Syracuse: Two Drowned Rats

Wanderingdragon
Stephen & Anne
Mon 13 Aug 2012 13:24

37.03.525N 15.16.961E

 

Well another week or so at anchor has gone by.

 

It’s been a fairly normal week really. The usual runs into town for water and shopping. On one of our trips to the market we saw some really nice Tuna, so we bought 3 steaks. (The extra one was so Yoyo could have some and we could have a bit another day). That evening we got the Cobb BBQ out , cooked some bread buns, grilled some peppers, roasted/boiled some potatoes and then grilled the Tuna steaks. One thing we hadn’t planned on was a very excited cat wanting the tuna NOW! We had to physically hold Yoyo well away from the hot BBQ.

 

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Tuna Steaks, One for Yoyo and the other two are for…well Yoyo thinks they are hers as well

 

As you’ve probably read in the news Spain have been having some bad fires recently due to the dry weather. Sicily might not have had bad fires but there have been a number of fires around the bay which the fire fighters have managed to get under control. One evening we had a helicopter filling it’s bucket in the bay so it could douse a fire nearby.  We could see the flames and hear the fire crackling from the boat.

 

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Filling the bucket, avoiding the small fishing boats

 

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Dropping the water on the fire.

 

We retrieved the generator from the lazzarette and set it up so we could use that instead of running the engine every day. We filled it with oil and petrol, and after a few pulls of the starter cord it burst into life. We were impressed. Unfortunately this was short lived as although the engine part worked we were getting no power out. Well we were getting 12v output but nothing from the 240v outlet. After various tests we realise we need a new invertor board, which of course is the expensive part.

 

Today we set off in the dinghy to do a water run. We have five 20 litre  containers we fill up at a public tap. As we got the dinghy ready the sea was dead flat calm; just as we were about to get in the dinghy the wind started. Just a small blow we thought – so off we went into town. The trip was not too bad as we had the wind behind us. We filled up and set off back to Wanda. Unfortunately the wind had picked up and there were now white caps on the sea. We needed to head straight into wind to get back. The waves were coming over the bow of the dinghy. Unfortunately we didn’t have our bailer with us so the dinghy was getting fuller and fuller of water. No matter what we did we still had waves coming over our bow. Stephen and Anne were wet through like two drowned rats. We eventually made it back to Wanda and quickly unloaded the dinghy. We were fairly close to sinking as the dinghy was 50% full of water!! Well lessons learnt, check the weather (this blow was forecasted and has been blowing all day F5 to F6) and make sure you have something you can use to bail out the dinghy.

 

The afternoons entertainment was watching the boats on the wall struggling with the blow. Most managed to leave the wall ok to anchor however one large motor boat struggled and ended up side on very near to, or touching the yachts. It was difficult to see exactly how close it all was, however no permanent damage was done as all the yachts eventually left the wall (the wind was blowing the yachts onto the wall hence they needed to leave).