Arrival in Arbatax

We've done remarkably well in staying out of marinas on this trip. So far on Sardinia we had one night at Isola Rossa and two nights in La Maddelena, the rest of the time time we've been swinging on a chain, and living off the fat of the land. We needed to do a little Gardenage (that would be boat lingo for cleaning up the boat) provisioning (grocery shopping) and I needed to permanently wire in the new mast-head LED running lights we brought from Vancouver.

Arriving at Arbatax

We decided on Arbatax marina because of its proximity to town and boy did we make a good choice. They put us on a laid mooring beside a 48 foot Grand Soleil and there was washing water and potable water, showers, toilets (with seats AND toilet paper!), a bar, restaurant and a town nearby.

Marina counting litres at the fule dock (hiding behind)

It was a pretty high mole. (And what's Hayden doing?)

Backing into our mooring spot.

Marina and I left the kids with a hose and a couple of scrub brushes and hoofed into the marina office where we were greeted by friendly and efficient staff that spoke English perfectly. 61 Euros, not a bad price for a berth in Sardinia and the toilets and showers were outstanding. We got directions to town and found a chandlery that could replace the broken lightbulb we had in our steaming light (the one you put on at night when you are under engine) and we also found a great little Supermercato -- bought wine, pasta, croissants, Nutella, water, and, of course, cheese. Getting 500 grams of Grana Parmagiana for 8 Euros -- we need to move to Italy!
We walked back to the boat with our backpack and two bags each and found that the kids had actually cleaned up Tara very nicely -- but now everyone was ravenous (it is hard to describe two hungry teenage boys) .. we have had to institute a rule that the boys are not allowed to devour 20 Euros of cheese and hors d'oeuvres just because they are ravenous ... so we have bought them each bags of chocolate filled croissants that they can fill up on so we don't have a race to the cheese during cocktail hour. Marina provided them with leftover pasta and the strategy worked.

Always love a dinner out...no-one on KP duty!

I needed to continue to pull wires on the boat so the gang went to the restaurant for pizza -- leaving me with a walkee talkee. Ross has his 'patented' call "Paging Dr. Faggot" that the kids use it to get my attention. Perhaps it wasn't such a good idea to let them load 'The Hangover' onto their laptops.






Good conversation...



I finished up, put the floorboards, seat boards, bunks, cushions and circuit-breaker panel back together and went and had a pizza too. We came back, everyone had a bit of Internet time and then we hit the hay -- long day tomorrow. Leaving for Sicily around 9:00am.

Heading out of Arbatax

Sicily is out there somewhere...