The start of a new adventure

Tuesday the 7th of April 2026 saw Julia, Jozefina, Theodore and myself board a plane at Warsaw's Chopin airport, our destination: Catania, Sicily.  We have just spent the last seven months living in Warsaw with Julia's mum. The children have been in a Polish speaking kindergarten and are now so fluent they choose their new language to speak between themselves.  We've all had a wonderful experience during the first stage of our year away from the UK.  Now the second stage of the plan is being put into action.

It was a late flight -arriving at midnight.  Then a two hour taxi ride before safely boarding Dragonfly and bedding down well past everyone's bedtime.  Wednesday was a beautiful sunny day in Ragusa Marina. We had lots of jobs to do so planned to spend four or five days within the comfort of the marina.  To begin with Julia took Zefi and Theodore to the beach while I worked through a checklist or chores.

I won't bore you with the entire list but the main ones were:
Mend & reattach bow roller
Learn to use the water maker
Collect and install sails, hood and bimini from repairs
Swap life raft
​Repair dinghy
​+ lots of little jobs

Putting Theodore to work.

After three days the children were well settled in to boat life and the bulk of the jobs were complete.  On Saturday we assessed the weather conditions for making our move East towards the mainland.  Unfortunately it looked like the best day to sail was already well under way and we might have missed the perfect window  Determined not to rush, we agreed there was still plenty to do in and around Ragusa -for Dragonfly and for ourselves.  With this decided we took a taxi to Ragusa town, 30 mins drive inland.  An excellent decision as we might have missed this beautiful city!