Termini Imerese - 15 October 2021

We spent a surprisingly comfortable night, all things considered. The wind was hitting 35-40 knots, and we are positioned side on to it, at the end of a pontoon, so we have no protection. Also the berth we are on is a bit too short and so the lazy lines which normally stretch out in front of us to hold the boat in place, basically go straight down. This means that Equinox is corkscrewing at its mooring, and pushing up quite hard against the boat that is downwind of us. This happens to be a motor boat, with a substantially different hull profile to ours, which makes positioning the fenders to keep us apart, quite difficult. Anyway, all has been ok despite the challenges.

When we woke this morning, I came to a very disappointing decision. It would have to be long trousers today, for the first time since we got to the boat. It was still gray, wet and windy outside, and in contrast to yesterday when I managed a total of 74 steps, (the result of 2 trips to the bows to check things), today we had to go out. Fortunately the worst of the rain passed, and we have had only occasional showers, rather than the endless deluge that happened yesterday.

We had located somewhere to do our laundry, this town does not seem to be as well served with laundrettes as some others. So we set off, up the steep stepped streets to find it. When we arrived, it was a serviced laundry, rather than self service. The proprietors spoke less English than I spoke Italian, but eventually we managed to specify what we wanted. The lady was very concerned that they would not wash the coloured clothes with the whites, but we assured her it would be ok, and accepted responsibility for the consequences. We will return tomorrow to collect it all.



We stopped off to buy food on the way back and ended up at the local market, which was enormous. Surprisingly the stalls were mostly selling clothing and household items, but we did find an area where food was available, and so stocked up on fruit and vegetables, nuts, cheese and cold meats. We plan (weather permitting) to be at anchorages for the next few days, so we need plenty. Again we found the people to be friendly, helpful and very proud of their delicious local produce.




One thing that is really good here is the refuse collection. Clearly it is unpleasant to have any food waste around, and so there is a daily rubbish collection. We see various small dustcarts doing their rounds every day. We have also noticed that many of the upper floor flats have a hook on a pulley which they can lower to people at ground level. When we bought pizza the other day, we heard someone shout down to the pizzeria. When it was ready, the pizza was put in a bag on the hook, and it was pulled up to the top floor. Today we noticed the ultimate use of this system, people had lowered their rubbish down, and the bin men just had to take it from the hook. Labour saving all round.

Ready for the rubbish collection

We have now finalised where we will leave Equinox for the winter, and made arrangements with the boatyard in question. As a result we have also been able to book our flights home (shame!). We will be watching the weather forecast as carefully as even to ensure that we use the weather windows to get there. The weather is due to improve now, so hopefully the storms are largely behind us.

Steve (and Tricia)

Distance today               0 miles

Total distance 2021:   435 miles


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