Wow, I can’t believe its been one year living on Nautilus and we’ve just wrapped up our first season of sailing. On Monday we left Malta and sailed over to Marina di Ragusa to our winter berth. We’re going to be hunkering down here for a few months before we plan to push-off again sometime around April 2023.
We’ve covered a bit of ground this year – we left Malta on the 22nd June and have sailed 2165 nautical miles (that’s just over 4,000 kilometres).
We have visited 4 different countries, crossed one timezone and had the fun of taking Nautilus out of the EU and then coming back in again.
We’ve spent 100 (ish) nights at anchor, 6 nights tied up along side town quays and only 2 nights in a marina.
We’ve caught 8 fish, landed 6 of them and lost 2 lures.
Most of the time we were able to sail, but did have to motor on occasions. My best guess is that we used about 400 litres of diesel throughout the whole time.
The solar worked out well, we produced 365 Kwh of power, but it still didn’t keep up with our needs, so there is more todo on that front.
So what did the season look like?
Weirdly it’s quite hard to remember that far back. It was quite a scary prospect doing our first crossing and being away from land for the first time. However, we had an absolute blast. we had perfect sailing conditions and headed due north up to Marina di Ragusa for the night. We wanted to check it out as a possible place for staying that winter. We had one night there, met some great people and decided we’d put down our deposit.
Sicily was really good fun. After leaving Ragusa the plan was to sail up the east coast to explore some of the towns and anchorages whilst we waited for a weather window to get to Italy. Due to the works we had done on Nautilus in Malta , we started our season much later than planned. As a consequence we decided to spend less time in Sicily so we didn’t have to cut-short our time in Greece. However there wasn’t much in the way of wind so we were able to take a bit of time exploring a couple of the towns on the way.
We hugged the coast of Sicily on the way out. Somewhat unplanned, but we ended up following a similar route back to Malta later in the year
The first night at anchor was at Capo Passero. We tucked in under the large chateaux that happened to have a wedding going on. We were lulled to sleep by the sounds of random disco tracks.
The next stop was Marzamemi. It a beautiful little Sicilian town. We anchored off outside the harbour and headed in for an explore. super pretty, lots of restaurants and very few brits there. What a result, we will definitely be going back.
The final stop in Sicily was Sircusa. It’s a large port town with an amazing natural harbour. We’d heard that you could tie up on the town quay for free and wanted to give it a go. We spoke to the harbour master who allocated us a space. However, when we tried to go in it was too windy, so we decided to leave it till the next day. Fortunately it was flat-calm and we had our first experience of anchoring “stern too”…. This is a somewhat “squeeky bum” moment when you drop you anchor about 40 meters out from the large concrete quay and then reverse your boat directly at the wall. You then have to judge whether you have let out enough anchor chain to hold Nautilus just short of hitting the quay whilst Tates puts lines ashore to hold things in place. We got it on the 3rd go and like most things, once you’ve done it successfully a few times it doesn’t seem too bad.
Managed to snag a very large bit of old metal on the anchor – it took bloody ages to get it unhooked. I’ve since bought a tool for helping when things “foul up”.
We had loads of fun exploring the town. A real mix of beautiful old architecture combined in with the obligatory retail centres.
Managed to snag a very large bit of old metal on the anchor – it took bloody ages to get it unhooked. I’ve since bought a tool for helping when things “foul up”.
Anchored like a pro (on the 3rd attempt)
Sicily is home to the arancini, so it would be rude to not give them a try… It was difficult to choose which ones to have as the menu was as long as my arm.
Rather than do one big crossing to Greece, we thought we’d explore the south coast of Italy.
Again, this was another big crossing for us and we had intended it to be our first overnight crossing. However the wind died away completely in the afternoon, so we motored up to the coast and anchored up rather than burn loads of diesel.
The first part of the coast wasn’t really that exciting to sail along. There were loads of long sandy beaches with the occasional beach cafe. We were right under the hills, so there wasn’t that much wind, we hopped along the coast until we got to Gulf of Toranto (between the toe and heal of Italy).
It’s a hard life being skipper
We managed to get a few locals to help us drag Nimo’s chunky ass up the beach so we could get pizza
Night crossings are amazing!
Off for an explore
Where there is a Caspar there is a mess
Sweet little beach bar, the owner gives free beers to any yacht who anchors in front of his bar
Just a reminder that things do get nasty on that coast and there isn’t much shelter if you get caught out. We saw a few wrecks along the way.
Was mile after mile of sandy beach, with no wind. It was beautiful, but after a few days we were wanting to get sailing again
We had our first overnight crossing and it went pretty much without a hitch. We got to the bottom corner of Italy at 3am and decided to keep going up to Otranto. There we anchored up in the bay for 3 days and went to explore the area. It was around this time we decided we would go to Montenegro for a week so.
We stayed in Oternato for 3 days as we explored the town and the surrounding area.
Final stop in Italy was Brindizi. Its a big commercial port, but has a town quay that you can tie up for free. We went in there for the night and the next day found the local passport office and customs office to check-out of Italy (and the EU).
You moan about border security when you leave on a plane, but try doing it with a yacht. You get passed around all over the place, seeing customs, then passport control, then the coastguard. IF you’re unlucky, getting sent back a step, only for long queues to speak to somebody at a desk who doesn’t give a f**K. It’s not always bad, but we have been allowing half a day when we need to go through the process.
Anyway, all checked out – we were ready to set off across the Adriatic to Montenegro
So why go all the way to Montenegro for just one week?!?! couple of reasons:
1 – Nautilus is a UK flagged vessel and post-brexit, she can only be in the EU for 18 months before we have to pay VAT on her (thanks Boris & Dave). Anyway, the way around it is to exit the EU, at which point the clock is reset. Given we plan to leave for the Caribbean at the end of 2023, then we only needed to go through this dance once.
2 – Jess (my daughter) was coming out to meet us in Corfu, we had a week free to explore and Montenegro sounded fun.
3 – Cruising tax is by the week, so if you stay an extra day, you have to pay for a whole extra week.
The sailing to Montenegro was a mix. It was our longest passage yet and the furtherest away from land we have been. It was easy sailing to start with, but the wind dropped away, so we needed to motor for some of it. There was a big electrical storm over italy that night, so we had an impressive light show, but were watching very carefully that it wasn’t coming our way.
The wind then got up and we were blasting along at 9 knots. It got so windy at one point that we lost the front cushion overboard. We dumped the sails and did an emergency man-overboard drill. Fortunately we managed to find the cushion just before it was about to sink. We now tie them down on the boat.
The last couple of hours weren’t much fun tho. The wind died, but we ended up in a confused sea, with waves hitting us from all directions. It was like being in a washing machine and we had no choice but to motor hard towards the coast. We got to Montenego in the pouring rain, but WOW it was pretty.
We really liked Montenegro – the Sea of Kotor was stunning, we large hills and mountains that came down sheer to the water’s edge. The first night we stayed in Marina di Montenegro as they have an agent who will help you clear in through immigration and customs. Given we don’t speak the lingo, it was a good idea. The marina was nice (expensive), but the town was full of Russian money with lots of VERY expensive pink fluffy tracksuits. The men were somewhat misogynistic and it’s the most overt I have seen where they’d speak to me rather than Tates. This was at its worst with a security guard at the marina who decided we didn’t look like somebody who should be on a boat and wouldn’t let us through. I thought Tates was going to punch him.
Jackie joined us a couple of days later and we had a lovely time exploring.
The town of Kotor was very picturque, but a real tourist trap, with lots of cruise ships coming in, That meant market stalls at the dock with “gringo” pricing. However, once you got away from it you could climb out the back of the town up the old trail to the top of the hill and the view were stunning.
The place was imossibly beautiful at times and you just sat there in awe at the scenary
Was time to push on and go for our new record for a long crossing. This was 50 hours and down the coast of Albania. It wasn’t very windy, so ended up being a mixture of motoring and sailing. Sadly we didn’t catch any fish, but did stop a few times in the middle of the sea to jump out and swim. There was nobody in sight, with just a couple of other yachts in the distance on AIS. Little did we know it, but one of them would end up being our neighbour in Sicily months later.
Checking to Corfu was “an experience”. after a couple of false starts, we found the port police office and a very strange lady got very uppety with us for being in the office and kept telling us to sit in a corner to wait, but there wasn’t a chair in sight. She decided to speak to us an hour later, filled in a sheet of paper and sent us to customs & immigration at the other side of the port. That was bad timing as a cruise ship had come in, so a couple of hours queuing to get our paperwork reviewed by customes, passports stamped by immigration, fees paid before heading back to Mrs grump in port police. More being told to sit on nonexistent chairs for an hour and she then told us to pay somebody else before finally giving us our cruising log. It’s not the cheapest / easiest thing to sail in Greece as you have to pay for a monthly license and they sting you on the paperwork, but it’s pretty amazing when you get there.
All done and we were free to explore.
Right, that's it for now as the page is getting too long... part two to follow.....
