapping time, there was a good chance that the wind god Aeolus would conspire with us to get together somewhere along the way even though Vince & Connie had an itinerary of wineries to visit in their professional capacity.
We'd stayed in contact through various means of digital social networking but it was still a delightful surprise when they showed up at the dock where Chinook was moored one morning in Marsala on the west coast of Sicily.
We had arrived there early the previous day from Sciacca, having motored all the way with light head winds and found a comfortable berth in a new area of the old marina just in front of the huge Marsala wine warehouses.
It was a nice long walk to the old town center and we reacquainted ourselves with the layout testing the ice-cream vendors along the way and finding time for beer and a glass of wine in a modern café with free wi fi. ....
That evening an Amel Super Maramu nestled in beside us, salt covered it seemed to have come from open seas and the owner and his wife wasted little time in the morning washing the big ketch down. We chatted for a while and soon learned they'd arrived from The Yasmine Marina, in Hammamet, Tunisia!
I quizzed them on the political situation there, the shelter, costs and available yacht services, noting we'd heard of very positive things about Tunisia and I was revisiting our options for a summer berth there.
They lived on board permanently and ran a business designing handbags for a Chinese company and were heading back to Yasmine after a couple of months for the winter and had nothing but good things to say about it. According to them the spontaneous uprising lasted only few days and when Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the dictator fled to Saudi Arabia things calmed down almost immediately. Apparently he'd fled from his palace in a big hurry leaving behind some $37 million plus jewelry and drugs. I'd read an internet news report a few days earlier he'd already been tried in abstentia and found guilty of various crimes but there were more, serious charges filed against him.
Tito said he'd give me the name of a great guy, who'd take care of Chinook while we were away, at a reasonable price, but later that day they moved to the other side of the dock which we couldn't access and we didn't see them again and I didn't get his name.
Vince and Connie had made an appointment with the Pellegrino wine company and we tagged along in their rental car the next day to taste some of Marsala finest wines and local high quality, smooth tasting Grappa. This was a lot of fun with V&C effortlessly conversing in Italian and English, switching back and forth with us, with the sales manager and staff and making deals through Pellegrino's Californian distributor.
They recommended a restaurant in the Old City and made a lunch reservation for the four of us and on arrival Doreen and I were surprised, recognizing it as the same restaurant we'd eaten in with Fran several years ago and it had not changed a bitl.
After a thorough exploration of the crowded Old City we watched a traditional Sicilian wedding in the Main Square and the girls did a little shopping in the stylish ladies stores which abound the area.




Over breakfast the next morning Vince talked about a Sicilian named Salvatore Giuliano who'd become a legend in the 1940's as a kind of Robin Hood, El Lute character who lived as an outlaw with his gang of separatists in the hills of Montelepre.
We decided to take a drive up into those hills and visit the villages where he'd hid untouched by the Carabiniere, robbing, stealing and kidnapping as well as helping and supporting impoverished peasants for many years, before being killed by the army and buried up there.
Rumors claimed he'd escaped the army ambush and fled to the United States where he'd previously petitioned President Harry S. Truman to annex Sicily and his body was exhumed for DNA testing in 2010.
It turned out neither of these scenarios were true and investigative reporter Tommaso Besozzi discovered that the shootout had been staged and Giuliano had been betrayed and shot down in cold blood by Gaspare Pisciotta, who was later poisoned with strychnine and died in a Palermo prison.
The tiny roads and craggy hills were a challenge to drive on but Vince found the villages and we walked around thinking it had probably changed little from the day in 1950 when Salvatore Giuliani was gunned down by his own cousin.

NB.There is a book and movie available describing his life.

The French flagged yacht next to us was a Beneteau 43 similar to the Beneteau we once owned named Calypso Lady and I struck up a conversation with the owner who was surprised to hear the previous CEO of Beneteau David Tydeman was now the head honcho of Oyster, replacing the retired Richard Matthews who’s started Oyster Marine many years ago.
They’d arrived from Tunisia a few days ago and were heading south down the coast of Sicily with a friend in another Beneteau who’d also wintered in Tunisia, which piqued my interest as we’d planned to visit Tunisia but because of the uprisings, decided to bypass the area.
They’d loved it there and their description was that all was normal again and the people were really glad to see tourist once more.
He produced a brochure from the Yasmine Marina in Hammamet which I recognized immediately from images garnered from Google Earth while browsing the coastline for suitable places to stop over.
It was well sheltered and they fully recommended the large marina. The enclosed price list indicated a berth for Chinook would cost less money for one year than Sardinia for 3 months, which really held my attention and I decided to contact them and check for space.

Motoring north up to Sciacca as the sun came up was a doddle and we slid past the break water into the sheltered bay and looked for someone to direct us to a mooring.
Our cruising guide mentioned there were two floating pontoon layouts here, each with it's own administration and staff but the map drawing showed them interconnected and both with available moorings for visitors at reasonable prices.
A whistle and wave from the Navalle Nautica in the furthest section indicated a vacant space there and Doreen prepared lines and fenders to go stern to next to a French flagged yacht. But as we passed the first pontoon we noticed waving and shouting coming from an individual there.
"Brian and Doreen" he called out "Marmaris 06",
In the few seconds it took to pass by I didn't recognize anyone but the accent was unmistakable American and we waved back.
Marmaris is a large cruising area on the south coast of Turkey where we'd stayed on a couple of occasions including '06. There are three marinas in the area with a capacity of nearly 2000 boats with a benign climate perfect for "liveaboards" to winter and is very popular with the East Mediterranean sailing community.
We were obviously curious as to who this was, a person who remembered not only Chinook but our names as well so after tying up securely and connecting to shore power and water I made my way to the Capitania to register Chinook, determined to find the owner of the voice who's hailed us and to reaquaint ourselves with him eager to swap our travel itineraries over the last few years.
Unfortunately there was no way to cross from one area to the next as both organizations employed key only access which made it impossible to get in or out of either of the moorings without one.
That afternoon was the Canadian Formula One race in Montreal and my favorite Ferrari driver was sitting number two on the starting grid after an impressive qualifying round, so I tuned our onboard TV to the appropriate channel hoping the receive the race broadcast through the antennae at the top of the mast.
The weather was not cooperating in the capital of Quebec with rain so hard the race was called after a few laps for safety reasons as it was impossible for the drivers to see the track.
After several hours though the competition was resumed and turned into the best race of the year, with lots of passing and a few accidents on the slippery surface with the lead changing hands on the final lap of the race. Unfortunately though, the red Italian cars did not fare well.

We have a tendency to get up in the morning on Chinook and take care of whatever chores have accrued prior to exploring ashore, but this has caught us a few times as we'd get ashore just when things were closing for siesta so we started early for the long climb up the hill where the main town was situated and browsed around the picturesque town with narrow streets old churches and fabulous ocean views.

The most impressive however was the sheer number of ceramic stores, some with artist's hand painting objects and kilns right there in the stores. All manner of items were available and we looked in every store and studio for the street numbers of our home in California, but without success.

We looked around for a nice restaurant, maybe outside with comfortable chairs and sun shades but drew a blank. There were small cafes serving coffee and sodas with light snacks but not a Trattoria to be found anywhere.
Even the main square dominated by a massive church did not cater to the hungry tourists.
Casually we wound our way down the steep steps to near sea level and the commercial fish processing area where the results of a large number of fishing trawlers nocturnal activities, were squeezed into cans.
Out of the blue a decent looking restaurant appeared and I poked my nose inside to check it out.
Only one table was occupied but there were clean table cloths and it was well decorated and maintained. We were ushered to a table with apologies for not having internet and enjoyed a great lunch. Before very long the restaurant was full and several customers were waiting in the entrance for our table but we felt no pressure from the staff who were in no hurry to present our bill and seemed used to the situation.

That afternoon I dropped all of Chinooks anchor chain into the clear waters of Sciacca and started to clean the most stubborn mud from our foredeck. This stuff was incredibly sticky and would not dissolve in water, in fact water just seemed to make it slimy and it literally stuck like glue.
It reminded me of the time I'd tried a potter's wheel. While revolving slowly a lump of malleable clay and wet hands could fashion almost any kind of bowl or cup shape and suddenly the connection between the clay bottom which held our anchor so securely in very high winds and the proliferation of ceramics in the same general area, became clear.

As Doreen and I raised the anchor slowly scrubbing the clay from its links Richard from Moonshadow rowed passed in a dingy coming from the next pontoon where he'd arrived that morning, I asked him about an American we may know, on his dock.
Yes! There was someone there who new us but he'd left that morning to fly back stateside, leaving his yacht at the marina.

Unfortunately we never found the person's identity or his boat's name which is just too bad.

Along with their friendly, contagious enthusiasm the dock workers at Cala del Sole quickly demonstrated their newness and inexperience in basic seafaring knot tying, clearly belonged to the “if you can’t tie a proper knot”. “Tie a lot of knots” group and I took a couple of the guys aside and showed them some basics, which I hope will be useful for them down the road, But that didn’t help much when the time for us to leave the dock arrived and the crunch came, with both fore and aft lines impossible to untie with tension on them. Using the motor we rocked back and forth, easing the tension and releasing the stern line, the bow line now relaxed, came off easily.
Motoring out into open blue waters again I set a course to Sciacca, pronounced Chakka by Sicilians. Located about 50 miles North West into a head wind which enabled only about 5 knots of smooth boat speed, we crossed our fingers it would last as the “grib (weather) files” indicated. We had the option of making Empedocle at about half the distance if it got too rough for us though.
Local money bet on the wind to gain strength and to our dismay they won, as after a few hours it became clear we were in for a ride, Surrounded by white capped waves which were becoming steeper as the breeze gradually increased.

A well fed gull or other heavy bird had rested on our wind indicator at the top of Chinook’s mast at some time and broken it, so we’d had a new anemometer installed in Istanbul and though the guys from Raymarine insisted they’d calibrated it in their shop, it was clear to us the readings were overly optimistic.
While 22 knot indications seemed a little farfetched we knew it was blowing hard, with spray flying over the dodger requiring razor sharp ducking reflexes as Chinook buried her bow deep into the oncoming waves and reared high again in a short steep, unpleasant swell.
We could barely manage 3 knots and at times would almost came to a complete standstill so very soon a unanimous decision to go plan B was taken and I entered the coordinates for Empedocle and the gateway to the world famous ruins of Agrigento, just a couple miles to starboard and off the wind.

We’d visited here on our previous time in Sicily and I remembered a pretty tight floating dock area with lots of small craft and I was more than a little nervous about docking stern to with high winds and limited space, but noticed a couple of sailboats anchored inside the outer break water thinking this may be a good option, but continued gingerly into the main port.
Rounding the commercial dock with a huge ferry moored to the outer wall, I had one last chance to turn around before entering the confined space and not knowing what was there, I bailed and spun the wheel hard a port!

There was lots of room to anchor near the two other boats and the bottom was a uniform 5 meter depth but the wind howled over the breakwater and as Doreen pushed the anchor over the bow, we knew we needed very good hold here.
A few minutes later though we knew we were dragging, but our sometimes temperamental windlass was up to the task and the anchor came up easily with a plastic bag and an old shirt wrapped around it.
On our second try I nudged Chinook into the wind near what looked like a fish farm and Doreen dumped the anchor and 40 meters of chain onto the muddy bottom and I used the bow thrusters to hold her steady and backed up slowly to prevent jerking the ground tackle loose.
This time we stretched the chain out and the anchor bit hard, but we danced all over the anchorage with the long chain so decided to use our patented delta sail on the stern, to stabilize our free swinging and keep a more even pressure on the anchor.
We shared the anchorage with a small racing yacht which was unoccupied and an old wooden sloop with a rare American flag. The owner hailed us on channel16 and we chatted for a bit on the VHS radio He’d been there for a few days and was headed like us to Sardinia but sensibly waiting for an easterly wind expected in about a week or so by his weather guru.

We’d visited ancient Agrigento on our previous stay in Sicily, so contented ourselves with the local scene and took the dingy around and into the main harbor next morning. I was relieved to see my instincts of the previous day were correct as there was absolutely no room there for Chinook with lots of small craft tied to the old floating pier we’d used before.
We met the American cruising couple Richard & Anita ashore and wandered the town together stopping for a beer and lunch in a little café with tables and sun shades and swapped current news events from around the world and compared grandchildren, They were from Portland Oregon, so we were practically neighbors and their very pretty wooden yacht Moonshadow was an old Alajuela 38 built in the early seventies, but still in good shape.

They’d recently arrived from Hammamet in Tunisia and raved out the clean spacious and well run marina there and Richard swore there were no problems vis-a-vi the uprisings there a few months ago and it was business as usual there. Mooring rates there were a fraction of those charged in marinas in Sicily and Sardinia and while planning this trip I’d seriously thought of booking Chinook there which got me thinking again.


The Meltimi wind patterns seemed to be fairly calm at night, rising with the sun to near gale force by in late afternoon, so logically the best time to sail north was either at night or very early in the morning and getting to our destination at least by lunch time would be the best scenario.
So just before dawn next day we brought up the 40 meters of chain that’d held us securely for two days and two nights, but were astonished at the coating of a gumbo like mud attached to the chain, anchor and windlass as well as Doreen and the foredeck, which would lead to a extended clean up later, as well as a probable insight into the major tourist industry of Sciacca.
Brian

Through email I’d contacted a new marina located in Licata and placed it on the mental inventory of places to visit along the south coast of Sicily. Zooming in from Google Earth one could see the double breakwaters under the mountain and could guess good protection from winds from all directions.
Antonio, the manager had sent a link to their website which was very professional produced with a dramatic, haunting sound track. Using an Iphone app Doreen ascertained the track was called The Sea and came from an album called Big Calm recorded by a British band named Morcheeba. I was so impressed I bought and downloaded the entire album from Itunes and have since enjoyed most of the tracks.

Our charts and pilot book are a bit long in the tooth and there was not even a hint of a new marina there so I wasn’t sure exactly where inside the moles it was located so called them on VHS channel 16 for directions.
Giuseppe came back saying he would meet us at the first breakwater in his dingy and would guide us to our berth and we followed him through a marked winding freshly dredged channel and picked up a tailed mooring.
There were half a dozen people on the brand new dock waiting to greet us with smiles and enthusiasm we’ve never witness previously. Only a brass band was missing from the welcome we received and Giuseppe whisked me to reception in an electric golf cart where I was introduced to the owners and developers as if I was Royalty and presented with special gift. A flash memory stick in the shape of a silver key.
The Marina de Cale del Sole is part of an ambitious redevelopment of the marina encompassing the mouth of the river Salso, which includes homes, condominiums and day chalets. Anchored by a stunning new shopping center with a huge super market and big ticket electrical appliance/computer store, it includes a number of high end retailers and a restaurant all demonstrating that unmistakably special, Italian design flair.
Check it out at http://www.marinadicaladelsole.it/

It blew hard in Licata off our beam, and we used additional lines including a long breast line to keep us stabilized but it was three days before we could leave and continue hopping our way to Marsala, the logical jump off point to Cagliari in Sardinia.