kateandjohnsail.boats

So, what to do when your boat is on the hard in Italy? Visit Tuscany with companions, of course. Due to a moment of madness at a charity auction a year ago, we were booked to stay in a villa in Cortana with four good friends. This week. So, leaving Quintessa in the care of…

Our time in Tunisia a while back was everything we wanted it to be (beautiful location, fascinating history and culture, good food, cheap diesel) and more. But the “more” was that we found a large uncharted boulder in a bay as we tried to anchor near Kelibia. The boat was at dead slow and it…

Boaters, you can take a nap now, because you know this, but I thought others might be interested in learning how we identify other craft that are sharing the waters with us. Knowing a bit about the other boats is not only interesting, it enables us to respect other ships and avoid collisions at sea.…

Recently we spotted a few bait balls on our way, offshore of the toe of Italy’s boot. We are clued in by the sight of a lot of excited birds touching down to the surface, and intermittent splashes where tuna or other large fish are jumping. But wait, gulls can’t eat big fish like tuna;…

This post is dedicated to my science educator friends (that’s you, Vicki, Rob, Anne, and maybe others too?). We discovered this informational sign next to the harbor at Porto dell’Etna, (next to a volcano, naturally).  Looking at the sketches and recalling a few Latin roots, you can discern that the display is about the changing…

Mi displace is usually translated I’m sorry, but really it means my bad. It comes in quite handy when one commits yet another unintentional blunder in the character-building business of living in a new culture. Italy is not a difficult country to navigate, but it’s easy to be tripped up by the little things, like…

Here’s something else that makes me happy: this little basil plant. It was very much an impulse purchase in the huge Bollerio street market in Palermo. The vendors were yelling, motorbikes were squeezing through the aisles, and various creatures from the sea stared at us with vacant eyes as we wandered past. This plant was…

We have had our first guests on Quintessa. Fittingly, they were a couple without whose mentorship we would not be prepared to cruise on our own boat. John and Janet Colby are the owners of Iris, a Hylas 42, sister boat to ours, which they keep on the Columbia River in Portland. They are Portland…

Back to our tour de volcanoes: as promised, we are sitting in the shadow of Mt. Etna, in Riposto, Sicily. We settled in last night under a cloudy sky, and didn’t know what to expect. There was no drama during the night, but morning dawned clear and beautiful, revealing a dramatic closeup of the crater,…

Forget about muscling up killer inclines in the Alps; my kind of bike ride includes a gently graded path and a cannolo. This morning in Syracuse, Sicily, we had a little business to do before riding, as my rear brake cable was failing and I do rely on that one a lot. We found our…