Dragonfly's maiden voyage

On the 19th of June we left Zefi and Theo with their grandparents for 4 days and flew out to Malta to collect our new boat.  It had been 4 months since viewing and buying her, in that time quite a lot of refitting had taken place and I was anxious to inspect the work. Our berth was waiting in Sicily and we only had a 2 day window to cross so I was relived that Sebastian from Malta Yacht Solutions was managing everything.

Upon arrival all was looking ship-shape. We met the installers who had been doing the work and sorted one or two last minute jobs. Daniel the previous owner came by to check everything was OK.  We had hauled out two big carry on bags with all sorts of useful bits & pieces; bed linen, rugs, cushions, coffee kit etc.. once unpacked she started to feel like a home. 

We decided to take her out for a spin, leave the yard and head over to Marina de Valetta for the night. Here we had a wonderful meet up and drink with Sophia, an old friend who I hadn't seen since school.  Julia and I later wandered into Valetta hunting for some supper and stumbled across a wine festival!

The next morning was spend hunting down a chandlery and buying a few essentials; mooring springs and lines, cleaning stuff etc..

An important task for day 2 was the renaming ceremony. You have to be very careful renaming a boat to avoid incurring the wrath of Poseidon and damning you vessel.  Luckily Sophia offered to help us with the proceedings, pointing out that this was an auspicious point in the calendar, being the day of the summer solstice and the year of the Dragonfly!  Frankincense was burnt, libations of the finest fizz offered to the four winds, words were said and Dragonfly came into being! 

That evening we were treated to a delicious supper at Sophia and Dom's house in their beautiful Maltese home.  They are currently fixing up a cottage in Hindon so we look forward to seeing more of them soon!

The next morning we set off at the crack of dawn towards Sicily.  Dragonfly's longer waterline means she can cruise a good 3 knots faster than Bumblebee was able. Punching our new details into the plotter app shaved an 11 hour crossing down to 7!  The app also warned us of very little wind so we would be motor sailing at best.

After an uneventful but relaxed crossing (mostly spent improvising mooring line splices) we reached Sicily and Dragonfly's new home at Marina de Ragusa.  This is a new marina and appears very well kept. Julia went to explore the beach and I looked up the local chandlery to buy a 16amp shore power adapter -without which we would be without air con.  This is a good moment to mention just how thrilled we are with Dragonfly. She is quite a bit larger than our old boat but handles easily in marinas thanks to her bow thruster. Air con is a game changer, as is the pneumatic passerelle. In-mast reefing makes sail handing so much simpler and new electronics give us all the info and stats we could ever want!

I've recently rekindled my love of 35mm film photography. This post is a mix of digital and analog photos, maybe you can see the difference?

Dragonfly by day and night:

We were ahead of schedule and keen to get back to the kids/relieve my parents so we booked onto an earlier Sunday flight and said farewell to Dragonfly -see you again in September..