2015, The New Season for Seaclusion and all on board

Well it has been a long time since we left Seaclusion in Marina di Ragusa on Sicily. In fact we have been away a month now, so it has been very remiss of us to keep you waiting for our first update.

The plan this season is to take Seaclusion to Monastir in Tunisia for work on her, spend some time in Malta with new family members before heading off back to Sicily, up the east coast of Italy, across to Dubrovnik in Croatia, and spend the remaining time around the Croatian coastline and its hundreds of islands, then coming south to Montenegro, then the final stretch, Corfu and over to Preveza on the mainland of Greece before leaving her there on the hard for the winter, thus returning to Spain in early October.

Before departing to Monastir, we spent a couple of weeks in Marina di Ragusa, waking Seaclusion out of her winter slumber, putting up her sails up (not as easy as it sounds, not when I dropped a crucial shackle inside the mast and David patiently spent 2 hours rescuing it with a long stick and some sticky tape) and waiting for a good weather window to cross. We hired a car to explore inland a little and joined what can only be described as the wacky races to go up to the  beautiful towns of Piazza Armerina, Mazzarino and Caltagirone, all full of character as the pictures show. We even caught sight of their latest police car!

Piazza Armerina

Mazzarino

Caltagirone

The trip to Monastir was pretty uneventful, a full 2 day sail, (including the nights ), 1 day of which was favourable winds and the other unfavourable to the fuel tank. There were no refugees from Libya seen either on packed boats or floating in the water.

The view from Seaclusion as we approached Monastir

We got lifted out of the water in Monastir a day late onto the boatyard, where work began to get the old layers of anti-foul off and back to the gelcoat, so she could then have coppercoat applied, which hopefully means no more anti-foul for circa 10 years, but time will tell. We had fully intended to see some of Tunisia during the 2 weeks the yacht was being worked on, but like all plans, we realised that this was just not going to happen.

Whilst the workers in the yard were great and worked incredibly hard, the real truth was that the process they used was both very manual and time consuming, so much so that we ended up chipping in to ensure that we made it to Malta for the 9^th June. Never a day went by when we didn’t go to the boatyard, even on Sunday when there were no workers present.  There were many other jobs that needed doing, this list included getting rid of the awful windows, or what was left of them in our sprayhood and have new ones fitted that now mean we can actually see through them. We had the winches serviced, fender covers made, in both black and beige, so Chantal can change her mind about which ones to use, dependant on her mood! We had a UVA sail cover fitted for the Spinnaker, which means we don’t now have to spend ages, dragging the sail out of the locker, fitting all the required lines etc, before using, it can stay up all summer without the hassle and hopefully keeping the brightness of its colours protected away from UVA damage.

We met some interesting people, mainly other yachties whilst we were there, special mention should go to a lovely couple called Tim & Tiff, with whom we had a great night out, far too late for some, which included a great meal where fillet steaks were of very high quality. To give you an idea, we had a Chateaubriand for 2 people, cost £15 ! In fact it was so good that we bought a whole fillet from the restaurant just before we left, which cost a mere £30.

We did also get a morning off to go and explore Monastir itself, full of character, lots of Tunisians trying to get us to buy their wares, and lots of bartering.

We can’t say that it was an enjoyable time in Tunisia, but it served its purpose, but most people when asked about yacht services, customer service in Tunisia, would simply reply, it’s ok !

So the day came to leave Tunisia, in fact it was Sunday 7^th June, I remember it well, the reason being that when I went to pay the 2 week hotel bill, the credit card machine wasn’t working, so what about a spare one I hear you cry, no that was broken as well. 1 hour later after told I needed to get cash out, which I wasn’t about to do, they finally did a deal with a friendly travel agent who took my card payment and wrote the hotel a cheque, but the whole process took 90 minutes. But after a quick trip to Customs and the all clear, I went back to the boat where Chantal was patiently waiting for me, to then be advised that whilst waiting, some idiot in a motor boat had decided to come up behind us and get off the boat at the fuel berth with it still in forward gear, upon which Chantal felt a massive thud, as it hit us, fortunately on the stern quarter, which is strong, so no real damage had been inflicted, apart from some choice words from Chantal. At this point, all we wanted to do is leave Tunisia and we set off on our way to Malta.

Having got used to plodding along with a dirty bottom, we estimated another 2 nighter, but we soon realised, with smiles on our faces that 8 knots out of 10 trues knots of wind were now possible and we flew across, dropping anchor in a very peaceful bay on the North of Malta, just before sunset on the second day, phew. Our holiday had started.

Now whilst we are still a week behind on our blog, rather than making you all wait whilst we tell you all about our exploits with my new found sister and brother in law, Tina and Martyn, we will leave it here for now, so watch this space for the next instalment!.