Getting to Gaeta

Here is a small essay I wrote for my parents about Gaeta, our home port.

One week ago yesterday my family landed at a port by the name of Base Nautica Flavio Giaoa. This marina is the main marina in the Gulf of Gaeta, which is the home to a very important U.S. Navy base. Ever since our “Touchdown” to the birth on the 3rd pontoon our lives have changed dramatically. Besides the being done cruising for the year, and not having to get “sailready” every day, we now can settle down and really get to know the town and community. We found some Dutch kids and a Norwegian family in the marina to play with, although their baseball (wiffle ball) skills haven’t improved much so far. We found a great beach with a soccer field, and a set of tennis courts to play on. Best of all, we found a baseball field!

Our arrival in Gaeta came with a change of life style. We now are not always so anxious about the weather, about making sure we were ready to go if we get a window, or fixing problems on the boat. We can now slow down and relax some, and learn how to cook and do a little more school each day. We started taking Italian lessons and now that we’ve stopped moving around we can find out some of the local secrets on where to go and what to buy. We have time to go to the local open air markets and to go to the beach in the afternoon. Soon we’ll be playing basketball and flag football (along with practicing Baseball) with the American school. Now that we’ve settled down and are in a smooth rhythm there is less stress and yelling around the boat, though fights every once and a while are inevitable.

The Norwegian family here has a 15 year old son, who I am slowly becoming friends with, and yesterday we met one of the kids from the American School; he seems really nice too. My brother and I have been teaching the kids in the Marina how to play wiffle ball. They may not be very good, but at least they are getting to know the game better. I am also learning that here in Gaeta I’m going to have 5 separate lives, very separate from each other. I am going to have a life of traveling with my family, which will take much of the winter. I will have two lives with kids and friends, one with foreign kids at the marina, and another completely separate one with the kids at the American school who I will be playing basketball with. I will be practicing baseball everyday, so that will be another full life, and the last life will be within the walls of my boat, the life with my family doing school and cleaning, which will be the craziest life of all.

A while ago my family took a trip to Rome for reasons you won’t believe. My family is from San Francisco, the home of the Giants baseball team, and I am a huge fan! In the year 2002 the Giants made it to the World Series, and low and behold, we were away. The adventures start in the port of Cannes, meeting place for rock stars all over the world. It was a Thursday evening and my sister had just been set off on a train with my grandparents and Aunt to go to Venice. We were planning to sail east along the coast of France and then down Italy to meet them the next Tuesday in Rome (which meant we had to get to Ostia). My brother, dad and I were playing soccer on a lawn above the port when my dad looked out into the sea and said

“Look how beautiful that (the sea with a setting sun) is. This is the kind of night we should be sailing.”

Now I had a motive to go, to get to Rome as fast as possible. “Why don’t we,” I said.

And so we did. In fact, the weather was so nice that instead of stopping in Olbia at the top of Corsica, we went all the way to Porto Ferraio on Elba. It’s a good thing too. The next day the winds were blowing and the seas were rough, and we never would have been able to sail from Corsica. So we sailed a short sail from Elba across to the mainland and down a little ways. The next sail was an adventure in itself. My parents started the sail themselves and left my brother and me to sleep. Well, the waves were rough the day before, but nothing compared to this. My brother and I woke up just in time to see ourselves fly off our beds into the bow on one particularly large drop. We had fun for a little while jumping up and seeing where we would land because of the boat rocking or dropping. Then we went upstairs and the adventure begins. Multiple times the wind gusted to over 50 knots (a knot is a little more than a mile per hour) and multiple times the portside railing went well into the water. This made for a lot of sickness and even more puke. My brother and I filled multiple bowls worth, in case you wanted to know, and then the dry hurling came. Eventually we stopped at a port about halfway to Porto di Roma (Ostia). The next sail was calm and we landed in Porto di Roma. From here we took a train to Rome and, don’t ask me why, rented a hotel. My “motive” to go to Rome was to watch the Giants play the World Series. We eventually found a high speed internet café that hosted about 300 computers and extremely hard, wood, chairs. At 1:00 in the morning I got up and dragged my dad and brother to this internet café to log on and watch the Giants game over the internet. We repeated this practice through all seven games and finally watched my beloved Giants give away the title in game six and seven of the series. Oh, yeah. We also visited the Coliseum and St. Peters square (though we didn’t go in the actual cathedral).

Recently we also went to Florence, and that was pretty good. It wasn’t as good as last time (see October 15 update), but we still saw the David and more importantly Foot Locker. In about three weeks we are going to go skiing in the Alps, meeting my grandmother and Paris, and going to Lausanne. Before that, starting this weekend, I am going to be playing in a Flag football mini camp. This coming Monday (the 8th of December) I am going to start playing baseball and basketball everyday (basketball in two different leagues).

I guess that’s all for now,
Log in again soon,
Over and Out,
Standing by,
On the Side,
Danny Zuckerman.