Wintering in Marina di Ragusa

 Nov - Dec 2020

Life is so very different when you are berthed in a marina especially when you know its going to be for some time.  Whilst you start to relax knowing that shopping, washing and day-to-day living can be easier, there is also the feeling of being restricted to that one position.  The main reason we love our life so much is the ability to sail on and see new places and experience new things.

We made friends very quickly with several other sailing couples.  Ragusa marina is so very different to La Linea.  There is a real community here that know they are going to be here for months, whereas in La Linea the majority of people were transiting onto either the Med or the Canaries on route to the Caribbean.

The marina is part of a small holiday resort with few shops but situated between a stunning sandy beach to one side and a pebbly beach on the other side.  There are a couple of coffee shops within the marina and a taverna type bar in the road above, which the marina community use for their twice weekly get-togethers.

Steve and I had a list of boat jobs that had to be started.  We remembered from last year that although you are booked for 6 months winter berth, it all of sudden starts to go very quickly and some of the jobs were quite big and like we all know, there is not one boat job that doesn't turn into 30 jobs!  First on the list was the solar panels.  We'd realised during the summer that 2 of our 4 solar panels had died. Not surprising when they are quite possibly 15years old so have served us very well.  The other major jobs are the steering cabling needs to be replaced, both heads needs a refurb and the forward berth headlining must be replaced.

We were planning to return to the UK in the new year, but due to Covid it become clear very quickly that this was not going to happen.  So damned annoying because we had purchased things in the UK that we were going to bring back with us.  With Brexit looming too, it was going to be very expensive to get it couriered over.

Christmas loomed and we agreed that Christmas Day would be spent with 2 other couples, sharing the costs.  Steve and I decided that we wanted to hire a car to go sightseeing and Christmas shopping.  We hired the car for 2 weeks sharing the cost and days with Kim and Jonathan from GrAce.  This turned out to be a great idea and at a cost of £30-50 for a week, was ideal.

We visited a few towns within the municipality and we were still not allowed to travel too far because of Covid.  We went to Noto and Modica, both stunningly beautiful places but quiet due to no tourists and Covid.  

Christmas Day was great fun, spent on GrAce with Kim, Jonathan, Steve and Mags.  Dinner was as good as roast in the UK with turkey and pork.  A brilliant time was had by everyone.

Christmas Day aboard GrAce

Steve drinking

Annette working

New Year bought a new set of problems with Brexit.  We had started our Italian Resdiency process, that gave us permission to stay here longer than the 90 days.  Now Britain has left Europe, we are only allowed 90 days in every 180 days in a Schengan country and there are only 5 countries in Europe that are not part of Schengan and 2 of these are war zones.  Whilst the residency gives us more time, this is short unless you want to become a tax resident.  So although this helps us initially, we now we have to make a bigger decision before our winter berthing period is up - do we stay in Europe or head west and cross the Atlantic, where there are more countries that we are able to visit without these restrictions.