Thu 4 Oct and Fri 5 Oct – Trouble on the wall

Should we stay or should we go? That’s what we debated all morning. We did want to push on to Ragusa (our winter marina, 60NM/12 hours away) but after the day we had on Wednesday, and on checking the forecast (which threatened more thunderstorms) we decided to stay in Syracuse. It turned out to be a good decision as it poured with rain all day until about 16:00. When we eventually surfaced we noticed quite a few boats moored to the town quay. As we hadn’t been off the boat for a few days, and were in desperate need of doing a wash we called the coastguard who allocated us a spot. We were a little apprehensive as we’ve not “Med moored” with just the two of us before. It involves dropping the anchor about 30m off the quay then motoring backwards and connecting lines. There wasn’t any wind so the manoeuvre should be straightforward. We dropped the anchor in a good spot and motored backwards, and to my delight our neighbour was there waiting to take our stern lines. Just as we’d secured ourselves and prepared to go for a walk the sky’s opened and it rained and rained. Not fancying getting wet we had dinner onboard Bini and saved our walk until tomorrow.

We had a decent nights sleep and this morning went in search of a laundrette, armed with a huge bag of washing. We don’t yet have a gangplank to help us get to shore so we had to pull ourselves in close enough so we could jump up onto the quay. Not ideal but it worked. We found a self-service laundrette and walked in, and were surprised to be told by the guy (who apparently worked there) that he was full. He pointed us in the direction of another one so we went to try our luck there. The area of the city we walked through was properly dodgy. Whether it’s because we’d read there’s still a big Mafia influence on this island I don’t know, but we walked through some neighbourhoods with some very suspect looking people hanging around. We blended in nicely, dragging our old-lady bag of laundry around dressed in very salty clothes so we didn’t attract much attention.

We found the laundrette, and were again greeted by a man keen on offering a washing service. Unless you wanted to get into an argument, there wasn’t any chance of doing your own laundry so we agreed on a price and handed over our clothes. We were to come back in a few hours. In the mean time we did a shopping run and went back to the boat. As we opened the companionway hatch we heard a beeping: the low voltage alarm for the batteries. The sun was mostly out so our solar panels should have been producing albeit a little charge. We couldn’t connect to the charger either (via its Bluetooth module) so Tom went into the cabin to investigate, which involves moving a lot of stuff. In between we popped back to the laundrette to collect our neatly folded clothes, and paid a bargain price of 13 euros! Back on the boat it was then things started to get interesting.

A swell had started to roll in, it looked like nothing but it was rocketing along the harbour wall down the the back of the boats causing a big plume of water as it went. It was mildly irritating at first but got quickly worse. The cabin of the boat was in its maximum state of chaos when we heard a loud BANG! We’d hit the concrete wall with our stern. It was time to get out of there ASAP.

When we’d moored up last night we were much closer to one ring on the wall than the other, meaning one line wasn’t long enough to be double-backed to the boat. We’d had to tie a bowline around the ring and bring just the one end back. In hindsight this should have been a round turn and two half hitches. This line was now under some serious load so we had a devil of a time trying to get it off. With the boat now surging backwards and forwards we had to abandon it, pull up the anchor and get the hell off the wall. With Tom and I, plus the crews on our neighbouring boats rushing around getting absolutely soaked we’d attracted quite a crowd of onlookers, who were either staring or taking photos. Must have been quite a sight!

Clear of the wall we dropped anchor in the large bay and checked the damage. A slightly bent ladder but thankfully that was it. We considered rowing back to collect our line but it was at least a kilometre or so and with Tom out of rowing action with a sore shoulder we (I!) couldn’t quite face it. A few hours later when I was cooking dinner I heard a knocking on the hull and came on deck to find our Dutch neighbours in their dinghy. “We’ve got a present for you!” they said – they’d retrieved our line! Angels! Turns out they’d also left something on the quay during their hasty exit and while they were back collecting it they’d picked up our line. We learnt too that we’ll be wintering together in Ragusa so we promised to buy them a thank-you drink.

We’re planning on leaving early tomorrow to get to Ragusa. Depending on how we feel there’s an anchorage on the way so we may make a stop overnight but we’d like to get there tomorrow so we can get settled in before we head to Spain next Wednesday to see family. As I’m writing this though we’re rocking quite a bit and I can hear waves crashing on the coast – doesn’t sound like it’ll be too flat out there!