Logbook Entries

Date: 11/23/08 (Sunday)
Location: Coastline northwest of Gaeta, Italy

We spent the day yesterday sightseeing along the coast northwest of Gaeta in our rental car.  A great day for it with huge waves crashing into the shore.  Luckily things were fairly calm in the marina, and the weather has settled down again today, leaving behind the chilliest weather since arriving in Italy two months ago.  It’s still in the 50’s, so you can’t feel too sorry for us!  Preparations are underway for a full Thanksgiving day feast on-board, pumpkin pie and all.  We even have cranberries this year, thanks to Jayne of Aorangi, our invited guest and the only other American in the marina.

Date: 11/21/08 (Friday)
Location: Latina, Nettuno, Castellonorato, and Formia, Italy

This is our second of five days with a rental car.  We rented the car so that we could take our sails to a loft in Latina for inspection and repairs and to look for our favorite varnish at a paint shop in Nettuno. Armed with maps and info from the internet, we tried to do both errands yesterday but were only successful with the latter task. We should have known that something was up when we couldn’t reach the sail loft by phone. Oh well, we’ve made arrangements with another loft in Rome, and they’ll pick up our sails next week.

With four days and 350 km left on our rental car, this morning David demanded, “Take me to the mountains!” It’s funny how we like to go up into the mountains whenever we have the chance to get away from the boat for a day or two. After Italian language class, we hopped in our little Fiat and climbed up the steep road into the foothills of the Aurunci Mountains. We visited the hilltop villages of Castellonorato and Spigno Saturnia, and unexpectedly came across an olive press cooperative busy at work making olive oil from the olives gathered by local farmers.

We stopped at the huge Panorama supermarket in Formia on the way back to the boat and stocked up on cheap, but good, Italian wines for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. The 2008 Novellos have just reached the store shelves, so we bought a few different varieties to sample this year’s harvest. So far, we really like the Sangiovese (the grape used for making the famous Chianti wine)…we’ll keep you posted on our research results!