Raffaellesco - Bill and Suzette's Sailing Adventure

 11/15/23 Marina Scarlino, Italy Sunshine, warm with a good breeze from the NW for drying everything up. Laundry day! Pickled the water maker, a fairly automatic process now that we have done it once. Started the process of deciding what stays and what goes home. Canvas bimini and dodger put away. Our neighbor Fillipo stopped by and we talked some more. It turns out that he descended from Florence Royalty. The building that his wife and son manage is actually the family palace in which you can book accommodations in a royal apartment. He encouraged that we stay there when we return. The family had two palaces, but sold one some time ago to care for the current palace. I am not sure if they live there or not, but we will look forward to learning more when we return in the spring. 11/16/23 Marina Scarlino, Italy Up with the sun to prepare for the riggers to arrive at 0900. I swabbed the decks to expedite drying and cleared away anything that would hinder their efforts. They a...

 11/4/23 Marna Scarlino, Italy Awaken at about 100 to thunder and lightning right on top of us, the sky opened up and it rained hard. If that was not enough it let loose a volley of hail the size of marbles for about 30 minutes. When you live in a plastic tube hail sounds pretty bad. I expected to find a pock marked decks in the morning. I got up to peak out at the hail storm, I could have probably made a small snow man with the accumulation in the cockpit, but I would be pelted to death in the process. As the thunder moved off into the distance I drifted back to sleep. Sadly, the admiral was up for a while full of adrenaline. Hail in the cockpit In the morning the sun was shining bright and there was no damage to the boat that we could see. In fact, this rain really cleaned the boat and the hail was long melted away. We could see the boat next to us was holding water on his decks, the scuppers were obviously plugged up from the sea grass. We walked to the office to let them kn...