Sunday Letter

Sunday morning and another week has clicked by so fast here. The
weather has turned a little warmer and we find time to have a snooze in the
cockpit in the sunshine after lunch. There is an air of excitement in
the marina now as people anticipate the spring and look forward to
being able to cruise again. Every day people are arriving to move
back on to their boats and the dark days are now in the past when
there were only about 7 boats with people living on board.

The Tuesday market becomes more interesting with a great variety to choose from...



We put the dinghy in the water (it has spent the winter upside down under a canvas on the bow) and Pippy washes all the blue topsides. It is very rewarding washing off all the salt and grime which accumulates in the strong winds we have here. A nylon hearth brush makes itself useful to brush off all the growth along the waterline. Pippy has to remind herself she is not a teenager as she climbs backwards and forwards on to the boat up over the side from the dinghy! Her legs are objecting big time by the time she has applied wax along the sunny side later in the afternoon.

At 6pm Pippy has her first 'official' haircut (by Georgio in Marina di Ragusa) since leaving New Zealand. Its quite well cut but slightly Nana so it will get a bit more of a trim in front of the boat mirror later.



Richard is hard at work inside fitting brackets for the water-maker
pump and pressure vessel assembly. Now that he has them the right
size he will be sealing them in with fibreglass and then installing
the components. Today he is measuring up for the hoses (or supposed
to be but is currently reclining in the sunshine in the cockpit with
an espresso coffee. It has been a fiddly time consuming job so far
making templates out of marine plywood which fit the exact inside the shape of the hull. Fortunately he has been doing all the jigsaw cutting in a shed here on the marina. Thank goodness we are not paying someone to do this part of the installation!

This Sunday morning we wake up a little later than usual at 8 am and
are off for a walk before breakfast, with 10 Euro in a back pocket 'just in case'. Our arm and leg muscles are telling us we have done some physical work but not enough as its an exhilarating feeling walking into the stiff wind up the hill behind the marina. A patch of wild fennel reaches skywards with clumps of yellow flowers popping out of pods. It is good to use the tender tips to infuse the pasta water with before adding the pasta.




There are clumps of crisp blue borage everywhere, not to mention yellow oxalis and tiny yellow crysanthemum-like flowers, then many other wildflowers which we don't recognise.



We walk along the top road enjoying the view out over the Sicilian Channel towards Malta, turn downwards through the town stopping at Dolci Piaceri, via Pozzallo, to buy sweet ricotta stuffed cannoli and pasticceria which we stand and gorge ourselves on there and then.





The sticky ricotta and sugar squirts out the ends and sticks to our fingers
as we bite into the crisp cannoli pastry. Mmmm... Its 2 Euro for
4 pieces. Naughty naughty. A little further down the hill we stop at
Panificio S. Guiseppe (bakery) and buy today's bread for .78c.



Not finished yet, we encounter an old man standing in the shade selling
fresh tiny muscles from a wheelbarrow. (Dove e?) 'Where are they
from?' in limited Italian we ask. Scogletti!! he says. We know its
a fishing town 10k along the coast and thankfully not the harbour
nearby. We know they must be good and fish out 2 Euro to offer. He laughs and puts a bit more than a handful into a bag for us.



Soon we are back in the marina and Pippy plans how the little
treasures of muscles will be cooked. She jumps on the bicycle back up
the hill to pick some wild fennel, then cycles along to Dimeglio Supermarket to purchase some Estratto di Pommodoro(highly concentrated tomato paste, olive oil and salt) and Misto Funghi a Cons (a mixture of tiny mushroom varieties in olive oil and
vinegar. Later we will see how this lot turns out!!

Not quick enough with the camera.... its all gone already! It was good!!