Category Archives: Cruising Guide

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

Welcome to Stromboli Island, Aeolian Islands, Sicily, Italy

Posted on by
Reply

We found out that while we were in Palermo, we had missed a festival in Trapani. There were apparently fire eaters, which impressed Bill. Oh well.

Yesterday we did the usual get ready to go routine, including a trip to the grocery store. The day before, when we were in the first market in Palermo, Christi had said at least 5 times that we should stock up on fruit here, where there were zillion of produce vendors selling every type of produce imaginable. Most of it looked lovely. But we didn’t. So, we stood in a grocery store, staring at a small selection of nasty looking fruit. The apples and bananas looked edible, so we got some of those. Every grocery store we have been to outside of the US there is a person whose job it is to weigh the produce and print a little sticker with the total before you get in line to check out. This grocery store has a self use scale and sticker printer machine. The directions are, of course, in Italian. Tai and Christi couldn’t figure out how to use it. Mind you, Tai is involved in producing cutting edge software, and the scale baffled him. So, we gave up on the grocery store and drove around town in search of a street fruit vendor. This was a blessing in disguise. The street vendor’s fruit was beautiful and a fraction of the price of the shriveled up fruit in the grocery store.

Anyway, once we had taken out the trash, stocked up on food, stowed away the things that like to go flying at sea, and checked the weather one last time to make sure conditions still looked good, and we were ready to go. We said our goodbyes to Bill and Ellen and pulled out. At first, the sea conditions were rocky and rough, which was odd given that the wind speed was low. We figured the waves are leftovers from yesterday’s storm. At one point, Tai was standing outside the pilot house with the pilot house door open. Eric shut the pilot house door, telling Tai he didn’t want to chance a wave coming over the side and getting the pilot house wet. No more than three minutes later, a big wave came over the side and drenched Tai. Tai looked rather surprised and said “I guess I should have clued in when you shut the door”.

As the day wore on, the seas got Continue reading →

Passage to Trapani, Sicily, Italy

Posted on by
2

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.

imgp7546-small.JPG

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

Welcome to Vittoriosa, Malta

Posted on by
Reply

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.

valletta-close-small.JPG

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

Kayaking Siracusa and Passage to Malta

Posted on by
1

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.

imgp6541-small.JPG

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.

imgp6543-small.JPG

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