Pisa!

It's beautiful when you walk through the ancient city gates. 

Ross, Jessie and I got up early (oh...about 8:00 am...Ross was 8:30 am) and caught a bus then train to Pisa (about 20 minutes by bus and 1 hour by train). We had to sail past it on the way up the coast to Porto Lotti as we were in a hurry to park the boat while Matt went home for work. Pisa was on the "gotta see list", so off we went with a few grumbles from sleepy Ross. An uneventful train ride, except a pain in the butt conductor who threatened to charge me an extra 50 Euro EACH! for not validating our tickets. Here in Italy, the self serve tickets apparently must be validated the day you use them. I figured I bought a ticket today, at the train station, from the station I was leaving, to the station I was arriving at, (and return by the way)...what's wrong with that? Well, these tickets can be used any day within a couple of months so they must be validated the day you use them. ARGH! 

The cathedral and the bell tower askew behind.

He threatened 50 Euro each and charged us 5 Euro each. This by the way, is not nearly obvious in the train stations when you buy your tickets...had the vending machine said "Please remember to validate your ticket on the day of use...grazie!" ... I'd have felt much more at fault. So...whatever, take your 15 Euro and go bug the next tourists...which he did. I think he collected over 60 Euro in fines in our rail car alone. 


We went to the Baptistery (apprarently the biggest one in Italy), Cathedral and of course the "Leaning Tower"...the bell tower for the cathedral, with faulty engineering, which has made this city famous around the world. A big oops and tourism for your city becomes it's main economy...go figure? 

The basic story is this (thanks to help from Wiki):  Construction of the tower occurred in three stages across 177 years. Work on the ground floor of the white marble campanile began on August 8, 1173. The tower began to sink after construction had progressed to the second floor in 1178. This was due to a mere three-metre foundation, set in weak, unstable subsoil, a design that was flawed from the beginning. 

Flaked out enjoying the grass.

Construction was subsequently halted for almost a century, due to several years of battling neighbours. This allowed time for the underlying soil to settle - otherwise, the tower would almost certainly have toppled.In 1198 clocks were temporarily installed on the third floor of the unfinished construction.

Ross...sleeping? Listening to music? Watching a movie?
At least he's not grumbling!

In 1272 construction resumed and in an effort to compensate for the tilt, the engineers built upper floors with one side taller than the other. Because of this, the tower is actually curved and it got worse. Construction was halted again in 1284 for more military battles.

The seventh floor was completed in 1319. There are seven bells, one for each note of the musical major scale. The largest one was installed in 1655. The bell-chamber was finally added in 1372.

Unfortunately I didn't get the goat's expression under
the beast...his eyes are like a deer in headlights.
 "OMG...NOT GOOD!"

After a phase (1990–2001) of structural strengthening, the tower is currently undergoing gradual surface restoration, in order to repair visual damage, mostly corrosion and blackening. These are particularly pronounced due to the tower's age and its exposure to wind and rain.

You gotta have the cheesy photo right???

We wandered around, had lunch in a little pizza joint nearby (spent about $8 on 4 cokes for the kids!...pizza is cheaper!), then went to get tickets to climb the tower. We had a couple of hours to kill until our time slot (can you hear Ross grumbling???) so we flaked out on the grass, Ross listened to music (or watched a movie on his iPod...not sure which), and Jessie and I played cards and chilled. Our time was 3 pm so we went over around 2:45 and waited to go in with about 25 other people.

The lower stairwell up the tower. 

 It didn't feel crowded (although the stairwells were tight!). It was one-way only from the top level to the top of the bell tower. Worth the wait and the climb, which was strange as you circled the building the stairs leaned one way and then the other, to catch a nice view of the Duomo area. Then...we beelined it for Tara. A brisk walk to the train station...VALIDATED OUR TICKETS...an hour later we took a bus (after the kids begged me to stop at Rotten Ronnies) and voila, home  again. And now...some more photos. 

View from half way up. 

See how worn the stairs are from thousands,
(millions?) of people using them. 

Going up!

Up top, above the bells even. 

From here, you can see how the cathedral is in
a cross shape, with the Baptistery in the back. 

Awwwwwwww...

Ok...we're heading back down.

One of the outside city wall gates. 

Elba -- at anchor again.

At anchor in Elba

Most of us have heard of Elba – it’s the island that Napoleon was exiled to. Other than that I kind of knew it was off the Italian coast and somewhere around Corsica. I had been up late the night before working so after about two hours of sailing I went to have a nap – during this time Marina decided that we should go to a place called Porto Azzura – on the east coast of Elba. It has a nice town and looked like a pretty good anchorage.

The wind was up and we were sailng along all powered up. I had done a bunch of work in the morning that I needed to email and wouldn’t you know that the darn internet stick wouldn’t pick up a signal. Ross had wanted to slow down and go swimming and I kept putting him off and putting him off thinking I could send the email at 5 miles out and then the stress would be over. 

The dock in town

Wrong. We didn’t pick up a decent signal until less than a half mile from Porto Azzura – so I was late with my work, Ross was bummed about not going swimming so we anchored and was pretty unhappy that we had wasted the day. We tried reasoning with him but we did ruin his day and we were all hungry too.

So, I had my conference call and at around 1am Ross and I had a chat and got on the same page again. I sat up a little longer thinking about how we could make the swimming more fun and came up with using the spinnaker pole. You might remember that Ross has been trying out a release-under-load shackle to drop off the side of the boat from the spinnaker halyard. The big limiter is that the higher you are the more likely you are to fall into the boat (apparently much harder on you when compared with falling into water). Here was the idea – you hold the spinnaker halyard outboard with the spinnaker pole and drop from there … so set it up. 

Before release....

We needed to attach a snatch block to lead the halyard through because there was too much friction to raise Ross up. Once that was done we did a progressively higher and higher drop until Ross was about 7 or 8 meters off the water before he tripped the shackle … he was delighted and it was great to see the kids swimming again.

Jessie bought a hat!

Marina di Cala Galera

Marina di Cala Galera is a really nice place, and it was great to have our crew back together again. It’s been nearly 10 months with no time away from each other – as Ross says, sometimes parents and kids aren’t supposed to be this close. Anyway, after our hugs and kisses, we settled into another day at Marina di Cala Galera.

We had intended to get up early and head to Elba but the wind was blowing pretty hard in the morning, and was forecast to top 25 for parts of the day. As Marina and I had breakfast and deliberated, we turned on the anemometer and the wind was gusting to 28 knots. Not needing to be anywhere immediately, we settled in for another day. There is a very nice beach nearby so Ross and I left the boat to scope it out and then we went back and had lunch. Work has gotten pretty active for me the last week so I stayed on board for a call while the rest of the family went to the beach. After the call I too had a chance to get to the beach. 

To get there we needed to climb across about 200 meters of rock – mostly OK but some were cliffs – to get to the other side. Once there the sand was very nice dark brown and the water shoaled quite a ways out so it was shallow and warm on the feet. We played paddle ball for at least an hour with our best count somewhere around 20 hits before the ball hit the ground. Not bad in a 20 knot wind.We packed up when the sun started getting low and made our way back across the rocks to Tara and had a nice dinner (we were basically out of almost everything so we had pasta – again). I had another call that went late into the night so while I am talking on the phone, Marina and the kids played a number of games. 

A pyramid on the beach.

We resolved that the next day that we would make our way to the island of Elba – made famous by being the place of exile for Napoleon.

A little recycling

Marina takes off to Florence

Our dear friend Sarah Ostler was cycling with a number of other women from West Vancouver through Tuscany and were ending up in Firenze (Florence to us English speakers). It seemed like a fairly easy trip to make by train and hookup with Sarah in Tuscany. Marina and I walked to the bus stop where she caught a bus to the train station and then headed down the tracks to Firenze. I did some marketing and went back to the boat, woke up to the kids and we queued for the fuel dock. The dock was full so we patiently waited, a spot opened up and a 40 foot powerboat buzzed by us and sharked our spot. Gotta love Europeans and the way they queue – I should have driven right into him and said ‘sorry didn’t expect you to do that’ but being Canadian we just roll our eyes at what a jerk the guy is. 

After shipping the fuel we set off to an island called Isla di Giannitri where we anchored (actually wankered) at the head of the bay. Marina would be happy to know that it took 3 times to get it right, we struggled with the windlass and dragged the anchor twice before it bit into the rock and sand. This is the first time I can remember Tara struggling to anchor. I think we would have been OK with Marina on board because we would have gone closer to shore into shallower water. It is nice to be needed.

That night was a bit rolly polly .. the bay is open to the east and on the way we passed Civitavecchia there were 7 cruise ships at the dock. I think they all left about 15 minutes apart starting at midnight, because from midnight to 2am the boat rocked violently from side to side every 15 minutes or so. Since we didn’t bite hard on the anchor I was up every hour to ‘prairie dog’ and make sure we’re OK.

We woke up in earnest around 9am and hung out until 1pm, with Ross swimming and testing out his newest invention – a load-release shackle put on the Spinnaker halyard so that when we hoist him up he can release the shackle and drop in the water. It’s pretty funny to watch. He now wants to do it while we’re sailing along from the height of the spreader (10 meters) .... teenagers.

After he was done we hoisted the sails and the anchor and sailed to the marina to pickup Marina. Again Ross went swimming along the way as we rolled up the sail to slow down and trailed a rope behind. He tried out his quick release gear and then jumped in a few times for fun.

As Marina made her way back from Florence and we tried to go to Porto Ercole but they were full so we went to next door to a beautiful marina called Marina Di Cala Galera – another place with impressive yachts. We were parked and after we got in there were probably 20 or so boats that came in after their Mother’s Day cruise ... all of them were 80 feet plus long. A couple of incredible 60-80 foot sailboats came in too. Wow.

At about 5:30pm Marina called saying she was near. Five minutes later Jessie and I got ready and put our shoes on and started down the dock to meet Marina – and guess who we saw walking down the dock? We gave each other a huge hug, went and bought some cocktail-hour nibblies and sat on the back of the boat and enjoyed the rest of the day. All of us were very happy to see each other.


And now Marina's part! 

It took about 4 hours each way to get to Florence. It helped to have been there before and I had my street maps so finding the hotel wasn't a problem at all. I made good time so loitered my way through the sights. The silly thing was, I had said I'd be there around 4 or 5 and was early, Sarah wasn't sure when they'd be back from sight seeing so I sat on a lovely park bench and read, hoping they would walk by on the way to the hotel (it was right outside). At one point I did pop up to the hotel lobby (but stupidly didn't ask for their room), I didn't see her so I went back to my bench. At 5 I thought I'd better go up and ask, just in case they came in a back door. Well...they'd been in the room the whole time! UGH! Long story short, Lorraine Kennedy (a friend and neighbour of Sarah's whom I know as well) had some lovely wine, compliments of her hubby for Mother's Day. 

We had a lot of fun catching up! That night was a dinner out with a handful of the biking gals in a very nice restaraunt. Lots of wine, lots of chatter and lots of laughing...a walk around on the way home near midnight and of course the streets were packed - and then to bed.

I had my own little cot in the room because if we'd tried to share a bed, one of us would be on the floor in no time ("double" to an Italian hotel means "tiny single" in Canada). Sarah had a planned sight to see in the morning which she and Lorraine went to while I enjoyed some peace and my computer in the hotel, then we went wandering, had lunch and talked some more. 

My train was around 2 so we made our way back to the train station and away I went having thoroughly enjoyed the whirlwind visit. A train, a bus and then a short walk and I was back with my crew on Tara - tired but happy and in lovely marina. 

Finally Leaving Rome - Riva di Traiano

When you have been in a marina for a while the ropes start to become like chains holding you to the dock. We had ordered a number of books from the UK that hadn’t arrived yet. So another day or so in Rome wasn’t too bad. The day we picked up the books we paid up and got ready to leave.

A little music for Marina's birthday

It happened to be Marina’s birthday – that we celebrated a few different ways including the previous night after midnight with the Watsons from Famiglia when we popped a little bottle of Champagne they brought over. On the actual night of Marina’s birthday we had a nice meal at a restaurant close in with an interesting appetizer of artichoke hearts and thick prosciutto cooked in a reduction of balsamic vinegar. It was excellent, then we followed it up with a nice steak.

The next morning we filled up with water, washed off the deck and got ready to leave. When it was time to go we powered out of the marina and headed offshore. The depth near Rome is very shallow – about 3 meters deep a half mile off shore so we kept going out until we hit the 10 meter depth, then pointed the bow North. The wind was on the beam at about 12 knots so we sailed for 5 hours and made it to Riva de Traiano at about 5pm.

Tara has a fairly deep draft so they put us on the wall quite a ways away from the office (like about a kilometre). We were sandwiched between a Wally 80 – a beautiful type of boat built in Italy by a guy named Luca Brenta. They’re made to look like there are no ropes or winches on board .. and everything is electric or hydraulic so one person can sail the boat by themselves. 

Tara - snug in between lovely big sailboats

These are big money boats .. I’d guess their mast would be worth 2x what our boat cost us. On the other side we had a custom 65 footer, than another couple of 60+ foot race boats. Check out the photo of poor Tara’s ‘chicken rig’ when beside these monsters.

Second from left....little Tara's rig. 

150th Blog Post

We posted our 150^th blog post today ... hard to believe that we’ve done as many things as we have. Thanks to those who follow us and also to all the comments we’ve received along the way. Cheers from Tara...