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Published: August 18th 2018
After our enjoyable time checking out Erice and the salt pans of Trapani we were off to the island group of Egadi. If you have never heard of them, you aren’t alone as we hadn’t before we started researching this area to sail. It is made up the 3 major islands of Favignana, Marettimo and Levanzo. We planned on staying out in the islands two nights so we could have gone to two different islands but we decided to be lazy and just sit and relax on a mooring at Favignana, the largest of the islands. All of the islands are surrounded by a marine park which was established in 1991. With this come restrictions on the use of various areas surrounding the islands which is good for all. Fortunately our pilot book for Italy includes a breakdown of where you can motor, swim, anchor or pick up a mooring. With pointers we learned from others we decided to take a mooring ball on the south side of the island as we were informed we could get the dinghy ashore to walk across the island into the village on the north side.
The islands are only a short distance from
Trapani so we left the marina by 8AM and were hooked to the mooring ball by 10:30AM. A marina has the advantage of being easy to get to town and having electricity for the air conditioner, but there still is nothing like being either on an anchor or a mooring ball enjoying the peace and quiet it gives. Well, that is sometimes the case unless you have noisy neighbors with taste in music that may not match your own. The first night was quite peaceful and we were treated to a lovely sunset, but the second night a few more boats came into the mooring field that were charter boats filled with people on a short term vacation and wanted to party more. A couple even had people playing guitars on the back which wasn’t bad, only problem was the one closest to us wanted to sing along and we wished they would only play the guitar! Oh well, you still are much farther than your neighbor when you are in a marina.
Anchoring out or being in a mooring field also sometimes gives you a show to watch. This mooring field did not disappoint in that regard as
This Cat Was Smart - Some Shade
and some pets from people that walk by!there are a number of charter boats here with people that are new to hooking up to a mooring ball. Most did quite well, but there was one boat in particular that took 6 times to succeed. There were a couple of times we thought they had it, but it was quickly realized that they either let the line go after hooking the ball OR they forgot to hook the other end of the line to the boat! We didn’t have our dinghy in the water to go over and help and sometimes in these situations when a person is frustrated and have quite a few people on board watching or “helping” in the process, they may not have welcomed the help at the time. We were just glad that they were successful in the end.
The first day we just enjoyed having a “down day” with no exploring, just reading, taking a nap and enjoying a day with nothing planned. The next day we took the dinghy to shore where we had to haul the dinghy up out of the water (she seems to be getting heavier every year!) and then take a lovely but very hot walk
across the island to the village of Favignana. It is quite touristy as ferries are constantly dropping off people from Sicily. Some come for the day, but others obviously are here for a longer period of time pulling their luggage behind them when they disembark. Wandering around the village there are plenty of shops for buying souvenirs, places to sign up for trips to go diving or snorkeling and lots of electric bikes or scooters to rent. If it wasn’t such a hot day we may have tried either of those, but we decided that doing a little wandering, having lunch and walking back to the boat to have a swim was a better plan.
This area we learned had been filled with blue fin tuna and as early as the 17
th C. the Spanish that ruled the islands at the time started to systematical fish the tuna. In 1637 due to the financial troubles Spain was having due to the high cost of war, they sold the islands to the Marquis of Genoa. He established the town of Favignana but in 1874 his family sold the islands once again and this time to a very wealthy person by
the name of Ignazio Florio. He brought the inhabitants of the island prosperity as he enlarged the tuna plant that had been built previously and he introduced the method of preserving tuna by boiling it and then canning it. Florio even introduced at the World Fair of 1891-92 an innovative can with a key opening. His tuna factory allowed for the marketing of tuna bringing needed money to the island, but unfortunately the style of fishing that they did decimated the tuna population. They used a net that was permanently in place and captured all fish that came into the area of the net. It was another example of greed ruining the fishing industry for future generations. Now the tuna plant has been opened as a museum telling the history of the fishing industry here. All the information in the museum is in Italian therefore decided not to go through it, but we did walk over to the entrance and saw a few photos from the time when it was prosperous here. They did have a display of turtles as well with people from the park and it appeared from what we saw that they were there for educational purposes,
but the person answering questions did not speak any English so we were not able to pick up any information about the extent of the turtle population here.
After walking around the town we stopped for lunch and then headed back on our very hot walk across the island back to where Tsamaya was located. With the heat of the day we were both looking forward to a nice swim off the back of the boat. Bob was ready earlier than I so he jumped in as he wanted to check out our speed indicator as on this last passage it wasn’t indicating any speed at all. Fortunately he was able to get it to spin (he said it felt like a barnacle may have stopped the movement of it) and he headed back to the boat when he got stung by a small jellyfish. Out came the vinegar to soak the area to reduce the pain. It got quite swollen and red and as he said, it really hurt! We had seen these small jellyfish around and Bob thought he was quite diligent in looking for them, but 3 were right around the stern of the boat when
he was coming back to and got him there. That ended our desire to swim off the boat. Out came the reading books and the rest of the time we just relaxed on the boat. As we sat out back we saw numerous jellyfish (a quite small brown variety) so when we saw the park personnel later that night we asked about the abundance of them and if it was normal for this area. We were told that the current is bringing them in and they are seeing quite a large number of them right now. Definitely unfortunate for us, but it still was nice to be able to relax and not feel we had to go anywhere.
Our 90 days on our visa is up on August 7
th and it was now August 1
st. The question is “do we stay another day or two or do we move on?” We still have some miles to go before we are out of Italy and as always our travels are determined by the weather. We were enjoying where we were, but thought if we would stay we would probably go to another island. With Bob’s arm still swollen from the
jellyfish sting we weren’t anxious to get back in the water so we made a conservative decision and figured we would move on so headed back to Sicily.
During our planning process we had decided that Mazara Del Vallo would be our next stop. It wasn’t a place we were going to visit per se, only anchor out in the bay for the evening as it looked like a nice wide open area for us to be able to leave early the next morning to head to the island of Pantelleria. We left Favignana Island at 7:45 AM with some good wind for sailing and arrived at our destination about 12:20PM. A short run, but figured it would be good to have the afternoon to rest as our next day was going to be a longer one. There is a marina at Mazara Del Vallo but that adds the complication of leaving the harbor with an early morning departure. The bottom in the bay was sand and allowed for good holding with the anchor so it made for a restful stop.
At 6:05AM the next morning the anchor was up and we were now headed to our last
The "Wilder" Side of the Island
reminded me some of Maine with the crashing waves stop in Italy. It was quite “hazy” and visibility as a result was reduced, so we used all 4 of our eyes to be on lookout until we could see a little farther ahead of the boat. By 8:40AM we now had about 3 miles of visibility which definitely made it very pleasant. We were very pleased as well to have some nice winds for sailing – always good to get in a good sail or two before the end of the sailing season. We had made reservations in the marina at the island of Pantelleria and they told us that when we get close to call them on the VHF. We did that and as we have found in numerous other places no one answers. A dinghy with two guys came out to the entrance of the harbor and said they would direct us to where we were to go. This is where it got confusing. There are actually two harbors here – the new port and the old port. We had made contact with the new harbor which in our book is labeled as being on the right side heading in. They wanted to take us to the
left. We tried to explain and they did too but with the language barrier we weren’t doing too well. We were still moving ahead albeit slowly as we are at the entrance to the harbor with other boats coming in while we were still working out where to go. We tried to call on the phone and they did too, but finally they decided to take us to the harbor on the right. They helped us get settled into the quay and then told us how much it was a night. This was more than we were quoted in the email! We told them we’d show them our message and suddenly the price matched our quote. We now were not sure if we were in fact in the place that we booked. We found this place charged 50 euros per night and there was no wi-fi and no showers or toilets – just a quay that was quite a hike into town. Oh well, we were here and it would work.
In looking at the weather it looked like we really needed to stay there for 2 nights before leaving for Tunisia. The 2
nd morning when we got up
the “two guys” told us we had to move to another spot as they had another boat coming in that needed the space we were in. We moved but it was definitely not as “good” a place as the first one but we could see that at least it would be easy to get out of in the early morning. Ironically later a larger boat did come in to the space next to where we were, but “our” first spot still was free – oh well…
We walked around town and could see the other location for sailboats in the other harbor – it definitely looked better from a distance, but we decided we didn’t even want to walk over to see it up close – better not know!
Our trip from Pantelleria to Tunisia will be approximately 16.5 – 17 hours so we just took it easy by wandering around the town some. We did happen onto a vendor selling fresh almonds. He gave us a sample and we were amazed at how good they tasted compared to any others we have ever had. Needless to say he had a sale! He also told us there that
the market day was on the 2
nd day we were there so that morning we headed in to town to see what they had to offer. It was a somewhat small market, but still had a good selection of fruits and vegetables and plenty of clothes and household items to buy. We aren’t sure what we will find in Tunisia and the watermelons are in season here so grabbed a small one to enjoy.
We have found couscous on the menus more often as we move south. This was no exception but with this being our last meal in Italy for a while we both decided to have a pasta dish for lunch. We aren’t sure if we will get pasta in Tunisia and didn’t want to take the chance!
Pantelleria is quite a large island and the people that we had met in Trapani told us that when they were here they rented a car to explore, but the heat has been quite high and it has definitely been draining us of much energy to do any exploring.
After all that we did while in Palermo the last few stops have been quite restful in comparison
– not a bad way to wind down the season. We will be a few days early heading to Tunisia, but in this way we won’t have to worry about staying legal. As Pantelleria was our last stop in Italy the regulations state that we are to report to the Coast Guardia with the paperwork that we had to get the first time we entered Italy way back last fall. The paperwork is called a Constituto and the ‘story’ is that we are to have it stamped at each port we enter and leave. We tried to do that at a few ports and were successful at only 3! Most places looked at us like we were from mars and didn’t know why we even came. We also had been informed that the most important thing is to turn the Constituto in at our last port in Italy. Pantelleria has a Coast Guardia office so we stopped by with our paperwork and our passports. We got that same strange look, a few of the officers conversed and then finally we heard someone indicate “get a stamp” and that is what happened – a rubber stamp was produced, the Constituto was
stamped and signed by them and then surprisingly they gave it back to us to take with us! Guess it is now our souvenir of Italy. At least we went through the process and now have it stamped in the last port!
We kept telling ourselves we needed to get some sleep as our plan was to leave at 2AM to make it during daylight to Monastir, but neither of us could get to sleep. We both sat up reading until about 10:30PM giving us a few hours of sleep – guess we will catch up on some sleep during our passage. Plans as we have said before always have to be flexible! Now on to our over-wintering port of Monastir, Tunisia.
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