On Tuesday, Barry and I leave our drysuits in Wales and fly to Catania in Sicily. We’ll be hoping to bust out our shorts as we attempt to kayak a little over 500 nautical miles around the Mediterranean island. We’re excited to see friends, eat pizza, get a suntan, and paddle lots. Giuseppe Di Mauro is kindly lending us two Aretusa kayaks, made by his company Overline Kayaks (Facebook page here)

We will be using Flat Earth Sails, provided by Kari-tek. It will be great to see how they perform on expedition & streamline a system before Sarah and I use them in the Aleutian islands later this year.

This will be our 4th visit to the island of grapes and mafia. We’ve been to the Vulcano symposium twice & the San Vito film festival once so it feels like we’ll be reunited with good friends. The photo above shows Overline big dog Giuseppe (on the right) and subtitler extraordinaire Gianfranco Liotta (in the middle). We are looking forward to sharing a little Sicilian wine with them and paddling geologist Francesco Petralia (in the photo below).

In honour of our visit to warmer climes, we’re offering a £5 discount to anyone spending over £25 in the UK/ Europe/ Australia store. Just write ‘sunshine’ when asked for a discount code! In the US store, write ‘sunbeams’ to get $10 off a $50+ order.