Envoy is back at Favignana Island in the Egadi Group.
The Egadis are a marine park with all boats banned from some areas and motor boats from others.
Buoys are laid in many sheltered bays and these are in excellent condition costing a reasonable Euro 25 (NZ$39) per night or less for longer periods, during which you can use any of the moorings around the Egadis. Unlike Croatia anchoring is allowed near moorings at no cost. Friendly park staff patrol the islands regularly to collect fees as do Carabinieri to ensure rules are being followed.
The Egadis have no fresh water so this is regularly delivered by tanker.
One morning we awoke to find this tanker had moored just in front of us, and we never heard a thing when it arrived
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A Scirocco (strong southerly wind) lasting three days, gave us plenty of time to explore the area around our sheltered anchorage. Like outer Gulf islands home in Auckland the Egadis have winds around 15 to 25 knots much of the time, and here we get a few days of NW-N, then a few of SE to S, so move our position accordingly. Rarely has the wind dropped below 10 knots.
We visited one of the other islands, Isola Lovanzo, and picked up a park mooring in a bay called Cala Freddo. This island’s only village is in the next bay around, Carla Dogna.
Carla Dogna’s quaint harbour
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Envoy on mooring in Cala Freddo
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We reported earlier that Sicilian wine is great and well-priced – this extra large 1.5 litre bottle of excellent Nero D’Avola red cost only 5 Euros (NZ$7.80)
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Back on the main island – Favignana there’s a great anchorage on the southern side where we spent several nights.
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There are a few yachts around, mostly Italian and we’ve not seen many cruisers at all except for a couple of French and Germans. During daytime many locals cruise the area in their small powerboats but they’re mostly gone by about 1700 and then all is quiet.
TECHNICAL “Touch wood” for good luck we’ve not had any major issues, only routine things like changing the oil and filters on the Lugger and generator.
Our Lugger engine’s conventional dry exhaust never emits any smoke, and although the exhaust blows directly onto our white-painted mast I only need to clean soot stains off this area about once monthly. We even hang washing out to dry by the exhaust while under way with no risk of stains. One recent morning I started the engine, went on the foredeck to lift the anchor and saw clouds of white smoke coming from the exhaust. My heart missed a beat – what has happened? I checked our diesel handbook and it cites stuck thermostats, dirty air cleaners, or blocked crankcase vent tubes as possible causes. We were clearing a lee shore in a strong wind so proceeded on and the smoke gradually cleared. Later it occurred to me that we’d had a heavy shower of rain during the night and the exhaust cover wasn’t closed, so some rain must have gone down the exhaust and was now showing up as steam. Since then all fine – huge sigh of relief!
Every day I check the engine room bilges and under each engine for fluid leaks, and our bilges are dry so any drop of oil or water shows up. One day I found the paper towel under the Lugger stained with brown dried liquid. It wasn’t oily or smelly and I had no idea what it was – but out of the ordinary occurrences on a boat do prey on my mind. A couple of days later we decided to clean the freezer. Lo and behold we found a large plastic bottle of coke had exploded, and coke had gone through the freezer’s drain hole into the engine bilge – mystery solved. Up to then we would regularly freeze plastic coke bottles with no problems – but no more!
Although our large RHIB’s 25 hp 4-stroke Yamaha was serviced in Lefkas we only test ran it at idle – big mistake eh Frank? Since then we’ve found it runs OK up to 2,300 rpm and above 2,700 rpm but erratically in between. The Trapani shipyard was also the Yamaha dealer so after much persuasion we got them to take a look and test run. They said the carburetor needed a clean so pulled the RHIB out of the water to do that in their workshop. It was such a quick job they said there was no charge, but when we tested it there was no real change, and we ran out of time for them to look again. So far our experience dealing with Italian technicians has not been good (neither was it on our previous visit). They always say “we’re coming in half an hour”, and you wait all day but they just don’t show up!
Our washing machine has developed a slight water leak. I’m able to see the rear of the machine through an inspection hatch and it’s not leaking from loose supply hoses, but possibly from a discharge hose which can only be accessed by pulling the machine out, which is quite a major job, so we’ll leave this until Corfu where we know there are good technical resources. Meanwhile we place a towel around the leak to soak up the water.
The engine room has two 12 volt blowers to extract hot air. One of these is not working and has a wiring problem that I can’t resolve, but we have an electrician friend, Doug Gooch, arriving next month so hopefully he can help me on this.
ENVOY LOG As at 2/7/14, we’d spent 85 days aboard and cruised 757 miles for 136 engine hours.
The Egadis are a marine park with all boats banned from some areas and motor boats from others.
Buoys are laid in many sheltered bays and these are in excellent condition costing a reasonable Euro 25 (NZ$39) per night or less for longer periods, during which you can use any of the moorings around the Egadis. Unlike Croatia anchoring is allowed near moorings at no cost. Friendly park staff patrol the islands regularly to collect fees as do Carabinieri to ensure rules are being followed.
The Egadis have no fresh water so this is regularly delivered by tanker.
One morning we awoke to find this tanker had moored just in front of us, and we never heard a thing when it arrived
A Scirocco (strong southerly wind) lasting three days, gave us plenty of time to explore the area around our sheltered anchorage. Like outer Gulf islands home in Auckland the Egadis have winds around 15 to 25 knots much of the time, and here we get a few days of NW-N, then a few of SE to S, so move our position accordingly. Rarely has the wind dropped below 10 knots.
We visited one of the other islands, Isola Lovanzo, and picked up a park mooring in a bay called Cala Freddo. This island’s only village is in the next bay around, Carla Dogna.
Carla Dogna’s quaint harbour
Back on the main island – Favignana there’s a great anchorage on the southern side where we spent several nights.
There are a few yachts around, mostly Italian and we’ve not seen many cruisers at all except for a couple of French and Germans. During daytime many locals cruise the area in their small powerboats but they’re mostly gone by about 1700 and then all is quiet.
TECHNICAL “Touch wood” for good luck we’ve not had any major issues, only routine things like changing the oil and filters on the Lugger and generator.
Our Lugger engine’s conventional dry exhaust never emits any smoke, and although the exhaust blows directly onto our white-painted mast I only need to clean soot stains off this area about once monthly. We even hang washing out to dry by the exhaust while under way with no risk of stains. One recent morning I started the engine, went on the foredeck to lift the anchor and saw clouds of white smoke coming from the exhaust. My heart missed a beat – what has happened? I checked our diesel handbook and it cites stuck thermostats, dirty air cleaners, or blocked crankcase vent tubes as possible causes. We were clearing a lee shore in a strong wind so proceeded on and the smoke gradually cleared. Later it occurred to me that we’d had a heavy shower of rain during the night and the exhaust cover wasn’t closed, so some rain must have gone down the exhaust and was now showing up as steam. Since then all fine – huge sigh of relief!
Every day I check the engine room bilges and under each engine for fluid leaks, and our bilges are dry so any drop of oil or water shows up. One day I found the paper towel under the Lugger stained with brown dried liquid. It wasn’t oily or smelly and I had no idea what it was – but out of the ordinary occurrences on a boat do prey on my mind. A couple of days later we decided to clean the freezer. Lo and behold we found a large plastic bottle of coke had exploded, and coke had gone through the freezer’s drain hole into the engine bilge – mystery solved. Up to then we would regularly freeze plastic coke bottles with no problems – but no more!
Although our large RHIB’s 25 hp 4-stroke Yamaha was serviced in Lefkas we only test ran it at idle – big mistake eh Frank? Since then we’ve found it runs OK up to 2,300 rpm and above 2,700 rpm but erratically in between. The Trapani shipyard was also the Yamaha dealer so after much persuasion we got them to take a look and test run. They said the carburetor needed a clean so pulled the RHIB out of the water to do that in their workshop. It was such a quick job they said there was no charge, but when we tested it there was no real change, and we ran out of time for them to look again. So far our experience dealing with Italian technicians has not been good (neither was it on our previous visit). They always say “we’re coming in half an hour”, and you wait all day but they just don’t show up!
Our washing machine has developed a slight water leak. I’m able to see the rear of the machine through an inspection hatch and it’s not leaking from loose supply hoses, but possibly from a discharge hose which can only be accessed by pulling the machine out, which is quite a major job, so we’ll leave this until Corfu where we know there are good technical resources. Meanwhile we place a towel around the leak to soak up the water.
The engine room has two 12 volt blowers to extract hot air. One of these is not working and has a wiring problem that I can’t resolve, but we have an electrician friend, Doug Gooch, arriving next month so hopefully he can help me on this.
ENVOY LOG As at 2/7/14, we’d spent 85 days aboard and cruised 757 miles for 136 engine hours.
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