S/V Spindrift comes out of the water for the winter, and the work starts
Licata. On a calm morning the harbor is a mirror. The lighthouse has watched boats come and go for a long time, and it wasn’t impressed by ours.
We followed the fishing fleet into Licata. The gulls followed them too. They know who has the fish.
On Wednesday morning a travel lift at Cantiere Navale Martello in Licata, about halfway along the south coast of Sicily, picked up 27 tonnes of aluminum and carried her across the yard like a mother cat with a kitten. S/V Spindrift is on the hard for the winter.
The Surf City Yacht Club burgee and our house flag came down this week, for the first time since Cap d’Agde. Months of Mediterranean wind, and they’re still in one piece. Unlike a certain plastic ring.
Sarah on the bow with the lines ready. The last time Spindrift touches water this year.
In the slings at Cantiere Navale Martello. Twenty-seven tonnes, and a 260-tonne lift doesn’t even notice.
There’s a moment in every haul-out when the slings take the weight, the keel comes clear of the water, and you see the bottom of your boat for the first time in months. It’s a lot like being handed your own X-ray. Everything you’d rather not know is right there. Ours was mostly good news. Mostly.
The Martello crew. They’ve hauled far bigger boats than ours and were too polite to say so.
The Plastic Ring
On the outside of the hull, where the propeller shaft comes out, there’s a black housing that holds the shaft bearing. Screwed onto the end of it was a red plastic ring. I know this because it’s now in two pieces.
The plastic ring, in two pieces. The part nobody was watching.
In all the time we’ve had this boat, I never once thought about that ring. The good news is that the seal that actually keeps the ocean out, the one inside the boat, is working fine. Boréal will tell us what the ring is for, we’ll get a new one, and it goes on before she goes back in the water in May. One more line on the spring list.
That’s boat ownership. The part that breaks is never the part you were watching.
Our Temporary Address
The yard has rules. No sleeping aboard. Nothing goes out of the boat onto the yard, not a drop. So for these last few days we commute to our own boat from ashore, which feels like visiting a relative in the hospital. She looks fine. She’s just not going anywhere.
Evicted from our own boat, we moved up the hill to Villa Giuliana Relais, a small villa looking down over Licata and the sea. After six months aboard, this was a shock to the system. The lights stay on as long as you like. You can run the coffee maker, keep the internet on and plug in both laptops, all at the same time. On the boat, the Starlink and the coffee pot both run on 110 volts through the inverter, so coffee with the internet on means the inverter working hard and me staring at the battery monitor like it owes me money. Nobody sleeps with one ear on the anchor alarm, because the building is not going to drag. Nobody asked me to pump anything.
Our temporary address. Note the complete absence of a bilge.
Breakfast is included. On white tablecloths. I can’t remember the last time I ate off a white tablecloth. On the boat, a white tablecloth would last about four minutes.
And the best part of the day: after a long one at the yard, putting things away and crossing things off, we walk into the lobby and Debora, who also looks after us at breakfast, has a Negroni waiting for me and a glass of white wine for Sarah.
I know none of this sounds like luxury to most people. But living on a boat is a lot closer to camping than anyone tells you, and after six months of camping, a white tablecloth and a drink you didn’t have to make yourself feel like the Ritz.
They even printed my to-do lists, two copies, no questions asked, which tells you everything about the kind of guest I am on vacation.
Every morning we drive down the hill from a villa with a view to a boat on stands in a boatyard, and every evening we drive back up to a Negroni. It’s the most glamorous commute I’ve ever had, and the least glamorous job at the end of it.
The Neighbors
It’s a small world out here. On the stands right next to us is S/V Sparrowhawk, a Discovery 55 with Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, on her transom. That sent us straight to MarineTraffic, which is where we found out she’s a Raritan Yacht Club boat. Sarah reached out to Michael and Terri Lusty, who sailed with us in Corsica this fall and are Raritan members too, and voilà, we were connected. We sailed about 3,000 nautical miles to the south coast of Sicily and parked next to the neighbors.
On stands for the winter: Spindrift on the right, and the neighbors from Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, on the left.
The Welcome Committee
The other neighbors are a pack of wild dogs in the harbor. Yes, a pack. Not a dog, not a couple of dogs. A pack, with an org chart.
The welcome committee. Management, off duty.
The fishermen look after them, which means the dogs have been fed by professionals and have opinions about everyone else. These are not small dogs, and they are not confused about who owns the place. It isn’t us. It isn’t the fishermen either. The fishermen just work there.
They run the harbor on a schedule I haven’t cracked. In the morning they lie in the sun like they’ve been up all night, which they probably have. By late afternoon they’re on patrol. They don’t bark at you. They just watch you walk by, the way a bouncer watches you walk past a club you weren’t going to get into anyway.
I’ve worked out the rules. Don’t run. Don’t make eye contact with the big one. Don’t carry fish. Walk like you belong there, even though everyone, including the dogs, knows you don’t.
In the spring, when we come back, I fully expect them to check our papers.
The List
The haul-out isn’t the end of the work. It’s the start of a different list.
The watermaker gets pickled for the winter, which means mixing storage chemical in a blue jerry can and pouring it into the sea strainer while the booster pump runs. The forward holding tank won’t pump all the way empty, so there’s an air leak somewhere I’ll be chasing in the spring. The headliner in the aft cabin has decided it would rather be on the bunk. Laundry. Cushions. The sails stay on, wrapped and lashed tight, because a furled sail that comes loose in a winter gale, on a boat sitting on stands, is a bad phone call to get in New Jersey. All the deck gear gets put away. And then there’s lining up the technicians, each one to come do their thing while we’re gone, and each one with a calendar that has never once matched ours.
Where the watermaker lives. Pickling day was not its favorite day.
Every line on the boat, washed, dried, coiled and counted.
The contents of one bosun’s bag. Somehow it all goes back in. Most lines go below deck so we had to sew in mouse lines for almost everything.
The yard has no water, so the water came to us: a 55-gallon drum, wheeled under the stern to flush out the Yanmar and the Fischer Panda.
Then there’s the life raft. It goes off to Naples this week to be serviced. It isn’t due until next September, but next September we’ll be on our way out of the Med with an ocean ahead of us. I don’t want to be the guy explaining to everyone, in the middle of abandoning ship, that I forgot to service the raft. So this winter I’m checking the expiration date and the service interval on everything aboard. The batteries in the EPIRB and the personal locator beacons. The CO2 cylinders in the lifejackets, which all get swapped for fresh ones. The flares. The fire extinguishers. A new bottle of propane, because finding the right fitting in a new country is its own small adventure. If it has a date on it, I’m reading it.
None of it is glamorous. All of it has to be done before we leave.
Sarah, taking a well-earned break in the cockpit. The lists are on the table. The lists are always on the table.
Next
On October 31 we lock her up and spend a week rambling across Sicily by car. On November 8 we fly home on United’s nonstop from Palermo to Newark, the only scheduled flight from Sicily to America. Three times a week. I assume the drinks cart serves gabagool (for the non-Italians: that’s capicola, cured pork sliced paper thin, the way North Jersey pronounces it, made famous by The Sopranos), the in-flight movie is all six seasons, and everybody on board says they’re “in waste management.” When we land at EWR I fully expect a guy in a tracksuit to meet us at baggage claim and say, “Tony, how was the trip?” And for once he’d be talking to the right Tony.
In May we come back and put her in the water.
Next up on the blog: the whole year, by the numbers.
Not to be forgotten
Licata isn’t just a boatyard town. On July 10, 1943, the Allied invasion of Italy began on the beaches here. Up the hill there’s a memorial to the town’s civilians who died in the war, with their names carved along the base.
Licata’s memorial to its civilians lost in World War II. The liberation of Italy began on these beaches, July 10, 1943.
I stood in front of it longer than I expected to. My father served in World War II. He lied about his age to enlist. I thought about him, and about the young men who came ashore here, some of them surely just as young and just as determined to be there. And I thought about the families in this town who paid for that day with their own lives.
Every day we walk past a harbor full of fishing boats and wild dogs, and it’s easy to forget what happened on these beaches. The memorial doesn’t let you forget. I’m glad it doesn’t.
S/V Spindrift
Licata, Sicily · 37°06’N 13°56’E
Next: 2026, by the numbers
Tony & Sarah
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