‘Au Revoir’ Ragged Company

‘Au Revoir’ Ragged Company

reflection.....? no, no time yet, pack, clean, organise - 27th to the 30th July

Salty, stiff lines ashore, anchor locked in position, mooring line fastened to the bow.  Our boat of three months, Ragged Company, settled in nicely next to a slightly rugged ‘Gin Tonic’, (how appropriate ;0) ) following our  smoother than ever approach.  The gears allowing me to engaged reverse on the first attempt (!) was very much welcomed as was a (good-looking) friendly Italian man who assisted us to our final mooring position and instructed us how to deal with the paper-work, (JG’s Spanish skills becoming particularly useful at this stage).

The sparkling new marina consisted of everything we required for once; water at the tap, electricity, toilets and showers (HOT!!! :0) ) and even a ropey internet connection!  Wonderful.

So back to it – CLEANING TIME!  Allllll out on deck; wet-weather gear, lifejackets, ropes, lines, bikinis, boardies, kayaks, seat covers, snorkelling gear.... binoculars, cameras (waterproof ones), compasses, you name it, if it could have got salt on, it was there on the pontoon ready for a good old wash-down; Including us (photos on non-processed waterproof camera cause fi’s AMAZING digi-waterproof camera died a death. :0( )! Fun times in the sunshine.

Wet-weather / sailing gear pre-cleaning

All those bits and bobs, buckets and lines to do!

DRY!

The following afternoon we took a trip to the completely confused customs guys in town.  And they are meant to be professionals..... but they couldn’t figure out how we where there. 

nerves and fingers crossed - finishing the paperwork off when re-entering the EU!

 Anyway, we passed through with nods, smiles and a few hair-tossing gestures and were left to enjoy the delights of a rather closed Brindisi.... I’ll really never get used to this ‘we’re closed all afternoon malarkey!’.  Pizza and Gelato available though – no complaints there.

 JG in Brindisi

In addition to catching up on our forty (thousand) winks, it was more serious deck scrubbing, sail- wrapping, gutting and cleaning every locker, surface and cupboard and double checking the toilet valve really was closed that took up our time. 

Fi - on deck duty

and JG also!

Ragged Cmpany (the O fell off) was looking glam!

You’d imagine Southern Italy to be as sunny as the rest of the Med but no, we got rain, clouds and a lot of wind (not that we were caring much for the latter anymore – cheekily!).  The most exciting was on our last night in the marina when we decided to use the local yacht-club restaurant – luckily being two we just jumped up, grabbed our dishes and ran for shelter but with limited space in the bar, the others with typical Italian style family tables had 8+ people to salvage delicious plates of food from and find shelter in the tiny bar..... very funny and VERY wet!!! Ooooh but it was great; lashing, fresh, rain!

lashing rain from marina bar

The last few hours around RC were somewhat bizarre. Thankful for her taking care of us but relieved to be leaving her in safe berth we walked our stuff (and that’s a LOT of stuff btw) to the hire car......

memories

JG & Fi by Ragged Company in Brindisi

bubbles onboard! (fi)

Y goodbye? (Fi, JG and RC)

Time to walk - JG and Fi - from RC

Don’t know what I did right that morning but I got a free upgrade and 2^nd driver – SWEEEEET NISSAN Qashqui – think I’m loving the Italians. 

Triple check of the lines, hatches, locks, valves and gas bottle, we walked away from our S/Y Ragged Company with heads held a little too high..... My super duper BIG black hat decided to give me one last test and flew straight into the lovely marina water – URGH!  Subsequently it was one quick shower for me and some diplomacy skills for JG – marina man was not all pleased about us leaving RC alone there.

WET black hat :0(, fi and the swish Nissan!

And so, Au revoir Ragged Company..... :0( / :0)

I guess one can only try to imagine the mixture of feelings that we had driving away in our spacious, fully-packed, flashy car from the marina holding safely our home and companion of the last three months, SY Ragged Company.

Fi

Over