Cartagena Spain

We arrived in Cartagena just in time to catch the beginning of “A Taste of Cartagena”, with food from all the local restaurants and live music just a few hundred yards away at the entrance to the marina.  The kids have enjoyed being back in a town they remember from last fall and every day after homework they head into town to buy ice cream and go to the park.  

The next leg of our trip is hopefully a non-stop sail to the Azores, so we’ve been working to get the boat ready, changing oil, stocking up on groceries and pre-cooking meals.  If all goes well, my next post will be from the Azores in about 7-9 days. 

Main pedestrian area in Cartagena

 

Hugo about to launch

 

Maggie

 

The kids' favorite ice cream store in Cartagena

last photos from Italy and now we're in Spain

After four days/three nights underway, yesterday we finally arrived in Cartagena, Spain.  A long crossing…the gale that had been howling down from France left big waves that hit us on the beam and made everyone a bit queasy the first day.  Despite anti-seasickness meds, Maggie threw up 4 times in the first 24 hours, although I think she was a bit disappointed she didn’t beat Hugo’s record of 7 times in 1 day when he was 8 and had the stomach flu.  What a tough little up-chucker.  Never a whimper or complaint, she just gets it over with and then goes back to sleep.

It was a rude re-introduction back into sailing…we’d had such a nice few days in our last stop in Italy in Cagliari, on the island of Sardinia.  Cagliari is a perfect place to see superb examples of all the various civilizations that have dominated large areas of the Med:  it has a Carthaginian necropolis, a Roman amphitheater, Byzantine churches and a wonderful walled medieval part of town.  The well laid out archeological museum explains the history of the island, particularly the unique Sardinian Nuraghe civilization, which started around 1800 BC.  What an interesting comparison to what we'd seen from the same time period in Egypt.  We rented a car and drove into the interior of the island to learn more about the Nuraghe with a visit to a remarkably well-preserved massive fort-like tower and village.  Then we drove up to the nearby plateau, where the Nuraghe went to get the enormous volcanic basalt stones they used to build their towers, and also saw the cork trees which the Nuraghe used as insulation in their sleeping areas.

Another gale from the west starts tomorrow, so we’ll stay here in Cartagena until it blows through, and then head towards Gibraltar.

Nuraghe village remains



Their tower complexes included a

courtyard with a well







 

 



Remains of a house, with a circular ritual

bathing area and an arch from the cooking oven



Nuraghe warrior figure



Phoenician amulet necklace...have to admit I like their

faces better than the classical Greek ones!

slogging west

Slowly, slowly, slowly, we’re making our way west.  We just can’t seem to get a good break in the weather to make any distance.  After leaving Ragusa, we continued along the southern coast of Sicily to the sea port town of Marsala and waited there while the wind howled from the east. A nice place for  a stop – we saw an 8^th century BC Carthaginian shipwreck and joined in the Saturday evening passeggiata down the main drag in town.  Wow, to see all the pre-teen Italian boys decked out in their oh-too-chic hair styles and sunglasses!   The next day we tried to head west again, but gave up after 20 miles of beating into the seas and wind and found shelter in the Egadi Islands.  The tiny town of Marettimo had just enough room at the town quay for us to sneak in between the fishing boats and ferry for the night.  Our next leg was a one night sail to Cagliari on the Italian island of Sardinia, as far as we could go before the next gale started.  We’ll stay here another day or so until the gale blows through and then try to go to the Balearics or Cartagena.

Sicilian island of Marettimo

leaving Sicily and heading west to ???

Funny how the best and biggest Greek ruins we've seen are not in Greece.  Turkey's Greek ruins were best, followed by the Valley of the Temples we visited this past week in Sicily.  Really gave us a feel for just how widely the ancient Greek world spread.  And a nice drive through the Sicilian countryside, past old stone walls and fields full of harvested winter wheat.

Speaking of spreading...it's amazing how far the Sahara dust spreads when the wind blows from the south.  All across the Med, from Israel to Turkey, Greece and Sicily, we could always tell when the wind was blowing from the south by the warm wind and layer of red dust it left all over the boat.  Yesterday it was so hazy, you could look right at the sun at sunset with binoculars and see dark sunspots.  And the winds that accompanied the dust were so strong, it would have impossible to come into the harbor through the breaking waves.  

Looks like the wind is finally starting to turn around and will blow from the east, so we leave tonight to sail to the western tip of Sicily, and then west as far as the weather will comfortably allow...likely either the Balearics or Cartagena, Spain.

One of several temples in the ancient Greek city

of Akragas, built in the 5th - 6th century BC



Breaking waves at the entrance to Marina de Ragusa

Saraha dust at sunset

 

 

Arrived in Sicily

It took four days and three nights to reach the southern coast of Sicily, sailing about half the time and motoring the rest when the wind died.  No moon at night, so the stars were brilliant, as was the tuna fishing and dolphin displays.  We're here for at least a week until the gale blows through, but between studying and catching up on chores, the kids are putting the time to good use.  Maggie can now free climb up about 30' to the first spreader using only her hands and feet (with a climbing harness for safety of course), while Hugo and John figured out how to combine swinging on the halyards with sailing. It's like rock climbing meets kite boarding. 

Someone asked me the other day if I would miss spending so much time with the kids.  I have to admit, we are fortunate to have kids who haven't gotten into organized weekend activities yet (they weren't interested, and we didn't push it).  That means we've always had long family weekends together, so I've never felt deprived of kid-time, despite always working full-time.  To be honest, the trip was never about just having more time with the kids, as much as we love them.  So what WAS the motivation for the trip?  That's a blog post for some other day!

More tuna for breakfast, lunch and dinner

Watching dolphins below

 

Striped dolphins below the bow

 

Maggie free climbing

 

Her foot technique



Hugo using a wind scoop as a sail

 

Big gust of wind

 

 

 

 

 

leaving Croatia, heading to Sicily

It's been lovely day-sailing between little green islands and anchoring each night, but time to start covering ground again.  Looks like we have a week before the weather becomes contrary, so tomorrow we leave Croatia and hightail it to Sicily to meet my dad.  It will be at least two or three nights sailing, depending on weather and if we decide to stop enroute.  My dad will sail with us to the Azores...it will be the longest time I've spent together with my dad since high school! 




6th century Byzantine castle ruins on the Croatian island

of Žirje, Tenho anchored in bay below

In Croatia, the kids learned the meaning of

the word "naturist" and "rubberneck"

A bucket of stars

In six short weeks, I’ll be back in the U.S. with the kids, with John just a few weeks behind.  One foot is already  home, as I start applying for jobs and looking into options…do we move back into our house?  Or keep it rented and live in a small apartment or the boat until we have jobs?  The other foot is still on the road in our floating home, exploring the Croatian islands and finding new anchorages each night.  Tonight we found a dark secluded inlet between two islands, where the kids explored the shoreline in the dinghy while John and I enjoyed a drink in the cockpit.  Before bed, we went out to admire the stars and the bioluminescent plankton in the water.  We pulled up a bucket of water, and as the kids put their hands in it and swirled them around, Hugo exclaimed “it’s a bucket of stars!”  What a perfect description of this past year together.

A bucket of stars