Feeling like real Cruisers

After Dad and Jeffrey departed, we started to finally make our way out of Sicily. We headed north in the direction of the Bay of Naples to meet up with more family arriving soon. It feels like we have begun a new phase. With one sailing season and one winter now behind us, and some boat upgrades that are working fabulously, we’re starting to feel like we might be getting the hang of this. I’d consider us maybe Advanced Beginners? Here’s why:

1) Now we know people. 

By spending our winter in Licata, we got plugged into a boating community. We’re all connected on WhatsApp, so it’s easy to ask questions, share photos, and meet up at different locations. As we were all dispersing from Licata, there were friends at various anchorages around Sicily. It was fun to have neighbors in an anchorage – to have dinners/drinks on boats and/or ashore, and to know you weren’t alone. We even caravanned one day with friends (from Portland, Oregon!) through the Strait of Messina. (More on that one later…)

2) We’re anchoring.

Last year, we mostly planned out our route by booking into marina after marina. It felt more reliable and straightforward. Plus, we had a lot of family and friends to collect/drop off along the way. So far this season, we are really winging it by aiming for more anchorages along the way. We have already spent 4x more nights at anchor in the last few weeks than we did all of last season. Our new Ultra anchor is AWESOME, and she’s making this possible. We’ve named her Gertie, a good solid name. 🙂 Our additional solar panels are also AWESOME and are providing plenty of energy. The only thing we are still missing is a working watermaker, so water is our limiting factor. We pull into a marina every so often to fill up the tank. Or, to still collect family and friends. 🙂

Passage planning via anchorages is a bit more risky because you never know what you’ll find. We learn about sites via a great app, called Navily, where other boaters have left reviews and information. (You can also learn about marinas and make bookings.) Then, you also plan based on weather conditions and whether an anchorage site will be protected enough. The west coast of Italy is short on very protected anchorages, but so far we’ve been lucking out with very benign wind and swell conditions. We have just been in awe of some beautiful sites we’ve come upon, and we’ve sometimes had the site all to ourselves. 

anchorage at Naxos (same bay as Toarmina):

anchorage at Favazinna (near Scilla; our first anchorage on the mainland):

anchorage at Tropea – a very popular tourist destination in Calabria region:

anchorage at Cetraro:

3) We’re tackling more challenges.

In addition to aiming for anchorages, and taking on the west coast of Italy, we also made our first voyage through the Strait of Messina. This strait sits between the northeastern tip of Sicily and mainland Italy (the beautiful Calabria region), is 2 miles wide at its narrowest point, and is 20 miles long. It has multiple fast and irregular currents, can have very strong winds, and has strong tides. It has been an area of fascination as far back as Homer’s Odyssey, when he wrote about its two monsters, Scylla and Charybdis. If you’re curious, you can read more about the legend here. 

When you want to plan your passage, you have to consider all variables – wind, currents, and timing the tides. Many boats pass through here each day, and many ferry boats cross the strait constantly, so you get to dodge those too. Conor chose a great day for our passage, and it was completely fine. We just did a lot of ferry boat dodging. The strait is also known to have a high concentration of marine life, especially swordfish. We were hoping to see some, but all we saw were a lot of sword fishing boat – very bizarre things! 

4) Time is a strange construct.

With our more “wing it” capability, plans get made more day by day. It’s very possible that a day might not go according to plan. And, there feels no difference between a weekday and a weekend (especially since Conor finished up his day job). So time is measured by the day. We kept asking ourselves “What day is it today?” So, I created a new calendar to hang on the wall…

5) Highs are high and Lows are low. 

It’s totally clichè, but totally true. Every live aboard boater will say so. You kind of get used to it. 

Some Lows:

• Spending days inside the boat at anchor waiting out a storm, rocking around.
• Running out of hot water if anchoring for more than two nights at the same spot. 
• Things going wrong / breaking / needing maintenance at any time.
• Everyday chores that take so much longer and/or are so less convenient / harder.

Some Highs that make it worth it: 

• Seeing amazing wild life like dolphins, sea turtles, and jumping fish.
• Seeing amazing scenery up close like erupting volcanos, storms, rainbows, sunrises, sunsets, golden moons, and stars.
• Getting to see amazing places in different countries without having to pack a suitcase because your home comes with you.
• Meeting so many interesting people from all over the world.
• Pretty much total freedom to roam and be.

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A day at anchor

If we’ve had a long journey (it took us 8.5 hours to get to Cetraro) and the conditions are good, we’ll stay at anchor a second night to catch up on chores and such. In the morning, Conor gets up early and has his coffee, reads / thinks, then does a morning workout by paddling through the bay in his kayak. I’m slower to rise, have my tea, then get started right away on laundry. Through the course of the day, I get through five loads and am happy the ‘dirty’ basket is now empty. We need to get groceries and are lucky that a good store is nearby (a Lidl – yay!). To get there, we take about a 12 minute UberDing ride to one of the beaches nearby, pull her ashore, then walk five minutes to the store. Actually, we first walked to a hair salon to see if by any chance I could get a haircut that afternoon. (I scoped it out on Google Maps first, and the salon had great reviews.) The owner was super nice, spoke some English (thankfully), and agreed to take both of us in a couple of hours. So, off to Lidl we went to stock up. We carried four bags of groceries back to UberDing, loaded her up, then rode the twelve minutes back to Sabática. We quickly unpacked, ate some lunch, then hopped into UberDing again to ride back to shore to get to the hair salon. We lucked out and both received the most efficient and stylish haircuts ever. (OK, I may have had some color too.) Another dinghy ride back to Sabática, then UberDing got stored for the next day’s journey. Conor did another workout on the boat, read and napped, and I did some work. We grilled on our awesome Weber for an easy dinner, watched a movie on one of our laptops, then called it a night!