We had been trying to figure out where to leave the boat for the winter that would still be handy to get to Greece in the spring. (Even in the Med it gets cold and wet during the winters). We were briefly excited about leaving the boat in Greece but the 24% value added tax (VAT) and high dock fee’s quickly put that out of the running. The other places we were considering were Brindisi on the West coast of Italy, and Ragusa on the South coast of Sicily. We heard back from Ragusa first, and the reasonable rates, milder temperatures, along with the large cruising community that over-wintered there decided us. We had gotten our confirmation as we passed through the Strait of Messina and turned left motoring along the “toe” of Italy.
After downloading weather though, we saw it would be 4-6 days of continuous travel with a lot of motoring. This was to spend a week in Montenegro to reset the boat VAT. (Our boat was purchased in the EU but no VAT had been paid as we were planning on taking it out of the EU once we had done some cruising. Basically the boat has 18 months in the EU but then must leave for a short period of time to reset the counter for another 18 months. This meant visiting a non-EU country and getting receipts for fuel and mooring etc, to prove the boat had been out of the EU. Most people either went to Montenegro, Albania, or Tunisia). So we turned back towards Sicily, canceled the marina in Montenegro, and started looking at weather for the trip to Tunisia. The only downside was that we were going to miss catching up with our Canadian friends Doug and Teresa who were going to be in Croatia, and we had tentatively planned to meet up with them somewhere in Montenegro for a few days….sorry guys!
The anchorage at Porto Xifono was calm when we arrived 12 hours after our departure, and we were the only sailboat there. The water was brackish and we could see the large working port of Augusta to our left, a small boat marina at the head of the large bay, and a few restaurants on the right side. That night we were serenaded by an Italian wedding singer, who we suspect was a member of the family that nobody could say no too!
The next morning we had 3 generations of men stop by in one panga-style skiff, asking if we would like a tour of the harbor or a trip over to an excellent fish restaurant. The Grandfather was at the tiller and eating a sandwich while doing all the talking (in Italian so the sandwich was getting flung this way and that), and his son and Grandson smiled encouragingly from the bow. I (hopefully) managed to convey that we were leaving in 10 minutes but thanked him for the offer, and as we left 10 minutes later, they were still circling around us.
The light breeze was on the nose so we did a drive by Siracusa, which looked like a good city to investigate at some future point. We were still pretty tired from the long day of travel the day before, and wanted another quiet night somewhere. Just past Siracusa in the Bahia di Ognina, was a marine reserve that had moorings (which ended up being free, yah!), so we headed there. Due to the proximity to the big city, most of the moorings were taken by 1pm, and we were lucky to get the second to last one, which was in the outer part of the bay. It wasn’t particularly picturesque but the water was warm and the swims and showers were awesome! It was also another calm night and we had the place to ourselves again after all the other boats went home by dark. (Always feels a bit odd when you are the only one left!)
The next day we moved on down to the Southwestern tip of Sicily and anchored in Porto Palo, enjoying a few hours with the spinnaker up (nothing broke and nobody was bleeding afterwards, so I consider the day a success!). This port was mainly a fishing boat harbor, but there was plenty of space and good holding for anchoring. The only downside was the smoke from burning rubbish and a diesel slick that blew in with the evening breeze. The following day we would head into Marina di Ragusa and check out our winter address, while waiting for a weather window to get over to Tunisia.
Since leaving the Strait of Messina which seemed quite lush, the landscape had gotten dryer-looking. Interestingly, once we got to the Porto Palo area, we could see plastic covered greenhouses and netting all along the coastline indicating some kind of agricultural endeavor, and this continued all the way up the South coast. It was early afternoon when we got to the Marina entrance where we were met by a Marinaro who assisted us with docking in what would be our winter berth.
The fairway was wide and the fuel dock just across the way on starboard. We could see many British flags on display, and the folks we chatted with on our dock all spoke English, which seemed strange (but also a bit of a relief), after the last 3 months of French, Spanish and mostly Italian. We had to wait for the 2 ½ hour lunch break to wrap up before checking in officially, (which Todd discovered after a 30 minute round trip to the office), and afterwards we had a walk around the area and a victory beer at a shore-side bar (for 3 EU with nibbles).