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.