Category: Allgemein

Hey!

I just wanted to say we are fine after the autumn storm hit Italy. Luckly it wasn’t that bad at the south of Sardinia. At the beginning the wind direction was south-east pushing the swell into the harbour and it was quite rocky. So at four in the morning we were running around on the pontoon to keep the catamaran next to us from pushing against us (by stealing his fenders at putting them to the other side :D). Later the wind luckily turned to south-west as predicted, which is safe for this harbour, before the real gusts up to 50 kn were arriving. Actually this was the first time I saw a barometer dropping around 10 mbar in some hours remembering this rule of thumb from the sailing book! However it was a quite impressive roaring in the night, but we were lucky and nothing happend. And due to the bad weather we had to stay inside for an entire day, eating sweeties and watch bad movies 😉

At the italian main land in Rapallo the harbour is quite unprotected and open towards south-west and wind up to 80 kn (!!) was annouced causing 5-6 m waves directly into the harbour with catastrophic results:

However weather is clearing up again here and in two days the sea will be calm enough to proceed further west to Ibiza, second try!

 

As some of you already realized (are you doing real time watching of the tracking page all the day?!  :-)) we had to cancel our passage to Ibiza and sail back to Sardinia. No worries! Nothing is broken or anything!

Continue reading “Autumn Weather”

So we’re currently in the middle of Mediterranean sea between Sicily and Sardinia. There is water and nothing but water in all directions and it’s awesome. Actually that’s not true, there are dolphins visiting every couple of hours and birds coming to rest on our boat for a bit now and then. We’ve had some nice sailing wind, but also quite a bit of motoring, but Serenity is gently rocking along. Anyway, getting back to the helm! (This is a test, posting via Iridium, see how it works…)

We fixed our engine for good yesterday, tested it, checked the weather five last times and tidied the boat. This morning we got up at six to set sail to Sardinia. This is it. We’re finally, finally leaving Sicily.

The journey will take until Sunday and lead us over calm, open waters, not too much wind, so good conditions for a first night at sea (though probably lots of motoring). And the first time we’ll lose sight of land on this voyage. Not to worry, though! There are always a few satellites hiding in the skies. Might just try posting from the middle of the sea tomorrow!

While we are stuck here in Sciacca anyway – we have to wait for a new starter motor to arrive, which should hopefully happen today – we had lots of  time on our hands. We used most of it to enthusiastically waste it – lying around, reading up on sailing theory, practicing tin whistle, using the WiFi to download more music and audiobooks and also doing nothing at all. But we also took a day to explore the city. Continue reading “Lost places, episode 1: Sciacca”

 

While we are still waiting more or less patiently for our motor (by now we nicknamed him Godot) our Serenity is really taking shape. Today I installed the last bit that was missing in our bathroom: a tiny ventilator  that will prevent certain odors to accumulate … Continue reading “Bathroom details”