I probably heard about the Earth overshoot day before. This year after spending 3 months sailing around the Med, surrounded by nature, I am more concerned than ever about this day and what it means. From now more we are committed to #movethedate. In Trapani (Sicily), we met with some friends (Angélica and Pepe) and we spent 3 wonderful days discussing about our planet, minimalism and kids education (all those neo-hippy stuff :-)… and we agreed that humans are a virus attacking the planet. We have to take care of this problem, for us and for the future generations.
We left Aeolian islands as soon as we had the right weather window and we went through an overnight navigation to arrive to the “Reserva Naturalle di Zingaro” to reach Trapani where élica and Pepe were waiting for us. Before Trapani, we made a stop and anchored in Mondello and San Vito Lo Capo.
In Trapani, we moored at Colombus Yatching Marina and we rented a car to explore the area (and more) and meet friends. The best way to visit a city is with locals and if locals have kids like yours it is even better! We ate “panelle“, we went to Marausa salinas, to Marsala, and Pepe introduced us to his family, it was like being home. We thank Angélica and Pepe for those great times.
We also drove to Agrigento and visited the famous Temple of Concordia (referenced in Marcos school book!) where our greeks ‘ancestors’ surprised us again: those temples were huge (once again, it was all built using slaves).
When driving from Trapani to Agrigento, I felt like driving from Sevilla to Cadix, the colour of the fields is very similar, a mix between yellow and green. Once again, we were surprised about the quantity of wastes that we saw on the road border, most of it is plastic – echoing the plastic disaster in the Med and the oceans.
We have to take care of our planet, we are trying to reduce plastic. Surprisingly, we find the task difficult: plastic covers a lot of things we use daily. We now refuse to take plastic bags when shopping (we did not asked for those bags in the past, but now we explicitly refuse them). We are also trying to reduce buying unnecessary things. We are more careful with food, water and fuel.
One positive side of being travelling on a sail boat, is that kids have become clearly conscious of what it means to be at sea and autonomous for some days/weeks. They now understand why we need to be careful:
- with our fresh water (they help with running the watermaker, they know what it means). And they discovered that in many islands (Aeolians, Malta) of places (Trapani, etc) tap water is not potable.
- with our batteries (they know how to use the battery monitor to check if they can watch a film, or if they have to wait for the sun to deliver its goodness on our solar panels)
- with the diesel fuel (we try to only run it when needed – they learnt patience and weather routing)
All those basic things that we take for granted at home. On board, opening the tap has now a different meaning than before for our kids and we are pleased to see that. Let’s hope they’ll keep this in mind forever.
Are you committed to#movethedate? Do you have any other ideas to achieve this goal?
Agile For Life 