The Final Curtain for 2014

We left Marzamemi last Thursday and had a great sail, tacking around the south eastern tip of Sicily, right until we got to a harbour called Porto Palo. Harbour, in the loosest sense of the word, it was essentially a bay with two breakwaters and an entrance in the middle. Beyond that were dozens of fishing boats, all shapes and sizes on mooring buoys, hogging we have to say most of the sheltered parts. We did however manage to snuck in and get some shelter for the  swell beyond the breakwater, dropped anchor and settled in for the night, with some grub and the inevitable bottle of wine.

Friday we set off for our final sail of our trip. Sadly with the wind right behind us and over 1 metre swells pushing us from side to side, we gave up attempting to sail and motored our way to Seaclusion’s new home for the winter. Somewhat of a challenging entrance as we surfed our way in to the marina in 25 knots of winds. whilst the water was all calm inside, thankfully, the winds persisted to make our last mooring not so pretty!

In summary, this is our trip which has totalled 2300 miles, over 115 days!

We have now spent the last few days “winterizing” her… there is a lot to be said for chartering a yacht, and just being able to pack your belongings and leave. Winterizing entails cleaning everything from the bimini to the cushion covers, the hull and everything updeck including polishing the chrome to give it a level of protection over the winter, taking the sails down and finding someone to clean and store them, removing all the sheets (ropes for the non-sailors of you), cleaning them to store away, tidying all the  bits and bobs down and ensuring the halyards are positioned so as to not annoy your live aboard neighbours all winter,  scrubbing all the stains off the table and teak, not to mention flushing the outboard through with fresh water, scrubbing every sign of a barnacle of the bottom of our dinghy, servicing the engine, flushing the heads (toilets) through, shutting all the sea cocks, the fridge, linen and well just about everything you can think off, we have cleaned and serviced it, so hopefully when we come back next year, there will be no problems waiting for us!

Amongst all this, we have found the time to make new friends with some Canadians and Australians, found a nice Swede to wash Seaclusion down after the red rain that will inevitably come and turn the engine over periodically, and explore both Marina di Ragussa and the inland city of Ragussa with its fabulous old town “Ibla”. I think it also worth mentioning that at great cost, we hired what can only be described as a monkey bike for a week, which helped with the shopping & laundry trips, which was all well and good until Chantal, wearing flip flops, managed to come a tumbling off and has acquired numerous friction burns on her big toe, ankle and calf, all of which I am sure will be recovering nicely when we arrive back in the UK and Spain. The last drama, this time didn’t include us, was when we were chilling on our yacht with a nice vodka & tonic, watching a nice motor boat come into moor opposite us, with a father and daughter, ( probably around 13-14 years old ), who suddenly disappeared off the side falling into the water of the marina, but I and a canadian lady, grabbed an arm each and hoisted her back on to the ponton. No children were harmed in the making of this blog !

Ragussa Ibla

Marina di Ragussa, the sea side town.

We are now ready to leave our beautiful yacht here in Sicily, so we would like to thank everyone for taking the time to read our tales, trials,  tribulations & fun. We will back on board come May next year, first to Tunisia, to get some work done on her for the up-coming season and then sail back, via Malta & the Aeolian Islands,  to the boot of Italy and across the Adriatic to explore Croatia, Montenegro and possibly Albania.