Southsea to Marina di Ragusa

Well what a journey it's been already! An odyssey is defined as "a long wandering or voyage usually marked by many changes of fortune" and that seems pretty spot on so far, it seems our boat is rather aptly named!

From security queues so long they snaked in and out of the Heathrow terminal building to a cancelled onwards flight from Cologne, passenger revolts, 2am coach rides across Germany, a bomb scare in Frankfurt and multiple failed attempts to buy new flights to Tunisia we (and miraculously all our luggage) finally made it to Monastir.

30 hours of travelling with about 2 hours of broken sleep and we had finally made it! However, no rest yet. After showering (in an attempt to make ourselves slightly more socially acceptable) we finally met the sellers Marian and Jean-Marc (a lovely couple who split their time between the US and France). They had bought Odyssee (then called San De) in 2002 in the US and had spent the last 20 years sailing her in America, before an Atlantic crossing in 2014 followed by several years in the Mediterranean.

It's rather an odd experience viewing something in person for the first time when you've already committed to it and spent a substantial amount of money on it but Odyssee didn't disappoint. She's a 36ft Westerly Corsair built in Waterlooville (the nearest town to where Sam grew up) back in 1984. With a centre cockpit and wide beam the boat is surprisingly spacious inside and has clearly been a labour of love for Jean Marc and Marion who have spent a lot of time, money and effort maintaining and upgrading the boat since they've owned it.

Tunisia was a pleasant surprise, everyone we met there was so friendly and helpful, a complete contrast to Marrakech (our only other experience of Northern Africa, in which you couldn't even look at something without being demanded to pay for the privilege!) and the food was not only delicious but spectacularly cheap!

Jean Marc and Marion had very kindly agreed to sail back from Tunisia to Sicily with us which we jumped at as an opportunity to get a really thorough handover of the boat and her particular quirks and systems, as well as an opportunity to get some tips on Mediterranean mooring and short-handed crewing from people who had been doing it for years.

With a sudden improvement in the wind forecast we set off at 10am on the 3rd of July. Unfortunately, despite preparing with anti-seasickness tablets, travel bands and ginger supplements I was struck down fairly severely by sea sickness on the first day so eventually admitted defeat and spent most of the day lying down in the saloon wondering if we'd made a rather expensive, foolish mistake! Sam however had a great day, learning the ropes (excuse the pun!), watching a pod of dolphins play in the bow wave and proudly changing the ensign over from US to UK!

Thankfully, on day 2 I made a full recovery and well and truly found my sea-legs! There was a fair bit less wind (which may well have been a contributing factor) so we spent a lot of the day travelling at a rather relaxed 4 knots. Sam took the opportunity to do his first repair, reattaching the rudder to the Hydrovane (a mysterious bit of kit that somehow through the magic of physics uses the wind to act as an autopilot). The water was a glorious blue and the sunset gorgeous but sadly no more dolphins.

Due to the drop in wind we ended up doing another full night passage in which Sam and I had a chance to familiarise ourselves with AIS, a brilliant system that alerts you to other boats in your vicinity, what direction they are travelling in (surprisingly difficult to establish in the dark) and how close you are likely to get to them with your current course (also very tricky to judge in the dark!)

We finally arrived outside Marina di Ragusa at 4am but decided for the sake of an hour to circle about until dawn broke so we could see where we were going. We made our way in at daybreak and after a couple of hours nap docked at the fuel berth, the "marineros" came on shift to show us to our official berth.

After completing our first trans-continental crossing we went to check in. Unfortunately, this was also not so straightforward as Marina di Ragusa didn't have the facilities to do this and we would need to travel to another town Pozzallo (a 40-minute drive each way) to do this. It also came to light that due to an issue related to an elusive and complicated document known as a "constituto d'arrivo" or transit log, Jean Marc and Marian had left Sicily without the relevant stamp in their passport and were rather concerned how this would go down with passport control. Sam and I however were equally concerned that if they didn't check in we had essentially smuggled two people across to Europe from North Africa, which we suspected given the current state of affairs would be rather frowned upon!

So we all piled into a taxi to Pozzallo and after a rather tense encounter in passport control we all got stamped in and breathed a huge sigh of relief! Having learnt from Jean Marc and Marian's experience we then set out to obtain a transit log for our stay in Sicily. Again much easier said than done, as we were bounced from one official office to another and back again with each claiming it was nothing to do with them. With a fair bit of perseverance and having sweated to a state of dehydration due to 40-degree heat and a rather intense encounter surrounded by official looking Italians sounding rather upset and jabbing fingers and shaking their heads at our various official documents, we eventually convinced someone to issue us one!

We travelled back to Marina di Ragusa, Marian and Jean Marc packed up the last of their things, we bid them farewell and Odyssee was finally ours!Read more