A Couple of Days in Castellammare Di Golfo

As you may remember, our maxim on safety says that we can pick a time to meet, or a place to meet, but never the two together. Sailing is too weather dependent and a good way to get in trouble is to press forward in spite of the weather. The big challenge comes when you must drop off or pick up crew … then you need to be there at a specific time. As a result we usually give ourselves leeway in terms of when we can return, and sometimes that doesn’t work out. Remember last-year when we had to make our passage to France from Minorca in a gale. We had left ourselves a ten day window and that wasn’t enough.

Anyway, we made the passage from Sardinia to Sicily on the 19^th and 20^th of July – then we had four days in Sicily before the kids had to get to the Palermo airport. After an all-nighter, the first day is pretty much a write-off. We usually do a little bit of exploring and then check out where to buy food and wine, some restaurants we might want to check out and get a feel for the local culture.

The "marina" dock.

We chose Castellammare di Golfo for a couple of reasons – one was that it was less industrial than Palermo, it was reasonably priced at 50 Euros a night (that became 60 Euros when we arrived) and it’s closer to the airport than Palermo with a much smaller, more yacht oriented harbour. Another contributor was that it was 20 miles closer – doesn’t sound like much but 3 hours at the end of a long trip is 3 more hours of rest.

As for places we’ve been I’d give it about a six – the harbour was good but there weren’t many water sports nearby – unlike Isola Rossa on Sardinia, but it had nice people, lots of good restaurants and bars to hang out in and many places to buy provisions – including a deli that made some of the best pesto we’ve ever had.

Always time for gelato!

After our ‘recovery day’ we had a good day in town marketing – I was on a hunt for an oil filter and our fuel filters were clogging up so I had a chore to do before we left.  

Out for dinner is so fun!

That night we went out for dinner and the kids were all served wine. Ross decided to drink more that was appropriate but he was more funny than out-of-hand so we let him proceed. He kept analyzing how he was feeling and how we was affected by it ….I’m sure the next time he comes home with liquor on his breath he’ll tell us that he was doing research. It was Hayden's treat which made it especially fun...and on top of it all it started to rain just as we were finishing up...which doesn't bother us Vancouverites at all.

The girls dressed up...

The boys..."dressed up"...and another girl who loves a camera!

Fun at dinner.

Hiding from the rain.

Hayden taking care of the tab. 

Jessie taking her turn at the helm of the RIB.

The next day we picked up a RIB (rigid inflatable boat – a Zodiac with a fibreglass hull) with a 40 horsepower engine made by the Canadian company Bombardier Motor Products. The motor was the source of many jokes by the boys “how big’s your Johnson”, “Hey Matt …. Nice Johnson” and so-on. It got us laughing. Anyway we took off in the RIB and the guy at the rental place said that it might rain – and was he right. We were anchored off off these caves having lunch when this big Thundercloud appeared and we quickly ran back to harbour – where we found our venerable dinghy Bonnie Blue floating away on its own untied to Tara. 

Playing "King (or Queen) of the RIB".

Apparently a big wind gust lifted her off the deck where she was upside-down but not tied off. Fortunately for us we arrived in the nick-of-time and rescued her before someone else laid claim to it. We waited for a couple of hours and then the weather cleared and the kids and Marina headed out again to use up some more fuel. Marina here...which we did. Each of the kids had a "go" driving the RIB, Ross thinking it would be fun to do S curves at top speed before testing it at lower speeds...so he was fired. After that it was a good game of who can stay in the RIB the longest, Marina and Chelsea spectating. After that, on the way back the kids decided jumping off at high speed would be fun, and it was! Again, Chelsea spectated and well, someone resonsible has to drive so I did that. We got our money's worth with the RIB by staying out and goofing around until around 5 pm as it had to be back by 6 pm full of fuel. Back to Matt.

No fun at all...



Feels good to be Queen!



Hayden about to hit the water at about 20 kts.

It was a pleasant surprise that after nearly an hour of powering it had used only a few liters of fuel – much better than our Boston Whaler that uses something like 30 liters per hour. Maybe I can justify a new engine based on fuel economy – yeah right.
While the kids were off using gas I took the fuel filters off the engine and ended up dismantling the Racor fuel filter to get a ton of plastic shavings out of the bowl at the bottom.  We had thought we had that fuel problem licked and clearly the stuff is better in the bowl of the Racor than stuffed into the fuel pickup hose like last time. One of the nice things about having problems is that when they reoccur or when similar symptoms happen you can figure them out quickly. I had the problems figured out, disassembled and back together within an hour or two … thank goodness for mechanical aptitude, though I have no idea where I got it from as nobody in my family can change a light bulb without calling an electrician.