Winter is coming.......

Being relatively new to liveaboard sailing, we hadn’t really understood the dynamics of the winter months when we set out in 2017.  Last year we kept travelling throughout the winter, although we holed up three or four times for a few weeks in Gibraltar, Fuengirola and Cartagena when the weather was too bad to move, and then intentionally for a month in Valencia for the Las Fallas festival. However as we have met other sailors living aboard, we have realised that there are three different approaches to wintering in the Med;

1. People who keep their boats in the Med but lift their boats out of the water over the winter months.... Usually from Sept/Oct to March/April when they go home for the winter.  There are frequent conversations about the best and least expensive places for a haul out and general debate about waiting lists and the importance of booking your lift out early.  

2. People who stay on board on the water but stop in one marina for up to 6/7 months - Some marinas offer a very low winter rate to stay for several months and as a result there are many people taking up this offer, thereby creating what are known as liveaboard communities.  Again, throughout the summer, numerous conversations take place comparing notes about the best places to spend the winter based on a) cheapest marina rates; b) safety, shelter and quality of marina; c) range and quality of marina on shore facilities; d) interesting town and access to supermarkets; e) sense of community engendered by many like-minded individuals with time on their hands to organise events.

3. Those like us, who stop for shorter periods and continue to move when the weather permits. This approach means you pay more than the 6/7 month discounted rate (although you do get lower winter rates) and you never really fully belong to any established liveaboard community. However, the advantage is that you are less likely to get bored by being holed up for so long in one place.  So far though, we seem to be in a very small minority - in fact we haven’t actually yet met anyone else doing this!!

This year we decided to check out a few places with a view to considering staying put a bit longer for this winter.  We discounted staying in Greece because by mid-October we had been in Greece for almost 5 months and we couldn’t face a winter of eating more souvlaki. So, over the last few weeks we have checked out Marina di Ragusa and Licata in Sicily and Monastir in Tunisia which is where we are at the moment. 

The weather forecast for our trip is not very favourable!

We enjoyed Sicily much more on this visit than when we stopped there on our way over to Greece in May, finding more interesting places on the east and south coasts.  After a sub-optimal overnight trip from Crotone on the boot of Italy to Sicily, trying to outrun the storms which devastated much of Italy this October, we arrived exhausted in Catania which is nestled under the constantly simmering Mount Etna.

The weather en route to Catania

Approaching Mount Etna

Catania was a big surprise.  A brooding city made largely of volcanic basalt and granite, it is defiantly impressive with some stunning buildings albeit many of them decorated with graffiti.  

The theatre in Catania

The cathedral in Catania

Sadly, the graffiti was everywhere.....

The pilot book says the residents don’t worry about caring for their city as it may be destroyed at any time! Whatever the psyche we enjoyed the bars and restaurants if not the usual aggressive and impatient driving.  

The castle in Catania

A very old church in Catania

We were planning to go up the Mount Etna on the cable-car, but the weather continued to be foul and poor visibility as well as high winds made us decide against it and instead visited the gallery of modern art which was brilliant.

We then arrived in Syracuse in pouring rain which continued for several days, fuelling floods and landslides in Sicily as well as on the Italian mainland. Despite the awful weather, we found Syracuse a delight.  It’s a beautiful city with interesting shops, restaurants and bars as well as a very unusual cathedral and generally stunning architecture. 

The amphitheatre in Syracuse

Just us moored alongside the Town Quay in Syracuse

The very modern cathedral in Syracuse

We enjoyed the Archimedes and Leonardo da Vinci exhibition – what stunningly clever human beings they were! 

 Leonardo was ahead of his time understanding human anatomy

A model of one of Leonardo's inventions

Well worth a visit although we imagine it will be absolutely packed in the summer.  Amazingly we spotted no litter or graffiti here, the streets were beautifully lit and most included exceptional planting in pots and on balconies; this was a town like Taormina – clear about what draws tourists with money to spend. 

The cathedral in Syracuse

Dionysius' ear 

A procession through the streets- no idea what it was about!

Our next stop was Ragusa but we ended up breaking the journey and stopping off in Porto Palo overnight.  That was a bit of a mistake.  We were the only yacht there and we moored alongside the quay having been warmly beckoned in by some fishermen.  

Just us the trippers again ....just arrived alongside in Porto Palo

All was well for about 10 minutes and then the stream of voyeurs began.  It seemed a message had been relayed and the whole town drove out to stare at us.  It was a strange experience, reminiscent of appearing in the Wicker Man. We assumed it would stop once it got dark….but no….. it continued all night with the same cars driving up, slowing down, turning slowly round and driving off only to come back again a few minutes later.  We were definitely under surveillance but not in a good way.  We decided perhaps they were waiting for us to go to bed before boarding us, so as you can imagine, we didn’t feel comfortable going to sleep.

The locals cruising the dock to examine us......

The next morning there was a sharp rap on the hull and we discovered the police had come out to see us.  We were told that we had stayed in a very unsafe place – frequented by thieves and that for our safety we should move onto anchor or go to another port with a marina.  We had guessed that was the case at about 0100 and wondered why the police hadn’t warned us earlier – everyone else in town knew we were there!  Needless to say Porto Palo has been crossed off our list of recommended places to visit. 

Marina de Ragusa was a great relief after Porto Palo.  Clean, efficient, well organised and with loads of facilities.  Excellent bars and restaurants around the marina, good supermarkets and a pretty town which was not entirely closed down like many holiday resorts.  We discovered tons of novels to swap on the bookshelves in the laundry which always excites me and is typical of a big liveaboard community.   Everyone is really friendly and we bumped into Ray and Cath on Cady who we first encountered on anchor in Torreviejo in Spain last year.  

The beach front at Marina di Ragusa

A drink on the terrace with Cath and Ray

We went on the bus to the inland town of Ragusa and the old town Ragusa Ibla which was absolutely stunning.  The sun was shining again and it was very tempting to just stay for the rest of the winter because the cost for us to stay was only €660 per month.

Ragusa Ibla clings to the side of the hill....

The cathedral in Ragusa Isla

There were wonderful gargoyles underneath the balconies

The gardens in Ragusa Isla

We then decided to hire a car, to explore further inland and to look at Licata, another marina with a strong liveaboard community and a reputation as a good place to winter.  The drive there was horrendous, Italian drivers are a very unpleasant combination of impatient and aggressive - which means sharing the roads with them is not very enjoyable. We were very disappointed with the town of Licata and the marina seemed tired and run down.  In its favour it did have Lidl and another big supermarket but that wasn’t nearly enough to persuade us to spend much time there. We crossed it off the list.

We had been talking about checking out Tunisia but hadn’t found anyone else who was planning to go there - after the recent suicide bomb in Tunis, many of our friends were counselling us against it.  We negotiated a safety net with Marina de Ragusa, that if we didn’t like Tunisia we could come back and they would knock our mooring fees to date off our monthly tariff.  We were confident there would not be a space problem if we returned; despite being warned that you need to book early we haven’t come across anywhere that didn’t have space for us.

So, we did another overnighter taking 33 hours straight to Monastir.  It turned out to be another horrid sail with a forecast that seemed benign but turned out to include gale force winds and thunder and lightning overnight and into the next day. In the end we just stayed down below with the radar on and rolled with the punches! 

No-one answered the VHF despite several attempts as we approached Monastir and we wondered what to expect, so it was a great relief to be met in a dinghy by the most wonderful port captain Macram and his deputy.  We have been treated like royalty, nothing is too much trouble.  Within an hour we were moored up, we had checked in with the Port Police and with Customs and been taken to the sailmaker to get our obligatory Tunisian courtesy flag. We were then shown the very clean showers and toilets and invited to a residents' barbecue. 

Monastir Marina

The beach front at Monastir

There are no fitted lazy lines so you have to get your own brand new mooring lines (no slime lines!) and Macram personally dives down and attaches you to the concrete blocks! 

Our lines have just been successfully attached by Makram.

The cost of mooring here is the equivalent of €200 per month.  So, we have booked for 3 months and today we joined the gym, went to the market and cycled to the fishing port to check out the lift out and antifoul costs.  It’s actually hard to believe these prices.  Eating out, food, wine etc is unbelievably inexpensive.  The best wine is about £4 and its delicious. We’ve already met some very nice people although most are French so we are dusting off our ‘O’ level French and making an effort! 

The Ribat in Monastir

Bourguiba mausoleum

Which piece of tuna?? Less than £3 per kilo!  We asked for half a kilo but were given a kilo as a half was clearly not worthy....

The spices in the market are fabulous and no plastic packaging in sight.

Best of all, this is a new country and culture to explore, with different and delicious cuisine and very friendly people.

We will be in the UK over Christmas and New Year visiting friends and family so we hope we will see and catch up with many of you then before we return to our adventures.