Category Archives: Cruising Guide

Information for other cruising boats. Our experiences finding places to anchor, dealing with officials, provisions, etc.

Passage to Trapani, Sicily, Italy

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By yesterday the storm had passed. Skies were clear and brilliantly blue, and while it was warmer than the previous two days, it was by no means hot. We languidly got ready to go to sea and headed out around 2:00 pm.

The passage was pretty uneventful. Winds varied from 11 -17 knots apparent, always on the nose (which makes real wind speed more like 5 11 knots). The seas were the typical Mediterranean small, sharp swells at rapid intervals. Not the smoothest ride of all time, but certainly not a bad ride, either.

We arrived in Trapani around noon today. From the distance, it looks like a series of blocky mid-rise apartment buildings on a flat of land. A large hill rises in the distance, and the hill is mostly barren, both in terms of construction and foliage. The hill is basically a big mass of brown, much like the hills of southern California at the end of the summer. From the distance, the harbor area looked to be primarily industrial, and the farther into the harbor we ventured, the more industrial it became.

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We called in and were told they had space in the marina. The marina is Continue reading →

Welcome to Vittoriosa, Malta

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By 0830, we were approaching Valletta. We had been told Valletta is spectacular looking, and it really is. It is a giant fortress, and much like Rhodes, as you enter into the old city, you feel like you are stepping back into time. Except that in Rhodes, you had to actually walk through the walls to get the strong sense of history. Here in Valletta, it was apparent from the water.

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Malta’s main town of Valletta is located on Continue reading →

Kayaking Siracusa and Passage to Malta

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Yesterday we decided to get some use out of some more gear we have been lugging around the world with us, our kayaks. Eric has used his twice and Christi has used hers only once.

We paddled through the canal to the ocean on the west side of the island, and then followed the coast around the island back to the marina. It was a nice day, perfect for a paddle. It was 2.2 nautical miles around the island, so it was a good workout without being too long of a ride. The island looks pretty from the sea. Here is a shot of the fort/castle looking structure on the southern tip of Ortygia that we have mentioned a couple of times.

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We returned to Kosmos to find a Nordhavn 47, Bluewater, tied up next to us. The owners, Milt and Judy, are friends of ours and we had been coordinating this rendezvous with them over e-mail for the last few days. It was great to see them. They were one of the many more experienced boaters that helped us with picking options for Kosmos and with understanding what we were getting ourselves into with the full time boating life.

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We visited with them for a while, and then Eric and Christi took the bikes Continue reading →

Welcome to Siracusa, Sicily, Italy

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By 0200, radio was quiet. The Monkey Boy must be out of range now.

We arrived at around 1000 local time. From the distance, we could see the walls of the fort in the water. We had emailed the marina a few days ago to try to get a reservation, and they never responded. We pulled inside the marina, where a worker signaled us to go around back to the outside floating docks. We went where directed, and saw he was standing in front of an open spot. The slip wasn’t much wider than Kosmos. Eric backed Kosmos in slowly, as Christi stood in back pushing us off the boats on either side to help keep centered. The worker tied up the back lines for us and handed us two mooring lines. Eric walked the first line to the front attached the first line with no problem. The second line was too short to tie off. The guy on the boat next to us saw Eric was struggling and jumped from his boat onto ours. The two of them tied one of our ropes to the mooring line to make it long enough to tie off.

Oh, and to clarify how the mooring lines work. The boats always back in. The mooring(s) is/are where the nose of the boat is. There are lines that go from the sea wall/floating dock to the mooring. You take the rope from the sea wall and walk it to the front of your boat, then pull on the line to get it as tight as you can, then tie it to a cleat (metal bar installed around the boat and on docks specifically meant for tying lines on to) at the front of your boat. Since the lines spend most of their time underwater, they are disgusting, full of algae and barnacles. The lines get your hands and clothes all dirty. They are nicknamed “slime lines”. We found out that most of the marinas in the Med use this system (though D-Marin in Turkey has old fashioned moorings where you have to use your boat hook to grab the mooring line or have someone in a dinghy hand it up to you).

Once we were securely berthed, we gave the marina worker a crew list and our vessel documentation. Since we are checked into the EU that is apparently all the paperwork we need to do. We didn’t seem to need to go and visit any authorities. Hmmm. It seems too good to be true that the paperwork is virtually non-existent.

It was weird to stand in the cockpit (back deck) and stare out at buildings that are hundreds of years old. Many are run down, but considering how old they are, they really don’t look that bad. A lot of them have fancy facades and appointments, and in their day were probably glorious. We haven’t actually been docked so close to a historic area before, and we found it to be sort of awe inspiring.

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We were starving, so went in search of food. The old part of Siracusa is called Continue reading →