Week 15: Sciacca to Trapani (68nm)

After our fairly sedentary previous week (in sailing terms) we were back on the move this week. The end goal was Trapani on the west coast of Sicily as we needed to leave the boat for a quick trip back to the UK, but we hoped to spend a few nights in the nearby Egadi National Park before we left. Whilst we had been warned that the south coast of Sicily wasn’t much to explore, our two stops in Sciacca and Mazara del Vallo suggested otherwise, and our brief time in the Egadi’s left us wanting to spend at least another week here.

Life admin and regret in Sciacca

Sciacca (which Laura and I still haven’t agreed on a pronounciation for) was a a town that we wish we had more time to explore. The marina ticked all of our boxes (clean bathrooms, free WiFi and a bar) and we spent the most of the afternoon after our arrival working through the internet backlog that we typically accumulate on a weekly basis. It has been a real revelation to me just how dependent on internet our lives have become, the proof of which for us right now is the backlog. We use phone data fairly sparingly when we are between WiFi hotspots, primarily for checking the weather, emails and new harbour info once a day. As a result, when we find ourselves with more extended access to WiFi, we have to catch up on everything else (e.g. downloading new podcasts and music, backing up photos, writing and publishing the blog, FaceTiming family and friends, researching upcoming destinations, consulting sailing forums and YouTube for repair advice, sourcing spare parts…).

I’m still unsure as to whether we are leaning on this crutch too hard, as the side-effects tend to be a restriction on the time we have available to explore the places we moor in, which was very much the case for Sciacca. By the time the work was done and we had spent 30 mins in the bar unwinding, it was time for dinner and then an earlyish night as we both were feeling the effects of our overnight passage. I promised myself that whatever happened I would make time to at least stroll round the town the next day!

The next day, I found that we wouldn’t have wind until the afternoon and so we decided to postpone the sailing until after lunch. Laura still had some boat admin to work though, and so I took the opportunity to walk into town. The main town turned out to be up a small cliff, but I relished the now unfamiliar cardio work out in climbing around 200 stairs to discover a very pretty and distinctive town. My wander revealed a nice blend of old and modern buildings and a spectacular view back over the harbour. I also discovered that our insularity the night before had been an even greater error that we had thought possible as we had missed out on a Sicilian streetfood festival! Advertisements for Fried Pizza, Sicilian Burritos and Tuna Kebabs were heartbreaking and a reminder of what you can forgo when a screen gets in the way – a good learning for us to take forward. We left our regret in the marina when we slipped our lines and completed the short sail round to our next anchorage just before the sun set.

Sewing for gelato

Our next port was Mazara del Vallo, which is famous as Italy’s largest fishing port (according to Wikipedia)…whilst there were a lot of fishing boats, we weren’t convinced. It is also famous for a now discontinued tuna fishing event known as “the slaughter” that involved draping nets across the entire width of a tuna migratory route! Our attempts at trolling in the area were limited to catching a plastic bag – clearly the fish stocks were yet to recover from these unsustainable fishing practices, or it was time for a new lure (sorry Robbo)?

After her recent successes with the new sewing machine, Laura was keen to tackle some larger projects that had been bothering us for some time, so we decided to stay in Mazara for an extra night and then reward ourselves with time to explore the Egadi islands. The two items in need of needle and thread were the dodger (which provides protection from the wind in the cockpit) and the biminy (which provides shade). The dodger had been starting to rip in a couple of high stress locations, and Laura made quick work in reinforcing all these seams and zippers. She then moved onto the biminy, which was old enough to have stretched out such that it become an aerofoil in anything more than light winds. Laura had tried to ease my original concerns about this phenomenon by suggesting that another aerofoil might improve Serenty’s sailing performance? Unfortunately I think the resulting lengthy hour lecture I gave on lift and drag coefficients to disprove this query may have now dampened her natural optimism a bit, but we were at least in agreement by the end of this that a fix was required.

Laura had hoped to simply pin the excess material on the bimini and the take up the seams, but this first attempt still left a lot of slack. So another go was required; this time the end result was a massive improvement and the threat of a Mary Poppins / James and the Giant Peach end to our sailing adventure was mitigated. I sensed a reward for her hard efforts would go down well and so we dinghied into town to find some ice cream. Around 20ft from where we parked the dinghy, we found the most elaborate Gelateria either of us had ever seen, and after deciphering the slightly obscure ordering system with Google translate and “arming ourselves with a ticket” we lost ourselves in some grade A Reese’s flavoured gelato.

Arriving and abandoning Egadi

Boat jobs complete, we left early the next morning to try and get as much time in the Egadi islands as possible. Access to the islands is restricted as they are a the largest marine reserve in Europe and it had taken Laura around two hours to understand the website and secure our moorings. We headed for Cala Azzura (Blue Bay) on Favignana (the largest of the islands), where we found a very aptly named bay, albeit one that was full of other boats when we arrived. It was clearly a popular day trip spot for tourists from the mainland, but that meant that 90% of the boats left around 4pm and the bay become much more tranquil. Furthermore, the snorkelling was the best we have found in the Med and it was the first time we had thought to take some photos – of course we had left the camera behind :(. The number of fish was so high that I would be tempted to describe it as overpopulated, and only the bizarre spear fishing ban in the park prevented me from ‘helping to address the problem’. The evening was spent listening to the new Ben Howard album on repeat as we both motored through our latest book recommendation (Boys in a Boat by Daniel James Brown, a great suggestion from my Dad – who knew rowing was this interesting!).

In a bid to avoid the crowds, we moved to a more remote bay on Favignana the next morning, which would also give us access to the amazing ‘Castle on the Hill’ that Laura had been wanting to hike. The bay was open to the morning wind from the South West, but was meant to get more protected as the wind veered through the day and so we waited for the protection to improve before heading ashore. Some interesting cloud formations then began to appear on the horizon, and as I studied them I chided myself for the lack of progress I’ve made through my Weather Forecasting book as I was sure they indicated something? Over the next hour, the wind rapidly built without any change in direction such that the bay we were in was no longer safe, which gave us a difficult choice. We could either wait it out and hope for the forecast change in direction, or leave and find a new bay before it got dark. We both recalled a similar situation on a family holiday in Croatia where we tried the first approach with spectacularly poor results and so opted to look elsewhere.

The other nearby bays on Favignana had similar weather exposure and so we opted to make the 10nm sail back across to the mainland to Trapani, where we had already planned to leave the boat the next day. We arrived just as the sun was setting and got permission from the Coast Guard to enter the bay (thus avoiding a hefty fine). In contrast to Syracuse, the CG in Trapani were helpful and were much clearer over the radio (I’d recently renovated the aerial connections). Laura had also perfected her spelling of Serenity First using the phonetic alphabet (i.e. Sierra Echo Romeo…) so it was a success all round.

Our last day was then spent moving Serenity to a little marina and getting her bedded down so that we could fly back to the UK for my Grandma’s 90th birthday. I notice that as we start to become more familiar with these various boat jobs, there is a certain pleasure that can be found in losing yourself in fairly menial tasks done well. Up until now, we have always been rushing to move onto the next thing, so this was a novel experience for me and one that I hope becomes more frequent as our experience continues to grow. It will be a theory we can put to the test next week, as once we get back from the UK we have our next passage to Sardinia… exciting times!