Gaeta - November

Gaeta - November

Tuesday 12th November - Hello and Buongiorno all Thésée Followers out there. Glad you are still tuning in to the Adventures of Thésée & the Three Sailors. 

LINDA - This weeks goings on started with me returning from the UK. My plane was delayed two hours which made it a long tiring day by the time i arrived in Gaeta. I had a window seat on the plane so got a good view of the Swiss Alps and the greenery of Italy. No time to rest on arrival though as the marina had thrown a cocktail party for those of us wintering here, and i arrived just in time to catch the last hour or so. We were greeted with wine and pizza, of course. Being the last ones to arrive and last to leave, they gave us most of the leftover food and so we lived on pizza for the next three days. 

Here's my route from Manchester to Rome

I never even noticed we had crossed the Straits of Dover

There has been a lot of boat movements during my absence, and all but one of the superyachts have left. One of the superyacht sail boats has had its mast and boom removed and the boom now has a new home in the car park. As you can see from the photo below, the boom is massive so you can imagine how big the boat it.

The superyacht's boom

 ...and here's its mast with four sets of spreaders

lying on the other side of the car park.

You can see how many parking spaces it takes up

Dean has a new present to himself. It's a climbing helmet, and here he is trying it out for size. Think he has turned into a Superhero. The reason he's bought it is to protect his head in case he ever has to dive under the boat to free a line. Will come in handy when he's scrubbing the hull too. 

My Superman

Gaeta's Christmas Lights and Illuminations have been switched on, and they look wonderful all around town and down the main streets.

Along the seafront

Light patterns projected onto the buildings

Lots and lots going on here

Holyness projected onto the Church here

The main high street

This tree is completely made up of lights

The Bell Tower

The Fountains

The Teddy

The weather has turned into UK style and we have had rain every day so far this month, and it's not looking to improve. Quite a shock to the system as we weren't expecting so much rain. Then we find out November is the rainy month in Gaeta. It better improve soon or even I will be having a moan! I've never experienced so much thunder and lightening at frequent intervals. The owner of the Italian boat next to us came down one day to check his boat and couldn't get on the passarelle, so he came onto Thesee and climbed over the rails onto his own boat. He must have been grateful as a few days later he presented Dean with a big Mozzarella Buffalo Cheese in Milk. We tried it out but it tastes like rubber. Anyway it was a very nice thought.

A typical stormy sky this week

The Mozzarella Cheese

Friday night eight of us went out the 'The Dutch' pub for a meal and get-together as our friends David & Caroline were going back to the UK for the winter. The food wasn't up to much and apparantly it was chicken on my plate, but i'm not so sure it was anything meaty at all. Afterwards we ended up on Ian & Sarah's boat for more drinkies. It was a great night and another past midnight bedtime. 

We did get a brief few hours on Sunday with blue skies, so we took the chance for a walk into Old Gaeta and up to Castle Angioino and Castle Aragonese. It was very pleasant although we didn't go inside the castles as it was 10 euros each and we thought we might do it another time.

Along our route to the castle

Great views here

...and here

At the big Church

Inside the big Church

Entrance to the big Church

Two Sailors outside the big Church

So afterwards we sat and ate our packed lunch on the sea wall, then pudding was a fabulously delicious ice cream. I can't remember what mine was called but it was a Mocca something or other, and Dean had a Fragioli. I was so busy devouring mine that i failed to realise that i had lost one of my hearing aids until we got back to the boat. I had to retrace my steps all the way back to the ice cream shop where someone had handed it in!

We'll be back here or more ice cream soon

Here's some more illuminations we found in the local park on the way back to the marina. There were lions, tigers and giraffe's too. 

Elephant

Rhino

It's actually a Hippo. Must be due to the loss of the hearing aid!

Almost back now

Nearly home

So the weather again.... Here's the forecast for the next two weeks. Rain and more rain. Right now whilst i'm writing this it's bucketing down outside with thunder, lightning, and wind gusts of 38 knots. Lovely.

Fresh gale warning offshore....lovely

38 knot gusts.....thankyou

So today in town, Dean bought us a little treat to raise our spirits. Can you guess what it is?

???

Cream Cakes

Let's make Tuesdays our cream cakes day.

DEAN - Once again back to cleaning and rubbing down the teak on the boat in between the rain. I managed to clean the companion way doors and hand rails before Linda came back, she didn’t notice! Cleaned all of the boat inside also, every nook and cranny. Didn’t notice that either!

I spent a morning trying to clean and re-align connections on the nav gear (Raymarine) you remember that we had some trouble earlier in the season. Anyway that turned out to be a complete dismantle operation. It’s housed in the end of the cockpit table. Hopefully all sorted now. 

I made up a couple of new mooring lines, whilst we're in a marina for a long period the lines tend to get chaffed on the mooring bollards which are rusty. I cut some lengths off the old anchor chain before we left Almerimar and so used those to pass around the bollards and sliced some three strand nylon with thimbles. 

We both chose a sunny and reasonably windless day to remove the sails. I’m going to send them in for some small repairs and have them cleaned. I’ll have a couple of mods done also. Big job and very heavy. I will modify some of the battens also as they seem a little short. Luckily kept some spares when we had the new sail bag made. After drilling a rivet out of the boom and replacing with a bolt they are now all stored out of the way in the boom.

Flaking the mainsail as we lower it from the mast

Not one of my favourite jobs

Removing the battens

Drilling out the rivet, and catching the mess at the same time

All battens nicely stored in the boom and out of the way

Three sails stored temporarily in Linda's aft cabin

Not sure she's too happy about that

A big thanks to Gavin who donated a car radio/CD player to the cause some time ago. I forgot to bring it with us and Linda packed it in her luggage when she came back, so that is now fitted and working. It plays my ITunes via bluetooth from my phone so I get to listen to Catherine Jenkins all day every day!

Whilst browsing the shops I came across some LED lights. Powered from the mains through a transformer, 12Volt. That will do nicely thank you. They're now under the cockpit table and powered from the boat's battery. There’s a remote control to change the colour etc.. Strangely the remote control also operates some controls on the new radio as the one that came with that didn’t work. Bonus.

The new LED cockpit lights in action

We still have an ongoing saga with the faulty solar panels. The company that supplied them are a complete bunch of w$*%rs we’ll see!

Tuesday 19th November... So here we are again me and Saffy home alone. Linda's sister Angela came for a few days. Now they've gone off to do some sightseeing in Rome. At last some peace and quiet. I had the floor up in the aft cabin to inspect the aft water tank the other day, I can just reach the level sender with my fingertips to clean it.

Bit of a stretch

Tools, bikes and floor removed

While we were out the other day we came across some nice shot glasses, so here they are our Christmas present this year.

Thanks Santa

We had a new visitor to the marina this week. It looks like steam powered but I think there is possibly a diesel conversion some where in there.

Getting up a head of steam

We had quite a storm come through the other day. Linda was up all night "on watch" luckily no damage to report but we did move the boat out away from the pontoon and we're now using a wobbly plank to get on and off. During the storm one of the bolts of lightening set off the new LED lights in the cockpit! Once the storm was over we went out for lunch with some fellow yachties.

Storm survivors

We found another supermarket shop, they sell wine by the bottle, buy your plastic bottle and fill it with wine!

Or use no bottle

Debris after the storm

We've been out and about with Angela, some of the back streets have little shrine things like this one. Some have an electric light some have candles.

Believers

Tourist on the beach

We took an evening stroll down towards the old town to look at the lights. We were there the other day but it was day time so the lights were off.

Light anchor

Nice lights and trees

Angela is and a star

Laser projected lights on the church

Giraffe

Mosquito

Large rabbit eating me in the dark

Tortoise

Wren

Linda with elephant at night

Another giraffe

Saffy

Elephant without Linda

Poodles

Barcoded 

The wonderful thing about....

What has eight legs and lights up at night?

Bloke who found Canada

Talking clock

On the way back from the walk we came across a plaque to commemorate Giovanni Cabotto AKA John Cabot. He discovered Canada. Not that difficult really as it's bloody massive! Every half hour or so a laser projected image shines on the clock tower and there is some sort of Santa nursery rhyme thing going on.We heard that during the storm a big 90 meter long tall ship had broken its mooring and gone aground. They salvaged it and it's now tied up near to us, but looks a bit of a mess with one mast broken off.

Bashed up

More debris

Angela during a walkabout

Nice view

Still a bit stormy

This is the big crack in the rock we found the other day

Sisters

Out for pizza

Tuesday 26th November... 

LINDA - So as Dean said in last week's blog, Angela and I went off to Rome for a couple of days to see the sights. First on the list after we checked into our hotel was the Trevi Fountain. It was only 5 minutes walk away.

Posing like the statues

It was still quite early so we decided to head over to the Colosseum next, and arrived as the light was fading. It's quite magnificent, but felt rather smaller than i imagined. We were too late to go inside but could get a bit of a view through some of the arches. By the time we had circled it and took a multitude of photos it was dark!

Then we found a lovely restaurant for dinner, on the edge of the Piazza de Venezia. I thought it was only right to have a Caesar Salad. The restaurant was so good we went there the following night too. 

Inside the restaurant - with tablecloths (of course)

Back at the hotel for a B&C before bedtime

Next day it was off to Vatican City (smallest country in the World), though we didn't have to show our passports. I made a mistake when i made Angela get off the bus too early, and then led her the wrong way for about half a mile. Must have been last night's B&C! Eventually we arrived at The Vatican, and after being hassled by ticket touts we found our way to the Sistene Chapel and Vatican Museums. 

Appoaching the Basilica at The Vatican

One of the many painted ceilings at the Vatican Museum

Wow, this was amazing

 More art up above us

There is a ban on photography in the Sistene Chapel, hence no photos. So here's one from the internet. 

We were astounded when a priest came in and said a prayer 

It was quite surreal

So after the excitement we went back to the Basilica and took photos outside the Pope's Balcony.

Next stop (after a long walk beside the River Tiber) was the Circus Maximus. This ancient Roman chariot-racing stadium, is now a public park.

Then just enough time and enough leg energy left to return to Trevi Fountain for a night-time view. Who should we find there? The one and only Pinocchio.

By Friday afternoon i was back on board Thesee in Gaeta. It took me a couple of days to recover from all the walking and i slept like a log. Saturday night 6 of us got together onboard 'Windarra' for dinner. Robyn & Bob hosted us and made delicious Steak & Salad, Ant & Cid did the starters, and Dean & I the dessert. Trifle, one of our faves. There was a thunder storm as we left and we got soaked (and we're only two boats away!). Today (Tuesday) it has finally stopped raining and we had clear blue skies all day. It was such a pleasant change, so we took a walk to the beach and sat watching the fishermen. The American warship is back and has raised the flag bunting along with its 'fairy lights'. It's looking very festive.  

 

We saw this cat on today's walk. It's Tibby's double

On the beach, a number of people out and about

Fishing for 'nothing'

The festive warship

DEAN - OK Lets see, What's happened this week? There was another storm and a lot more debris was washed up in the marina and also on the prom.

Someones pride and joy once

Other rubbish

I decided to fit an isolation switch to the solar panels mounted on deck, quite an easy job in the end. But the electrics locker is now getting quite crowded.

New Solar isolation switch (Spray solar)

I had some bad news on Monday, to be expected really as the Spanish are not honest and rip you off at every opportunity. Anyway the solar panel company that sold me the solar in July have declined to replace the panels under warranty stating that I modified the panels....wankers! If there are any other Spanish people reading this sorry but you all come under the same opinion when you rip me off. I guess it's something to do with the armada. PayPal are just as bad!... tossers!

But the good news is that after waiting nearly a month for my new cordless grinder it has finally turned up from Germany, and is all present and correct. Who would have guessed that?

Might try this out on the Spanish!

I finally finished rubbing down and treating the teak toe rails and they look great again. Just the cockpit floor and seats to do now.

Nice teak toe rails

This is the last blog post entitled 'Gaeta-November'

The next post will be entitled 'Gaeta-December'