The next day (Sunday), Sandy and I took a big walk to a Carrefour supermarket that was open. We needed to get a taxi ride back with all our provisions, and the nice old guy who drove us made very vocal grunts and groans in typical Italian fashion as we helped him load his van. (Although if we had done this during the week the store would have delivered to our boat for free, but we were hoping to leave on Monday).
Meanwhile the guys figured out how to correct the generator charging problem (a programming adjustment), yah! Todd had also decided that we would have to buy 3 new batteries and temporarily replace the house bank which had not maintained it’s charge while we were away on the tour. We’d been watching it slowly die over the last month, even though they were supposed to be new and should have lasted 5-6 years, they were dead. The marine store was closed on Sunday and Ben was off until Monday, which was now shaping up to be a busy day.
Orlando, another of the nice staff from the marina, came by in the afternoon to ask if we wouldn’t mind switching our berth to the opposite side of the dock as a large Catana would be needing our spot. All the charter boats had left so we had a decent sized berth but it was a narrow fairway getting in there. We met Henry and Carol who owned the 55 footer, along with their friend John. They hailed from San Francisco. It turned out that John was on the Baja Ha Ha cruisers rally from San Diego to Cabo San Lucus back in 2006 when we did it, so it was fun to catch up and chat about mutual friends, and swap boat tours. It was Sunday night so we had our now-traditional Sunday dinner aboard with Doug and Sandy, who taught me a new card game called “golf”. That night the air conditioner stopped working, which we sort of expected at some point, but had hopped it would hang in there for the season at least.
Monday September 3rd was busy and hot again. Sandy and I made a final run for fresh produce and bread, while Todd and Doug removed the 6 dead house batteries and replaced them with 3 new ones. I also walked to the TIM store to get another pre-paid Italian SIM card to use for weather (and blog) updates, when the other one expired on the tenth. Unbelievably we were off the dock at 1 pm, stopping to add fuel which was at a convenient dock on the way back out of the port.
We nosed around a few bays until finding a place to anchor to the East of Porticello for the night..boy it felt great to get in the water again after the heat of the last 3 days, and the breeze was a godsend!
Tuesday was more light wind on the nose so we had a leisurely motor up to Cefula. This was a pretty town but the anchoring was restricted by buoys to 300 meters off the beach which meant you couldn’t get tucked in and out of the swell.
