July 7th, 2012

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July 7 Saturday evening in Santa Maria del Leuca

Saturday, July 7th, 2012

This part of Italy is the third world. I’ll have to wait till Monday for the banks to open to get cash from an ATM machine….  Wireless internet  is almost non existent in the boot of Italy. Yesterday in Brindisi, which is a repectable size city I just gave up.  I sailed all Wednesday night, from Trani, and passed Brindisi in the early Thursday morning. The wind kept increasing and was right on the snoot. I was not making any headway  trying to get around the heel of the boot of Puglia. In the end there was no harbor to go back to except Brindisi. So all that precious upwind proghress I had made wsent to waste and I spent another three hours sailing back down wind to Brindisi. I was totally wasted because I had not been able to get much sleep during the day. I dragged my self up the steep stairs trying to find an internet connection. No such luck. After a decent sleep I did laundry and some maintenance chores and tried once again to get wired at a nearby restaurant. Did not work. Then I left the Brindisi marina and anchored for the night within the break water and left at 5.30 a.m. this morning. By the way, on Thursday I blew out my favoorite sail the light dacron 150%. It was all of 32 years so I guess I got my money’s worth out of it. But now my next biggest sail is a 140% piece of crap I bought second hand in Annapolis in 2009. I had Schokker in Volendam try to fix it but that was a wasted effort. Today there was very little wind and I motor sailed the whole way. I will go to mass here in the cathedral tomorrow.

Looks like an nice town. Moorage is expensive, 31 Euroes. They at first wanted 39.  I have paid 22 and 22.78 i the previous ports.