We left Kythira on July 29th and sailed 450 miles west to Sicily. It was a rough, close hauled affair summed up nicely by our log entry on July 30th:
“Nice sunset, otherwise terrible.”
N’uff said. Should the birthplace of the infamous Cosa Nostra be anything but a challenging and dangerous undertaking?
We arrived in Likata and took a berth due to the shortage of anchorages on Sicily’s southern coast line. We tied up in the typical Med ‘stern to’ style and started providing Slapdash with some post-passage pampering; scrubs and suds.
Likata is an old, dirty, charming, and real Sicilian town. We loved it even before I found this little local “bring your own container” winery where you could pull an extremely drinkable red straight from the keg for a dollar a jug. Jaime fell head over heels for the place and threatened to rent an apartment and live there permanently. She claims this was for the cozy cobblestone streets which thread their way through crumbling old colonial buildings and roman ruins.
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She also cited the fine chocolates, meats, wines, and the fact that it was virtually impossible to find a bad meal anywhere to further justify her position. A compelling case, but I immediately found it suspicious that she chose not to mention all the suave tall dark and handsome’s swanking around in fine footwear. Just to be safe I pointed out that every one of them carries a dormant Super Mario gene. It’s like a time bomb, at any time the gene could spring into action. Massive amounts of ear and nasal hair spontaneously sprout. Eyebrows take on epic proportions. One day you wake up next to a jolly broom-toting shopkeeper. Then I locked her in the boat.
A fellow named Ken from Tennessee enhanced this already great Sicilian experience. Ken had been following our story since the beginning and made it his habit to buy our first round whenever we arrived in a new country, an endearing quality. He has family in Sicily, and not only did our trips coincide, but we landed only 30 minutes away from his Mom’s village. So what do you do when life throws an improbable string of coincidences at you and the next thing you know the guy materializes on the dock behind your boat saying “Hello Slapdash!”? You put him to work! Ken grabbed a brush and a hose and seemed genuinely happy spending the afternoon mucking around on the boat, which led us to believe that he was really a great guy or a deranged lunatic. Fortunately he turned out to be from the former category, so when he invited us to go back to Butera with him we jumped at the chance to see a little more of this incredible country.
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Butera was stunning. Like, really stunning and being “with Ken” meant that we were instantly swept into its local scene. He was our kind of people; the kind that can spot a good street side vendor for dinner, and knows that drinking takeaway beers with locals is usually way more fun then spending 3 times the money for a generic experience without the chance to meet anyone new.
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So in the spirit of street-meat adventure, Ken led us over to a street side cafe to grab some dinner. How ‘bout a Panini? The guy behind the counter asked what we wanted in our sandwiches. I asked about these veal cutlet looking things in his display case. We had about a two word Italian vocabulary at this point, but Jaime has a bit of French. When the guy said “cavallo” Jaime whispered to me that the French word for horse is “cheval”. I looked back at the vendor and said “cavallo? Like this?” and started riding an invisible hobby horse on the spot. Perhaps excited by the moment of clarity and understanding amongst all parties the old vendor abruptly yelled “SI SI, CAVALLO LIKE THEES!” and began trying to outstage me by riding his own invisible hobby horse. Then another guy got into the act eventually showing us both up by cleverly adding surprisingly life-like horse whinnying sounds as he repeatedly slapped his own invisible hobby horse on the rump causing it to buck around in a little circle behind the counter.
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Jaime grew up with horses. She comes from a long line of cowboys and other assorted types of horse loving people. But what can you do after a multi cultural improv performance like that? You each order the damned horse meat sandwich that’s what! And you want to know the scary part? You like it. Then you wash away any lingering horsey remorse with the best damned Gelato on earth.
So after our horse meat Panini’s, we bagged some bottles and hung out with the local hoodlums in some beautiful centuries-old courtyard which, judging by the strong stench of urine in one poorly lit corner, gets used for these informal gatherings fairly regularly.
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After we shut down Butera at like 5am, Ken took us back to Likata and the next day we made loose plans to hook up again and said our goodbyes. Sadly the lack of good anchorages pushed us a little further down the coast than we initially expected killing off any hope of another night in Butera.
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Capo Bianco was a beautiful anchorage 40 miles west. We stayed there overnight underneath this beautiful limestone cliff face. The water was pristine, unfortunately it was also teeming with giant jelly fish. That combined with the total lack of protection kept us moving.
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The next day we sailed on to Sciacca and spent two nights in a marina, a dirty overpriced marina that smelled like a sewage treatment plant. When a marina welcomes you with a little basket containing a bottle of wine you know you’re in trouble. When they wanted to charge us double for being a catamaran I was forced to go through an old dance routine that I’m really sick of. Basically it consists of refusing to pay this ‘catamaran tax’ based on our tiny dimensions. Many modern mono hulls are as beamy, or beamier! We would be paying double the price of a boat beside us that takes up more room than Slapdash. This is something I’ve actually had to demonstrate to some marina staff: walk them down the dock, point at tiny Slapdash in her tiny slip and say you want to charge this boat 60 dollars and then pointing to the 50 foot mono hull with a 14 foot beam dwarfing us with her dimensions, that boat 30 dollars? The great thing is that it’s impossible to justify the cat tax in the face of this logic, and if the marina staff are reasonable (eight times out of ten they are) they don’t charge us, or just tack on 10% to save face or something. I just get really tired of having to run through this stupid charade every time.
Eventually we won the Sciacca marina people over to our way of thinking. We also found a place with dollar beers outside the marina so things were looking up.
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I guess a positive side to the anchoring and marina drama in Sicily is that if it wasn’t for it we would probably still be there having fallen prey to a ‘too good too easy’ combination that can turn travelers into stayers if they aren’t careful. Sicily is too good. Danger.
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Not sure if it will work on the med, but we learned to call ahead and simply say we are a sailboat and give them the boat dimensions. Kind of hard for them to justify the extra price when we get there if we aren’t taking up any more space than we said we would.
Posted by Mike & Tammy | 26. Oct, 2011, 8:25 amHow cool that you got to meet up with a Slapdash fan! By the way, I think we’re officially no longer family since you ate a horse. Goodbye.
Posted by Pamela Bayntun | 21. Oct, 2011, 2:51 amI’m sorry, I was weak. Fresh off a rough passage and surrounded by amazing food smells. What’s a girl to do? Hope you can forgive me. I’m all, yum yum, torn up, mmmmmm slobber, inside.
Posted by Jaime | 21. Oct, 2011, 6:45 pmWhat a great discription of our short time. I don’t know about you guys but I’m looking forward to our next beer, Antigua?.. that’s a long wait! ….or you heading to Cape Verde?
Posted by Ken Page | 20. Oct, 2011, 10:23 amOff to Verde but Antigua is a very good possibility. Would love a Ken Page Part II costarring Vik.
Posted by Jaime | 21. Oct, 2011, 6:46 pm