Days 249 to 255: 18th to 24th Feb - Rain, fun, and a little bit of planning

Sunday

After a bit of a lazy breakfast AJ went out in search of his new friends from "No plans just options", coming back to ask me if he could go to the beach with the boys, which was fine as he took one of our new 2-way radios to keep in touch. After a while I decided to take a walk over to see Zoe and Guy while Patrick kept a very subdued Esmé company (she had fallen off her scooter the night before). What followed was a perfect, unplanned, lazy, sociable day on board "No plans just options". Eventually Patrick and Esmé appeared, I guess wondering what I was up to, at some point AJ and Cam returned, and then Lynita, Justin, Kynan and Leora joined the party. We all got to have a nosey at what life on a catamaran is like, the kids had a whale of a time jumping on the trampoline, and the adults had chance for a lovely long chat largely uninterrupted by small people. At some point we got peckish so Lynita and I nipped back to our boats to pick up nibbles while Zoe introduced kids to Vegemite sandwiches. And then we continued chatting until nearly tea time. What a perfect day!

Monday

School, lunch, relax, then we all went down to the meeting room for the afternoon craft session which was building Viking long ships out of cardboard. AJ wasn't too keen so Patrick went back to the boat with him while I helped Esmé for a while before leaving her in the care of Lynita while I walked into town to get some shopping. An early dinner then I abandoned Patrick and the kids in order to pick up the meeting room key ready for our low budget ladies night. 

Earlier in the day I had asked reception where to get the key and they had advised me to get I from the security guys. I borrowed AJ's scooter as it was in the opposite direction from the meeting room and I was running late, carrying a rucksack full of bottles, pewter goblets and nibbles. The new security lady had very little English but luckily another Marina guy was there and understood from my hand gestures that I needed a key. He followed me in his van, all the way to the other end of the marina only to tell me he didn't have the key and I should talk to the office tomorrow.... Noooooo I have a bunch of ladies expecting a social evening tonight! Eventually, after phoning somebody, he asked me to wait 5 minutes. Another marina guy arrived with a key... result! He let me into the room, turned all the lights on and just stood there. I asked what I should do with the key at the end of the evening and he said "no... you can't have my key. Speak to the office tomorrow". Turned the lights off and made for the door. Again I objected and eventually he phoned somebody else who obviously told him where the spare keys were in the office... and luckily he had office keys. Finally after half an hour I had a key for the room.

What followed was another lovely ladies evening, comparing cheap bottles of prosecco as well as cruising plans for the coming year. We eventually finished a short while after midnight with grave concerns for our ability to function the following morning!

Tuesday

Too tired (hungover?) to run so a lazy start to the day. A little school followed by a family trip to the market, and then a little more school on our return. Lunch, Panto rehearsals and then over to Yves Christian for dinner. Yves is an amazing 66 year old Gaff Ketch owned by Lotty and Sacha. It is possibly the only boat we have come across on our travels that Patrick is truly jealous of. He loves classic wooden boats and thinks fondly back to the days where we owned and raced our Stella "Vreny" on the East Coast, however when we decided we needed a bigger boat for our growing family we took what we felt was a more sensible option of buying a GRP boat which would need far less maintenance. 

Lotty treated us to a fantastic roast complete with Yorkshire puddings which the kids loved. Then a movie was put on for the kids while us adults chatted in the pilot house. A beautiful evening with beautiful friends!

Wednesday

This week AJ has been working on long division. It was quite tricky and he found it hard concentrating on me teaching him via our usual "Maths no Problem" text book so I enlisted the help of Math Antics and a whiteboard for a change of approach. I'm really impressed with AJ's perseverance this week and I have to say, we have just about cracked it. Just one more section to complete before the chapter review. We've also been encouraging him to photograph his lego creations. This one will be used for a Green Blue Peter badge application (he was somewhat jealous of Esme's blue badge and this has spurred him into action). The model is of a special plane which collects spilled oil polluting the oceans and returns it to land where it is recycled into fuel to power land based vehicles. The green Blue Peter Badge requires him to write a 50 word application letter explaining his environmentally friendly efforts. Once school was over I was just about to make lunch when Gabby, our Italian boat neighbour came past asking if AJ and Esmé would like to join her and Lynita taking their kids kite flying. I quickly grabbed their kite and thrust some fruit into their hands and they were off, leaving Patrick and I to a nice quiet lunch of Tom Yum soup. On their return our quiet time continued as they both went to watch Coco at the weekly kids movie afternoon. Finally retrieved them from Mrs Chippy just in time for a late tea before trying to get an early night.

Thursday

After school we had Lynita and crew round for lunch. After being introduced to the idea of breaded "eggplant" by the young Australian boys we met in Port Napoleon, we have been enjoying these every once in a while with baked beans as an accompaniment. As Lynita is vegetarian I was keen to introduce her to them. It was  a horrible wet and rainy day, which made the hot, crispy fried aubergine taste particularly good. We all had a lovely afternoon with the kids spending time after lunch investigating our magnetic toys.

Friday

Another wet day, with thunder and lightning too, so after school we were quite relaxed about the kids having an electronics afternoon while we did some planning. Once Mum and Dad have visited next month we are going to try to get to Malta for a week or so, as later in the year it gets extremely expensive. While conversations with Guy from "No Plans Just Options" were reasonably fresh in our mind we wanted to map out a rough plan of where we wanted to go, and get an idea of how long we might like to stay.

It was nice to do a little planning as I think we are all starting to get itchy feet, however this is dampened a little by the realisation that although we are keen to continue with the next part of our adventure, it will mean saying goodbye to the amazing friends we have met this winter. 

The usual Friday evening kids social on Vesna was cancelled as Jack is away back in Oz, the weather was hideous, and Declan had had some dental work and really wanted a quiet night. In order to offset the kids disappointment I suggested a family pizza and movie night, taking the opportunity to show AJ the trailer for Percy Jackson and the lightning thief. I've been trying to get AJ into this series of books for a while now as he really likes Greek Mythology and I thought it would be a good thing to read before heading to Greece. Up until no he has resisted however he was pretty excited at the trailer so we downloaded the movie for the evening's viewing. It was a lovely family evening and I am now hopeful that he will read other books in the series. (There is one more movie and I told him in no uncertain terms he needs to read the next book before we watch it!).

Saturday

An early morning run, the first this week as the weather was horrible on Thursday. Followed by breakfast and then a long trek down to the MD supermarket in search of more bacon, and a birthday present for Doug, while Patrick took advantage of a dry sunny day to do some laundry. Esmé decided to come with me on her scooter so we had a lovely time walking along the seafront in the sun. Shopping done we started our return slog now laden down with shopping, and it started to rain. As soon as we had crossed the road onto the seafront I let Esmé scoot ahead so she could get out of the rain quickly, and eventually Patrick came to meet me to help me carry as my legs were like lead and I was questioning the sanity of a 3 mile round trip to the furthest supermarket just an hour or so after my first run in a week. On the way back I saw locals on the beach obviously on a mass litter pick. I was a bit disappointed that we hadn't known about this as it would have been a good thing to get involved with as the sailing community. We are all becoming increasingly aware of the issues surrounding plastic pollution in our oceans, and bit by bit people seem to be shunning single use plastics in favour of carrying water bottles, using stainless steel straws, and taking reusable bags shopping with them. It did cross my mind that in order to collect plastic of the beach, the easiest method of containing this litter was in a plastic bag. Perhaps they were biodegradable, but I guess we've still got a long way to go before we take reusable bags to collect litter!

The afternoon passed in a prosecco fuelled haze, watching the kids attack the now traditional Manzano Piñata, and eating crisps and cake.

Carrying on the theme of avoiding plastic littering our seas we seemed to be constantly fishing balloons or other items blown into the marina. I'd like to think we are pretty good at this but I think we can all improve our mindset with regards to this.

However as 4pm loomed I was brought back to the reality that I had invited Lotty and Sacha over for tea at 5pm so Patrick and I headed back to the boat to tidy up and prepare a Thai green curry.  Yet more prosecco and a good night was had by all!

Days 243 to 248: 12th - 17th Feb 2019. The week that passed in a windy blur.

Monday to Thursday passed in a bit of a windy blur. The wind was gusting up to about 50 knots on and off and we were all getting a little short tempered. When I was on teacher training I remember being told that kids go crazy when it's windy and this week proved to me that being on a boat only amplified this. Boatschool was not our finest and Patrick was getting frustrated with boat jobs. Fitting the new thermostat for the Calorifier was a fiddly and awkward job where on numerous occasions a screw was dropped inside the housing, calling for small fingers to be distracted from schoolwork in order to try and retrieve it. Once finally fitted the new thermostat made diddly squat difference and the calorifier kept tripping out!

My new exercise routine hit a bit of a rocky period too as, much to the amusement of  my new yoga buddies, I turned up half an hour late just as they were finishing having forgotten that it started at 8 rather than 8:30am. Tuesday morning's run was a non starter as I listened to the wind howling in the rigging and looked up at the dark clouds glaring down at me through the hatch in our cabin. However come Wednesday I managed to get to Yoga on time, the fact that I had been so rubbish on Monday giving me the kick up the bum I needed to get out of the boat despite the torrential rain only 1/2 hour earlier; and on Thursday Patrick pushed me off the boat for my run (ok not really running that much but I'm still feeling good about starting couch 2 5k again even though at this stage it is mostly walking).

It was lovely to welcome the crews of Mrs Chippy and Spacegrazer back and the kids did manage to squeeze in one bonfire on the beach in between showers, however AJ did manage to burn his chin eating toasted marshmallows, meaning he now constantly looks like he has been eating chocolate ice cream and dribbled it all over his face.

Luckily Friday was a new day and we had light winds and glorious sunshine. Yoga overlooking the beach was particularly lovely.

Patrick had to take the hire car back so we had an early morning trip to the supermarket to stock up on heavy groceries and fill up with petrol before he headed off to the airport. The kids and I then went down to the meeting room to explore some data heavy online learning.

The kids enjoyed spending time with friends they hadn't seen for a while and I enjoyed a quiet afternoon until tea time when we had pizza on board Vesna before the adults went to Happy Hour while the kids had their games and movie night.


Saturday was another lovely day. We had a morning chat with Nana who gave us the exciting news that Esmé had a letter!

It was the one we had been waiting for... a Blue Peter Badge that she had applied for before returning to Sicily after Christmas. She had written a lovely letter about our adventure, putting an awful lot of effort in and was over the moon to see the badge in Nana's hands over a video call. Next Titania went out for a sail while a bunch of us walked up to the playground near the market so kids could run and play somewhere different. In the afternoon a kid boat from Licata, "No plans just options", came in for a night or 2 so we all went for ice creams before heading to the meeting room for yet more pizza before the kids had a movie and the adults talked about Greece and cruising plans. It was a really enjoyable and informative evening, although Esmé was struggling with a hurt ankle from a scooter accident earlier in the day! Hope it feels better soon!

Day 239 to 242: 8th to 11th Feb - Esmé sick again, Lidl, Happy Hour and Ispica

Thursday

We were woken in the middle of the night to Esmé not feeling well, and then projectile vomiting while sat on the loo.... nice! So a broken nights sleep for everybody except AJ meant a light day in terms of boatschool and a very frustrated Esmé not being able to go out to play in the afternoon despite feeling much better. However having been away early I decided to restart Couch to 5k. I tried this 2 years ago and for the first time in my life enjoyed running, unfortunately as I was getting close to the end of the 9 week programme I did my ankle in and it has taken 18 months to heal so I'm somewhat nervously having another go in this most beautiful of places to run. In the afternoon Helen and I took AJ and Annabelle to the beach and had a sneaky drink in the marina lunch bar while they were playing... it was nice to get off the boat and have a nice chat. She got me thinking about the possibility of returning to engineering after our adventure, saying that she had a friend who was involved in a project to encourage women to return to STEM careers after taking a career break. All in all quite a low key day.

Friday

Just maths and English today as we were running out of food so needed to go out shopping before lunch! Off to Lidl in Ragusa as they were having an Asian week and anything other than extortionately priced 5 minute noodles  seem to be tricky to find in Sicily. Once there Patrick took the kids to a nearby playground while I stocked up on noodles and sauces before trawling the other aisles for our normal shop. As we only have the car for another week we are looking to build our dry stores back up again ready for the summer. The space under the floor which beans, bacon grill and ravioli  used to fill now has some space for noodles and kidney beans. A car picnic of crusty bread, ham and cheese before heading back to the marina where the kids headed off to play with their friends.

In the evening we trialled a night out at Stella Bar Happy Hour without the kids. Our friends on Vesna have older kids and usually leave them on board with movies and an x-box on Friday nights. They asked if we would like to leave our kids with theirs (along with Ben and Annabelle) and head up to the bar with them so we decided to give it a go... the kids were extremely excited. We had a lovely time meeting other liveaboards, knowing that the Vesna kids would give us a call if there were any problems. When we returned Esmé was really tired and wanted to go back to Laurin so Patrick took her home while I stayed a while and shared some of my birthday whisky letting AJ have a precious extra half hour of fun.

Saturday

Rain rain rain. Patrick had volunteered to do the morning net and then a lazy morning followed. By lunchtime somebody had booked the meeting room for the kids to get together and play on electronics. I had offered to look after Kynan and Leora for a couple of hours so grabbed a rucksack full of toys and headed down there to take my turn at supervising the older kids. It was pretty much a lazy day but by 7pm I was really tired so snuck off to bed leaving Patrick to wash up and deal with the kids!

Sunday

We had decided to go to the caves at Ispica, a collection of tombs and cave dwellings in a rocky valley so after another run we set off in the car. Unfortunately when we got there the main area was closed despite guide books saying it was open every day. Luckily Lynita had told us about a water mill worth visiting nearby so we spent a lovely time learning about the water mill before the kind lady told us of some other caves to visit on her side of the valley. I won't go into too much detail about the watermill as I think writing a little report on it may be part of Esmés school this week but enjoy the pictures!

Days 236 to 238: 5th to 7th Feb - Birthday drinks, bonfires and more sick!

Monday

So Esmé nearly one week on from the last sickness was suddenly sick again:-( AJ not sick but still not feeling that great, and the adults not 100%. We've been having a run of unsettled weather and this often brings in some dust from the Sahara which covers the boat and makes walking about a little like navigating through red mist.

However it was the day of my girls night out for my birthday and as it had been delayed by a week due to the restaurant being painted I wasn't about to miss out. In the end there were only 5 of us but we had a great time drinking cocktails and Quattro  Quarti and will try to do this more regularly. The lovely Clare gave me some oranges from Greece that I'm looking forward to and also told me about a free exercise session on the beach which happens at 8am on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.... more to follow!

Tuesday

It rained! A lot! Boatschool went well, it seems to be improving all the time, but generally a quiet and boring day other than the obligatory pancakes for lunch:-)

The comedy moment of the day came when AJ brought a electrical cable back from the gazebo (where people leave unwanted items that others may find useful) only to be told we put it there in the first place!

Wednesday

So I managed to drag myself out of bed in time to make it to the beach for 8am. I have still no idea how to spell what I did but it's a rather gentle form of Yoga (no lying down on mats needed) and was a lovely start to the day looking out across the bay before heading back to the boat for breakfast and school. The afternoon movie was cancelled so Esmé went to the shops with Helen and Annabelle while AJ played with the boys. Very soon he came, very excited onto the boat, asking if one of us could come to the beach as they needed an adult to supervise them playing with explosives which they wanted to launch with paper aeroplanes.  I quickly delegated to Patrick who spent the afternoon overseeing the boys playing with firecrackers. Half way through waging war on the cavern of carnage under the forepeak I was assaulted yet again by a very excited AJ asking if I had started cooking yet, saying that they needed meat to cook on a fire. Somewhat dubious but equally not wanting to curb his enthusiasm I sent him off with marshmallows, forks, and a tin of bacon grill. It seems the kids had a great time building a fire and toasting marshmallows but were somewhat disappointed that Patrick vetoed the use of even one tin of his treasured bacon grill!

After a somewhat more filling tea than toasted marshmallows the kids rushed off to watch a movie with Ben and Annabelle while I beat Patrick at Qwirkle (again!) finally giving up when Patrick accused me of cheating (again!). AJ is such a poor loser and I'm beginning to understand where he gets it from!

Days 231 to 235: 31st Jan to 4th Feb - Agrigento

Wednesday

A quiet day mainly on the boat as wanted to keep the kids away from others despite them seeming perfectly well as didn't want to spread the sickness lurgies. Kids were understandably getting bored so after school in the morning we got stuck into Esme's Christmas lego, a lego friends Catamaran. It was the first time I had really seen her enthusiastic enough about lego to stick at building something from instructions and the whole family helped her at times.





Thursday

Patrick's birthday and another quiet day, although the kids were pleased to be able to catch up with their friends in the afternoon. Esmé finished her maths book last week with a big revision exercise. I am so incredibly proud that she chose to go back over any questions she didn't get right and spend some more time learning these concepts using Dienes borrowed back from Dizzie... she loved having a little time for playing with them too.

In the evening Lynita babysat for us so that Patrick and I could go out for a birthday meal. Unfortunately our first and second choices of restaurants were closed but we ended up eating at the Miramare Hotel where Mum and Dad will stay next month. The starter was amazing and really overshadowed the following course but it was perfectly ok and a nice change to be without kids for a while. After dinner we went for a long walk before returning to the boat.

Friday

Another quiet day with boatschool followed by a trip to Decathlon to try to find a replacement pump for the SUP as ours melted when a hose disconnected from the webasto heater. Unfortunately the pumps there had a slightly different size fitting, however we managed to get E a replacement coat and a AJ a new fleece before heading back to pack for our night away.

Saturday

An earlyish start as we were heading to Agrigento and the Valley of Temples. We had been recommended this trip by Lynita and were looking forward to a night away. Unfortunately the weather was VERY wet, although we were somewhat hopeful that it would improve as the day went on. Patrick commented on how quiet the roads were and that the Italians definitely didn't like rain, however as we drove on we realised that it may also have something to do with the fact that the roads have very little drainage so there were very large puddles everywhere. 

Eventually we arrived at The Valley of Temples and had a car picnic before braving the weather. Typically we realised that the site would be free tomorrow but decided to continue regardless as we had other plans for then. 10 Euros entry each for Patrick and I but free for the kids, however we did spend 5 Euros on an audio guide as Esmé loves these and her reading stamina although great isn't quite up to reading information boards yet.

The Valley of Temples is a stunning series of Greek Temples built along a ridge with beautiful views of the Mediterranean sea. Some are more intact than others but all have their attractions. Whilst it is great to see the almost complete examples, it is also amazing for the kids to be able to climb over ruined structures too!

The best comedy moment was AJ looking at the bronze sculpture of Icarus and saying "Mum, I think that man is naked" "What makes you think that AJ" I asked, "I can see the ripples on his chest, I think it's called a six pack...... and I can see his willy!"

As we walked on we found Hardcastle Villa, so decided to visit to find out about our potential ancestors! Apparently it was named after some army general..... need to do some research mum!

Inside was an art exhibition of work by Orna Ben Ami, a project called "An entire life in a package" using metalwork with photographs to show the experiences of refugees through the ages. 

The whole site was quite large so once done we headed for our B&B and spent a couple of hours relaxing before heading out for dinner. On our way we enjoyed listening to some drummers before finding a lovely pizza restaurant where we were served by one of the drummers!

No point photographing the kids meals, it's always margherita pizza!

Sunday

AJ was feeling really tired, perhaps not fully recovered from the bug earlier in the week so we ditched our long detour on the way home in favour of an hour in the local museum before heading straight back.

 The huge stone statue formed part of one of 38 pillars in a temple.

On the way home we stopped for a picnic on a beach close to where the Allies landed on Sicily in the second world war and all enjoyed a leg stretch.

Unfortunately there weren't many kids around when we got back but the kids and I did manage a walk to the stony beach to watch the sunset.