Assimilation and adaptation - the Sicilian west coast

It struck me that last year when we were here, in the blog, I combined Trapani and Palermo into a single perspective. But really they are quite different. We’ve been “stuck” here in Trapani for a few days waiting for the weather to clear, but we’re in a pretty safe berth.

The boat to our left is oddly enough called “Big Joy”. Sounds like a Chinese fortune cookie maker so something. (But actually they’re from Germany. I didn’t get the opportinty to ask about the name. Maybe it’s lost in the translation.

Anyway I’ve had some  to consider this part of the western coast of Sicily.The most notable places of interest here are the three towns of Trapani, Marsala and Mazara del Vallo and the three offshore islands that constitute the Egadi Marine Park.

Trapani is one of our favorite places for people-watching. It has a lovely Sicilian Baroque center whose pedestrian streets are dotted with cafes. The business people who go by are, what you might call, crumpled chic. The combination of the heat and the predominance of linen makes this inevitable.

But, then again, maybe the nuns have the right idea.

This is an area that has long-depended on agriculture and fishing for its livelihood. For example, the history of Trapani dates back to the time of the Greeks, Carthaginians and Romans  more than 2500 years ago. But more “recently”, this area was the first to be taken over by the Muslims during their invasion of Sicily in 827.

And Muslim and Arabic influences are subtly present everywhere. The name of Marsala, for example, is probably derived from the Arabic Marsa Allāh, meaning “God's harbor". And  Mazzara del Vallo has a substantial immigrant population mostly hailing from Tunisia and living in traditional Arabic areas of the town. Outside of southern Spain, this is one of only a few towns in Europe to have souk and kasbah.

The Arabs revolutionized the indigenous agricultural practices. They constructed canals to bring water from springs and rivers to agricultural areas and towns. Leveraging this infrastructure, they introduced a wide variety of new crops that we now think of as typically Sicilian - lemons, oranges, almonds and pistachios.

Other new vegetables, fruits and spices brought by the Arabs included eggplant, artichoke, melon, apricot, banana, buckwheat, cumin, tarragon, jasmine and a white grape variety called zibibbo, which later would be used to make sweet wines.

Fishing, too, was influenced by the Arabs. While bluefin tuna fishing had  been carried out since prehistoric times, the Arabs perfected the staged netting system called the tonnara.  Traditionally these are deployed in May and June when the 400lb fish swim past the coast of Sicily. The catching of the fish is a socio-cultural event called a matanza. Once common everywhere in Sicily, the few remaining mattanzas take place in the strait between two of the Egadi Islands - Favignana and Levanzo.

I don’t know about you but this is not what I have in mind when I think “fishing”. The Italian word for the above can be translated as “massacre”. Very apt. When you see what goes into catching the fish, it makes you think twice about the delicious tuna tartare that is everywhere.

I think I prefer to have this mental picture of fishing and fishermen.

Tuna fish stocks in the Mediterranean have been significantly declining due to legal (and illegal) industrial fishing fleets and is now near to collapse. Fresh bluefin can still be had in the markets of Trapani and Mazzra del Vallo but you have to wonder for how long.

While the decline of tuna fishing has followed the sadly familiar pattern across the Mediterranean, red prawn fishing illustrates a different set of issues.

With their distinctive red color, even when raw, Mazara del Vallo red prawns are considered a delicacy worldwide. They can retail for almost $100  per kilogram. We tried some of these prawns tartare and can attest to their soft flesh and  delicate taste.

At these prices, red prawn fishing represents a major revenue source for local fishermen. The prawns are caught in deep water in the channel between Sicily and Libya and Tunisia. And herein  lies the problem.

Towards the end of the 1980s, Libyan coastguard patrols began using force against foreign fishing vessels within about 75 miles of its coast despite the fact that territorial waters stretch only 12 miles from its shores. This was the maritime equivalent of a land grab – a “sea grab”’ I suppose.

Sicilian boats were fired on, seized and their crews detained in Libya for as long a six months

As a result, things have changed since the red prawn war heated up. At the end of the 90s there were over 350 fishing vessels in Mazara. Today there are fewer than 70. Understandably few fishermen are willing to risk their lives for the red prawn.

A painful irony not lost on the fishermen is that, since Rome and Tripoli signed an agreement in 2017  to curb migrant flows across the same stretch of water,  Italy has been helping to train and equip the Libyan coastguard.

But, as large-scale fishing has declined, line-caught fishing has increased - not, I suspect, quite enough to compensate but certainly enough to keep a community healthy. Restaurants bring you platters of line-caught whole fish (often with the line still in their mouths) for you to choose which one you’d like and how you’d like it cooked.

One satisfied customer who fully supports this development.

And, more generally, in this area there is a lot of evidence of a transition to more environmentally aware approaches to agriculture and fishing.

We drove south from Trapani heading in the direction of Marsala passing the famous salt pans.  We have made abortive attempts to visit these on our last two visits largely due to logistical difficulties and a lack of enthusiasm. This time, rather than strike out, we elected only to drive past them - smart move. For those of you who wonder what watching salt dry is like - think “paint” only longer.

We visited a winery just outside Marsala which makes Marsala (of course) and a number of non-fortified white and red wines. The vineyard is organic using fava bean plants between the vines to provide the nutrients they need.

And in another reference back the Arab period, some of the wines are aged in earthenware amphorae rather than their spectacular wooden barrels.

And while we were there we made an amazing discovery about the source of the vitamin B12 that we take every day.

This must be why it’s so good for you. Don’t tell anyone you know the secret!

We wondered if this vineyard was typical or not and we’re told that most, if not all, local vineyards had now become organic with no noticeable reduction in production quantity or wine quality.

And informally there is more evidence of a healthier ecosystem.

As we rounded the cape that starts this coast, we encountered a large and heathy turtle swimming woefully and waving a flipper to us on each stroke. Later, as we left the Egadi Islands, we saw three separate large pods of dolphins who broke off from their breakfast and came to play happily around our boat.

Perhaps not a scientifically valid indicator of a better future but certainly an encouraging one.

2023 Starts - Finally!

Those of you who are loyal readers of our blog will know that the first few weeks of our summer never go quite as planned. And this one is no exception. Actually, it’s a doozy.

We headed back to Palermo. Relatively easy flights PHX-JFK-CDG-PMO with overnight stops at PHX and CDG.  In Charles de Gaulle we get a text from the yard saying our boat launch will be delayed by two days. We are excited. If the delay s only two days this will be record-breaking efficiency. We are so excited that we ignore the cello music in the background.

When we get to Palermo, the yard says that our boat is not ready and that they might not be able to do all the work we asked for. Apparently, the weather has been bad since April and they are behind. We gently point out that they have had our work list since September of last year … There is a pause… And as usual it takes negotiation and compromise but we end up with a plan that we all can live with.

Work restarts in earnest

And then it happens.

Lori starts to feel sick with flu-like symptoms and spends the next four days flat out in bed. Then I get it. Where Lori’s experience was a long slow burn, mine was more a fierce blaze that was like the worst flu that I could imagine. We kept trying to tell ourselves it was flu, but the collective wisdom said COVID. Wow - that was not nice at all.

So, if that’s what COVID is like with all our shots up-to-date, I really don’t want to think what it would have been like without them.

With that nightmare behind us we get back to our regularly scheduled programming of walking (albeit slowly) around Palermo while waiting for our work to be done. One good aspect this year is that the weather has been weird in Sicily. For months it has been raining, it is quite humid and cool. The Sicilians hate it; they want it to be hot. But, as we recuperate, we take delight in the extremely comfortable temperatures. And to be honest, the Sicilians are undaunted by the unseasonal weather. Street life goes on unabated.

Palermo is as scruffy as ever but perpetually interesting when you scratch the surface just a little.

I wonder what the cruise ship passengers make of it. There’s usually anywhere between 1 - 3 ships docked each day. Little chains of numbered tourists play follow-the-leader with their more flamboyantly numbered tour guide. They look puzzled, perplexed, bored, hot but never like they are enjoying it. The shore trips are the penance they have to pay for all the fun they can have back on board.

Sicily has a long history of receiving visitors, welcome or unwelcome, arriving by sea and  Palermo has been at the center of this. So much so that it may be the theme of its new marketing campaign. We received a recording of a meeting between the mayor of Palermo and his marketing consultants:

Mayor: So what have you come up with as a slogan for the city?

Consultants: Well, to be honest that’s been a bit problematic.

Mayor : I know - that’s why we’re paying you the big Euros.

Consultants: So many of the good ones have been taken - “the Florence of the South”; “the Athens of the North”. “Garden City” would have been good but  we’re pretty sure you need to have more than two really nice gardens for it to be credible. Taking the lead from New York, we seriously considered “Palermo - the Big Arancina “. We even have a draft graphic.

Mayor: No! I don’t want to be the mayor of a city whose emblem is a stuffed rice ball.

Consultants: We thought you’d say that - pity. We thought it was kinda cool. Sooooo ., you may not like this either, but we propose “The World’s Most Conquered City”.

There are strange noises on the recording at this point. Sounds a bit like a mix of a stunned silence and espresso being spluttered from multiple mouths simultaneously.

Mayor: You are joking aren’t you?

Consultants: We are consultants - we have no sense of humor.

Mayor: OK. I may regret this but I’ll play along.

Consultants: Palermo has been conquered eighteen times

Mayor: Eighteen? Surely not?

Consultants: We have a list on this slide.

• The Phoenicians

• The Carthaginians

• The Greeks

• The Romans

• The Vandals

• The Visigoths

• The Byzantines

• The Arabs

• The Normans

• The Swabians

• The Angevins

• The Aragonese

• The Spanish Hapsburgs

• The House of Savoy

• The Austrian Hapsburgs

• The Bourbons

• The British

• The Bourbons (again)

Mayor: OK You win. But I do have one question…

Consultants: Shoot.

Mayor: Who the **ck were the Swabians?

Good slogan or not, the consultants were right, the Sicilian population is a blend of many genetic backgrounds. For example, there is a high percentage of people with reddish hair or blue eyes (not typical of southern Italy). And unlike many places, the newcomers were frequently assimilated peacefully into the island mix. And with the people came their crops, their cuisine, their culture, their scholarship, and their architecture.

The cultural mix in Sicily has long been very sophisticated. The first Norman kings of Sicily spoke Arabic fluently (and had harems but we won’t mention that). Also the level of literacy in Sicily in the 12th century was higher than was in the 18th and 19th centuries. The legal system took account of the ethnic background of the litigants. Arabs could be tried under Arab law, Jews under Jewish law and Christians under Norman/Roman law.

And when you walk around you see three different styles of architecture - Moorish/Arabic, Norman and Baroque (in a distinctively Sicilian style).  And, if you look closely, you can see these styles being blended together.

This year we got to visit the one major landmark we haven’t seen - the Royal Palace. Built in the 12th century by the first Norman king of Sicily, on top of a much earlier Arab fortress it is a stunning example of the blend of Arab and Norman styles. While the exterior is more functional than elegant, the interior is breathtaking.

But Sicilians do, apparently, have their limits when it comes to civic art and architecture. In the middle of the 16th century, the city decided it needed a fountain in the Piazza

Praetorian. Rather than design a new one, they purchased one from a villa in Florence, disassembled it, moved the pieces about 500 miles and installed it in the square. The Palermitans were shocked; the nude statues offended their sensibilities and from that day on it has been known as the “Fountain of Shame”. And yet it’s still here shamelessly filling the square.

The more prudish among you may want to skip the next picture.

[I knew you couldn’t resist looking.]

Another thing that Sicily in general and Palermo in particular has inherited from the Arabs is a love of open air markets. Palermo has three.

The range of goods on sale stretches from raw shellfish, to fresh vegetables, to cooked entrees, to cheap electronics, to bric-a-brac. All jammed together in no particular order. You are permanently surprised by what’s on sale on the next stall.

Add to this, people, Sicilian people, lots of Sicilian people, all of whom love to shout, argue, gesticulate in a good-hearted aggressive manner. If you don’t know how to shout with your hands, you will be at a total disadvantage here. It all feels wonderfully un-European.

And then there’s the food. We got our arancine early at a street-food restaurant on the edge of the Balaro market that’s been in business since 1837".

Our tuna tartare was just a few streets away in a decidedly up-market osteria which is becoming one of our favorites.

But no spleen sandwich for Lori this year; the little cafe was closed due to some kind of construction work outside.

We find Palermo familiar and comfortable but it’s time to start on our trip round Sicily.

The weather forecast is not good for an extended period so careful planning and execution will be required. So we will head to Trapani and lurk there until we can see a good weather window to get to Malta.

A Tale of Two Cities (and an Alien Abduction)

The two cities are Palermo and Trapani but you’re going to have to wait to find out about the alien abduction.

We’ve been to Palermo before and (after much vacillation) it will be True Colors home for this winter. There’s no avoiding the perception that Palermo is scruffy - the streets and buildings are dirty and there are weeds growing through the sidewalks in some places. But there’s a vibrancy to the place that is quite infectious and we love it. As I’ve said before this is a city to live in not look at.

Palermo is 2700 years old and has held a strategic position in the central Mediterranean for much of that time. It’s been under the rule of the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs and Normans. But from the 1100s to the 1800s it was the capital of the Kingdom of Sicily.

This history explains a lot - the language, the architecture, the cuisine and the culture. Sicily is different than the rest of Italy. As one of our restaurant owners put it “I am Italian but I am Sicilian”. The latter trumps the former.

The churches and palaces that we can see today have a vast range of styles (Romanesque,  Gothic, Baroque and Art Nouveau) and a tremendous range in age from the 11th century to the 18th and 19th centuries.

We added a “new” church to our list this year - the Church of San Cataldo. Built in 1154 in what is called the “Arab-Norman” style. Given that these two groups tended not to like each other very much, it surprises me that they could get together and come up with a common style. (If the Democrats and Republicans were to build a church, they’d still be arguing about the style in 2154..)

One interesting development is that some churches have started to charge tourists for entry - typically 2 Euros. This is a great way to recoup some of the costs relating ro wear-and-tear. But some people on social media are complaining.

Two Euros is too much to pay for exquisite 1000 year-old religious art and architecture???

It looks like the money is being put to good use though. Palermo Cathedral is getting some overdue work done on the interior and it is really revitalized.

And our favorite church - the Admiral’s Church - is still as astonishingly beautiful as always.

But the traditional working city is still evident. The little harbor where our marina is also is home to the small fishing fleet which continues to fish in the way it has done for many centuries (with the addition of a little technology from time to time).

Also the city is home to three large open-air markets that sprawl through the streets and alleyways of the historic city center. Here you can buy clothing, bric-a-brac, records, religious icons, fish, meat and fruit. At the busiest times they are packed with buyers and sellers - not a good place in the time of COVID, so we wander at quieter times.

For a variety of reasons, we are spending more time in Palermo this year than on our first visit and we are taking the opportunity to sample more of the cuisine. A lot of our perceptions of Italian cuisine are based on many dishes from the north of Italy all the way down to Rome (with the obvious exception of pizza which comes from Naples). Here the influences are fish-driven and many dishes have their roots in North Africa.

Italian restaurants are on three levels - ristorante, trattoria and osteria. Osterias are (supposed to be) the most simple but with a focus on traditional dishes cooking in the traditional style. We sample a couple.

Our first, Osteria Nonna Dora  (Grandma Dora’s Osteria) is about as authentic as you can get and is a favorite of locals (always a good sign). It is cheap but the portions can tend to be on the enormous side - as you would expect when you’re at grandma’s table.

Our second example is Osteria Balaro  (named after the largest food market in Palermo)  which as you can see is perhaps not at the low end of anyone’s restaurant scale.

But Palermo is also famous for its street food. Arancini I the little stuffed rice balls) can be found everywhere.

As can  Crocche and Pannelle.

But, and this is not for the faint of heart, Lori decides to try one of the most authentic street foods of the all -  Pani Ca Meusa.

For those of you whose Sicilian dialect is not as strong as it might be, this translates to “spleen sandwich”. I’m not sure what a spleen is or what it does but I’m pretty sure I don’t want to eat it. Lori insists it’s excellent but in my experience the only thing you can do with a spleen is vent it.

“More spleen anyone? We’ve got lots!”

With dreams (or is it nightmares) of spleen sandwiches in our heads we set off for Trapani.

And this is where the alien abduction takes place.

We are crossing the Gulf of Castellamare (the roots of three of the prominent New York Mafia families are in this area) motor-sailing with the mainsail up. The wind is changing but I head below and Lori is at the helm.

I hear the engine revs reduce until we are only idling but being pushed forward by the wind in our mainsail. The wind is now behind us and gradually increasing.

I look at Lori who has a big grin on her face and she says “I wondered how fast we could go without the engine”. (The answer is “8 knots” by the way).

But my wife has always been nervous of running before the wind. She has visions of crash gybes , people being knocked overboard by the boom and True  Colors  being dismasted. So I know while this may look like my wife it is not in fact my wife.

Alien abduction alert!

I say “What have you done with my wife?” And then add in a more conciliatory tone, “Welcome to Earth.”

Lori insists that she has not been abducted but I’m watching and taking notes. I’ve seen “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. I think I’ll offer her another spleen sandwich as a test.

We reach Trapani, the provincial capital on the northwest coast of the island. It has a large commercial harbor which accommodates a sizable fishing fleet.

And a lot of inter-island ferry traffic - particularly to the Egadi islands which are our next cruising ground.

But before that Trapani itself.

The town dates back to at least 250BC and has pretty much the same cast of conquerors as the rest of Sicily. The area close to the harbor has commercial feel but as you wander towards the historic center the Baroque architecture and the old street patterns are revealed.

In a cafe on a street corner we sample another Sicilian street food specialty - granita ca brioscia.

Lori liked this so much she ate most of it before deciding to take a photograph of it.

Instead of coffee and a croissant, Sicilians opt for a simple brioche bun and a a fruit-flavored water ice (granita) which was invented here in Sicily.

The flavor this time is pomegranate which are in abundant display on the stall outside the cafe.

Trapani also has a thriving art scene which most visibly manifests itself during the summer with outdoor opera and theater as well as street art in a tree-lined park.

For those of you who have a puny temperamental ficus in your home. To paraphrase Crocodile Dundee, “That’s not a ficus; these are ficus!”

Only for kids to play on - there was a guy who’d blow a whistle if any adult (including parents) went anywhere near the art.

This corner of Sicily is also known for its couscous with both Trapani and San Vito lo Capo to the north being renowned for their variants of this dish. Indeed San Vito has hosted the World CousCous Championships for the last 25 years. Couscous probably originated in Algeria or Morocco and is a classic example of how Arab ingredients and dishes infuse the Sicilian cuisine.

So, if there is couscous, there have to be couscouserias (or cuscuserias in the Sicilian dialect) - restaurants specializing in couscous.

Finally, Trapani is also famous for salt. The salt pans are just south of the town. Last time we didn’t make there but this time we tried. However, in the time of COVID we are not comfortable riding in a little bus with eight or ten of our new closest friends (even if we are required to wear a mask by law). So we think about a little ferry tour that takes the short trip across the harbor to the salt pans. We go to the ferry quay at the designated time, but no ferry tour. We ask around, no-one knows.

As we yet again contemplate failure  to see salt drying, we are comforted by the thought that it may be just like watching paint dry.

North Sicily

Getting from the Ionian Sea to the Tyrrhenian Sea and the north of Sicily involves passing through the Strait of Messina. This can be a tricky piece of water due to the structure of the seabed and the narrowness of the channel itself. The two seas, one to the north and the other to the south, are both deep but have different characteristics and the water that moves between them is forced to take the narrow, shallow channel that is the strait itself. Weather and sea state can be unpredictable.

We’ve taken the south-north route a few times and it’s never been the same twice. And this time it’s setting us up for something different again.

We have chosen a weather window that promises a straightforward passage, but as we set off we hear that the actual conditions are less than ideal. At the south end the weather is fine; at the north end it is blowing hard; in the middle there is fog. This should be interesting.

The first part is easy - hot, hazy and calm with visibility generally good but definitely variable. As we move northwards the visibility stays variable but deteriorates significantly.  We are starting to move into the fog.

Our AIS can identify the location of boats that use this technology but not everyone is required to and not everyone does. So as our ability to see diminishes, the risk of us having a close encounter with another vessel increases sharply.

Most of the traffic in the strait is RO-RO ferries going ACROSS the traffic lanes - there are no traffic lights; there is only one roundabout;  boats don’t have lights that help in fog; nobody can see very much at all.

The ferries are quite large but frustratingly invisible until we turn on our radar. Suddenly we can see all the vessels that are close to us, plot their course and assess their risk to us. Those with radar can also see us.

But it’s still a bit spooky. On the radar we see a ferry about half a mile away heading into our path; looking up we can see nothing. Slowly a dark line emerges from the mist and we are relieved that it’s only a small ferry. But wait, more and larger details emerge and we can see that it is actually one of the larger vessels moving fast into our path. “Large” is not so good, but “fast” is beneficial - it quickly moves ahead of us and we can focus on the others that are in range.

At the same time, the water takes on a disturbed nature with short sharp irregular waves that knock us about a bit but don’t pose any real threat. The conflicting water flows mess with our boat speed too - without changing our throttle the boat speed varies from three to almost eight knots.

We eventually pop out of the north end of the strait and make a sharp right turn to the little fishing village of Scilla. Regular readers will remember that Scilla gets its name from that of the sea monster Scylla in Greek mythology. The story here is pretty special.

It all starts with Glaucus, a mortal and general good guy. One day he comes across a herb that can bring things back to life. (Though exactly how you decide that giving a dead animal a piece of shrubbery is a gainful way of passing the time I don’t know. He must have been really bored.) Anyway, he thinks what would happen if I ate it? (Again the logic here leaves something to be desired.) Turns out that it makes him immortal with one teensy snag. It also turns him into a fish-like creature, some kind of merman. But it’s ok, the other sea-gods take him under their wing (or should that be “fin”) and teach him all he needs to know. Glaucus fall in love with a cute sea creature called Scylla but she doesn’t think much of him.

So Glaucus goes to the sea nymph Circe for help (big mistake). Circe falls in love with Glaucus and poisons the pool where Scylla bathes and she is turned into a six-headed dog monster who really doesn’t like ships sailing in the strait. So she destroys them. I don’t know what happened to Glaucus.

Anyway, it’s tales like this that pretty much substantiate the claim that the Ancient Greeks invented daytime television.

Modern Scilla is still a small village with a thriving swordfish fishing fleet but is transforming itself slowly into a picturesque little vacation spot with some excellent (fish, of course) restaurants (one of which has a nice night time view of True Colors).

We next make a quick side trip to the Aeolian islands off of the north coast of Sicily. This gets us close to a pretty active little volcano that forms one part of the arc of four volcanoes in this region - Etna, Vulcano, Stromboli and Vesuvius - all four are active.

We spend the night moored within sight of Stromboli (Lori thinks this is close enough) on the island of Panarea - a car-free island that is a curious mix of day trippers and exclusive establishments that cater to their upscale guests who arrive by superyacht or helicopter.

We head back towards the mainland threading our way through the other islands. We’re motoring through one of the channels minding our own business and a French guy yells at us. Can’t hear what he’s saying and can’t see anything on our boat that we should attend to. It remains a mystery so we put it down to the heinous crime - “sailing while not French”.

The trip from the islands to the mainland is a beautiful sail with the steady wind pretty much on our beam - smooth sailing!

Cefalu, on the mainland, is another fishing village which is farther down the road to “main tourist destination.” This primarily due to its superb Norman cathedral.

But before we can visit the town, we have to park the boat. Not usually a major problem.

The little tourist port at Cefalu has one serious drawback - it is not completely protected by harbor walls. It is open to wind and sea from the east. Guess what we’ve got today!

Our pontoon is completely open to the swell; each big surge pushes us about two feet backwards towards the quay. This makes putting lines ashore very tricky. Also the boat is rolling from side to side which makes the spreaders on our mast come perilously close those of the boat next to us.

This makes for a difficult three-dimensional problem which the marineros are eventually in control of and do a great job. But it is not safe to try to get off, so we spend the evening and night on board and will explore Cefalu tomorrow.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it so far, but it has been really hot since we arrived in Italy. “Extreme heat” warnings have been continuously in place since we got here. It’s not Scottsdale hot temperature-wise but the humidity has been pretty cruel. So the 20-minute walk into town is fairly demanding and very sweaty.

But it’s worth it.

Cefalu still has its original street pattern with narrow cobbled alleys leading either to the sea or the cathedral square.

It’s Saturday so, as we’re starting to realize, it’s wedding day anywhere there’s a cool church for the service. We wondered if the elaborate dresses from Taormina would be a little toned-down in a less glitzy place. But this is Italy, so what do you think?

Another wonderful thing about the Italian approach is that your church may be an historical monument, an architectural masterpiece and contain priceless works of art, but, yes, you can book it for your function.

The downside of this frenzy of weddings is that I don’t get to take the pictures I’d like. My Italian doesn’t stretch to, “If the bridal party would just step aside for one moment, I can get a better shot of the mosaic in the apse.” Probably for the best. Darn!

Faced with a crisis like this, we resort to a centuries-old Italian remedy: we eat lunch.

This doesn’t make the problem go away, but you do feel a lot more mellow about it! And you have time to reflect on possible solutions. I resolve to get up early the next morning and scoot into town while it’s cool. The church opens at 8:00am about 90 minutes before the first mass. (Fortunately early mass doesn’t seem to be a thing here.)

I make the trip as planned and am walking in the almost deserted streets of Cefalu at about 7:30. Suddenly a long-forgotten European stereotype confronts me - I see small groups of people with beach chairs, towels etc. making their way to the beach. It is the great quest for “The Best Spot”. It’s 7:30 in the morning people! (And by the way when you get there you’ll see that the local grannies are finishing their swim and are on their way home for breakfast. I like their plan better.)

With few people around you can get to appreciate some of the never-changing sights of rural and small town Italy. First of all, there are little shrines scattered throughout the villages and towns. Some are showing their age but others are well-maintained and utterly charming.

Another timeless icon of rural Italy is the Piaggio Ape which has been in continuous production since 1948 and this may be one of the originals.

In this case, it is not the English “ape” we’re talking about, rather it’s the Italian “ape” which means “bee”. Entirely appropriate if you’ve ever heard the noise of their tiny engine and seen the way they buzz through traffic. By the way, Piaggio also made the Vespa motor scooter - “Vespa” is Italian for “wasp”.

The church opens a little later than advertised and I am worried that I might not have time to take the shots I want if there are a lot of people. But I need not have worried.

It is quite intimidating being in a cathedral all by yourself. But I kind of think that that is exactly what the architects of these buildings had in mind.

If you take away some of the renaissance features, the structure is imposing and austere - culminating in the mosaic of Christ Pantocrator in the apse. Warm and welcoming he is not.

But the whole building is dominant, assured and confident in its permanence. One of the most impressive churches we’ve visited.

And now it’s on to Palermo which has truly wonderful churches in its own right.

Sicily - the hard:easy way or the easy:hard way

When Lori and I lived in Massachusetts we used to walk on the beaches most weekends. On one such we encountered two girls about ten or eleven who were playing an the rocks and tidal pools. Getting from one spot to another involved tricky clambering across the slippery rocks.

As always, one girl was bolder than the other and she instructed the other on the best routes - “this one is the easy:hard way, but that one is the hard:easy way” she shouted to her hesitant acolyte. It wasn’t clear if her instructions were heeded (perhaps due to the popsicle-induced purple lips and tongue of the would-be leader) but the categorization definitely had some subtlety and merit.

So when it comes to sailing from Greece to Sicily, there is the easy:hard way and the hard:easy way. The hard:easy way we have done before a couple of times. It implies sailing north to Corfu, crossing to the Italian mainland at Santa Maria di Leuca, traversing the sole of the Italian boot and finally making the long day’s leap form Roccella to Taormina. It’s an easy route to follow but it has more long legs than is comfortable, is susceptible to bad weather and requires 5 or 6 sailing days.

So this year we determined to do it differently - the easy hard way. This involves s direct sail from Preveza to Roccella. This is easy in the sense that there are no complexities but it’s hard because the single leg is 208 nautical miles (the longest leg we have sailed). 208 nautical miles takes about 36 hours, so for a significant period it is dark and you are far from land.

Choosing a weather window is key; you don’t want to be messing about on deck in the dark with bad weather. We have a perfect one - we’ll probably motor most of the way but all will be calm.

You may be wondering what it’s like to sail at night. 100 miles offshore there is no light pollution whatsoever, so when it is dark, it can be really, really REALLY dark.

The orange blob is the moon rising and the little dot to the right of it is another sailboat about 5 miles away. NOW you understand why we have radar.

However if the sky is clear, the stars never cease to amaze. The Milky Way looks a dusting of snow crystals on a vast invisible Christmas tree. And when the moon is out you can see for miles across an oily-black sea. On this trip we have the added spectacle of bioluminescent plankton in our bow wave and wake.

The boat waves crest the effect but it’s really eerie when dolphins swim around the boat at night and all you can see are their darting luminescent trails.

Roccella Ionica

The trip to Roccella is uneventful but we plan to rest here for a couple of days before the last leg to Taormina on Sicily.

Roccella Ionica is in Reggio Calabria - a historically poor region in the south of Italy which has been slow to benefit from international investment and economical development. The people are friendly and incredibly helpful. We want to go to a restaurant with authentic Calabrian cuisine but it is about three miles away and we are in the middle of a heat emergency. The local taxi driver is not available, so the marina staff insist on driving us into town where we can meet up with the cab driver. We are told not to worry about the trip back - the taxi driver is again unavailable but all is in hand.

The restaurant has been in business since 1899 and they have certainly used the time to hone their culinary skills.

After the meal, we discover that the arrangements that were made for our return are that one of the restaurant staff will drive us back to the marina. When we insist on giving him a tip, he looks embarrassed. As I said incredibly friendly and helpful people.

The crossing to Taormina is straightforward but involves crossing the bottom of the Strait of Messina which can work as a funnel for all sorts of strange weather (as we will see later). But today the weather in the Strait is better than the forecast and we make good time to the buoy field below Taormina and its handy, over-sized (but hiding in the heat haze) navigation beacon.

Mount Etna through the heat haze brought on by the extremely hot weather this year.

Sometimes little things serve to remind you of the long history that you are wandering through. Giardini Naxos (Naxos Gardens) the town below Taormina was founded in 735BC and is the oldest Greek settlement on the island. The name is derived from that of the island of Naxos in Greece where the first colonists came from.

Taormina, up some very steep mountain slopes from the water’s edge, predates the Greek settlement but has thrived over the last 125 tears and has become a sophisticated tourist destination that, among other things, has its own Film Festival.

And here is where past and present clash (for me, at least). One of the iconic classical ruins of Taormina is the Greek Theatre. (Not really a “Greek” theater but a Roman one built on top of the structure of an earlier Greek one. You know the Romans - never saw something that they couldn’t improve.)

Anyway, I wanted my version of the shot. We pay our ten euros; climb up to top of the hill to see the view and …

Now I like films as much as many people but this is going too far … I want my ten euros back!

Taormina is our first encounter with a striking Christian image that may have its roots in pre-Christian times. The image is that of Christ Pantocrator (seen here in Taormina cathedral).

It’s a complicated image. Some say it has its origins in Classical Greek times and is derived from images of Zeus. In the Christian context this is an image more rooted in the Orthodox Church rather than the Roman church. It is unknown in the Protestant church.

“Christ Pantocratoe” can mean “Christ Almighty” or “Christ All-powerful”. But looking at the Classical Greek with its subtle nuancing, others say it means either “Christ who does all things” or “Christ who can do all things”. Now that’s a nuance worthy of discussion!

We hope to see more examples of this image in the coming days.

More prosaically, Taormina is also an opportunity for people-watching. The main pedestrian street is lined with cafes ideally situated for sipping an Aperol Spritz and watching life go by.

Today is Saturday and, apparently, the day for weddings in Taormina - we count four. All have a similar timeline and all involve the bride riding in a car decked with flowers  and accompanied by either her father (before the wedding) or her husband (after the wedding).

Back to True Colors

As many of our readers will know, the start of the sailing season never goes to plan and this one has been no exception.  Lori had some medical and dental work that delayed us by about a month. This meant that we would be transferring through London at the time of the British Queen’s Platinum Jubilee (70 years on the throne). Some of you have a conspiracy theory that this was all a plot on Lori’s part (closet monarchist that she is) to be able to have tea with the queen. Her plans were going well until our American Airlines plane landed as it does every day at the same time, only to find that the Heathrow disembarkation steps were no longer a good fit for our plane. Much consternation followed with much blaming of COVID-19 and global supply chains that resulted in a 45-minute delay before anyone could deplane. This delay was fatal to Lori’s tea plans and the queen had to call on a last-minute replacement.

Not nearly as cute in my opinion.

But to go back to this whole Jubilee thing. She has been the British head of state for seventy years, in that role she’s has interacted with 14 counterparts in the US (Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden). Seriously hard to comprehend and to think that we worry about term limits. One thing to note, Britain has had quite a few queens while we are still waiting for our first woman president. Clearly gender equality based on biology is much more effective than that based on democracy.

So, on to the sailing season. We transferred from Heathrow to Gatwick to catch an early flight to Greece the next morning. Gatwick is a major hub for budget airlines in the UK. So we found ourselves in a throng of 2-3000 fellow-travelers all trying to board flights for various vantage points of the sun. Memo to selves: don’t do this again; fly midweek.

The plane is delayed -shortage of staff due to COVID, supply chain issues impacting availability of food on the flight, and, more credibly, bad weather over Germany. We arrive in Greece about 90 minutes late but the taxi driver is waiting for us and has nothing that he can blame on COVID, supply chains, or even bad weather over Germany. He is really quite mellow - we are back in Greece!

Our plan is to stay in a hotel one night and then move to an apartment for three days while we transfer to True Colors. Remember I said “plan”. You can almost hear the ominous soundtrack.Nevertheless, Lori quickly adapts to the Greek ambience.

Accommodation is great - as good as we hoped. True Colors not so much. Our boatyard (Cleopatra) tells us three key parts are not installed, not on board, not in Preveza, and, we understand, not in Greece. COVID is not to blame, but supply chains have a lot to answer for and so (we surmise) does bad weather over Germany. They have no ETA for the items.

Resisting the temptation to ask Google what is the Greek for “WTF”, we try to be polite but insistent as to the likely availability of the parts pointing out that we have traveled 6 or 7 thousand miles to get this news. Might they not have mentioned this BEFORE we got on the plane?

We now enter a familiar gloomy cycle. Each afternoon we ask about status; each afternoon we are told nothing has arrived; each afternoon we are told we will know more tomorrow. In Italy we have known this go on for weeks and are preparing for the worst. But no, on the fourth day we are told the parts will be here and installed the next day. We hold our breath; the next day dawns and by the afternoon the work is finished! Yay Cleopatra! Yay Greece! So we will be about a week behind schedule - tricky this year but in normal seasons quite workable.

The extra time gives us the opportunity to enjoy what Preveza and Lefkas have to offer. Neither could be called beautiful towns but, especially when it comes to food, they have something special to offer. Of the two, Preveza is the better and opens up a whole new dimension for us.

When you think of Greek cooking you tend to think of meat dishes like souvlaki, stifado and gyros utilizing the plentiful lamb, pork and beef. You all may recall Lori’s reverence for the gyros from Daltons - a cheap-and-cheerful eatery on the quay in Lefkas. Here’s a shot from this year’s pilgrimage.

But this year it was the fish that was the outstanding discovery. This is because Preveza sits out the mouth of the Amvrikakos gulf - an inland sea that covers about three or four hundred square miles. In history this gulf was the site of the battle of Actium where the Roman fleet defeated that of Anthony and Cleopatra (hence the name of our boatyard). But it’s an odd site for a battle - you’d have to choose it deliberately.

Maybe it was one of those Goldilocks moments.

“Hey, Anthony, it’s time that we settle this once and for all”.

“Kay!”

“We need to have a battle.”

“Kay!”

“We need a good spot - this is going to be epic.”

“Kay”

“How about the open sea off Preveza?”

“Nah! Too big”

“How about the bay off Preveza?”

“Nah! Too small!”

“You’re a hard guy to please. What about the Amvrikakos Gulf?

“Done! On one condition - we don’t call it the Battle of Amvrikakos. Think of all the school kids who’d have to member and pronounce that name.”

As you can see from this dialog, Shakespeare exaggerated the eloquence of Anthony. Dramatic licence, I suppose.

But, anyway, back to the fish.

We have diversified and now take our own satellite images. The Amvivrakos Gulf is the large blue area in the top center.; Preveza is the light patch in the narrows just below.

The Gulf of Amvrakikos is famous for its shrimp, scallops, sardines, small delicious anchovies and many other seafood varieties. In part, due to the abundant food supply, the gulf has many dolphin and loggerhead  turtles and in  the swamps around the rivers there are lots of rare birds including the silver pelican whose wingspan can reach more than 10 feet.

All this seafood has a striking impact on the local restaurants and their menus. Many restaurants run their own boats and only serve what was caught fresh that morning.

But let’s take a closer look at that menu on the wall. It pretty much says, “If you want meat, really any kind of meat (even lamb) don’t even try to eat here.”

But it is the shrimp that are the most remarkable. They became more widely known when, in “For Your Eyes Only”, James Bond said, “I’ll have the shrimp, but only if they’re from Amvrikakos”.

So Colin, hoping that some of the suaveness will rub off, orders the shrimp and is not disappointed

(at least as far as the taste is concerned). They are huge - about four inches long - and are absolutely delicious.

We eat in the same restaurant three times in four days!

But Italy beckons and a nice weather window is opening up for the long overnight crossing to Roccella Ionica in Calabria,

Southern Ionian Decorum

Sailing has been around for a very long time. Ever since the first human thought it might be easier to cross the river by floating on a log, people have been inventing many different variants on a very simple concept. For most of its history sailing has been driven by commerce - Roman galleys, Spanish galleons (and their associated pirates), clipper ships trading tea etc.

To keep commerce flowing freely, sailing developed a set of rules and regulations that govern the interaction between ships on the sea and in confined spaces like harbors and bays. These are ominously titled “International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea” or “ColRegs” for short. They apply to everyone from the largest super-tanker to the smallest sailing yacht. They were designed to stop captains trying to turn a 400-meter container ship in a 200-meter wide canal (oops!) or cruise ship captains running their ships aground to impress their girlfriends. But, despite some very public lapses, they work reasonably well.

And now we enter the era of super-yachts (and mega-yachts and giga-yachts) and the associated wishes of the super-entitled (and mega-entitled and giga-entitled) owners with captains to do their bidding. These folks are not too keen on regulations when they’re inconvenient. Let’s take a look at an example.

Vathi is a large landlocked bay on the island of Ithaca with a pretty town surrounding it. It has for a long time been a favorite of sailors who overlook the very boisterous and gusty winds that make having your anchor well-set the highest priority. In the summer, the bay has lots of yachts who try to arrive early, get set, and ride out the intensity of the gusts in the late afternoon. The bay used to also support a ferry service but this has been relocated to accommodate super-yachts etc at the former quay. 

Enter Stella M

At 200ft, Stella M is the 47th largest (but who’s counting?) mega or giga-yacht in the world and is so new that the paint may not be fully dry in some places. She arrives late in the afternoon when many yachts are all snugged in and wants to get into the remaining berth. But there is a problem; there is a 40-foot catamaran parked where Stella M would like to maneuver.

Sailing rules favor those who arrive first. So the captain of the mega-yacht has to politely ask the captain of the catamaran if he would move. Given the weather conditions, the captain of the catamaran declines (equally politely).

“Shock! Horror!!”, on the mega-yacht. “Why are the little people not understanding our needs?”

The dialog becomes less polite but the catamaran captain refuses to budge. In the old days ships used to communicate by means of flags. I imagine the catamaran showing just two flags to Stella M - a red diamond on a white background followed by one with two red quadrants and two white ones (go on - look it up).

Watching Stella M take thirty minutes of skootching in forward and reverse to get into her berth with both captains intently watching for contact and damage is very diverting. A scratch on the hull of Stella M would cost more to repair than the catamaran is worth.

And, the next morning ……

The next morning Stella M wants to move - at 7:00am in the morning. Vacation sailors don’t get up early AND now there are TWO catamarans in Stella’s way. We can’t see if any dialog took place, but the outcome is the same - catamarans stay put Stella M has to skootch. And she does so very impressively. In fact, I’m not entirely sure how she did it.

But, actually, I have a question about this. The yacht probably costs about $500m (give or take the odd $100m). Every modern car that costs more than, say, $20,000 has parking assist - get your Kia in and out of tight spaces while not killing pedestrians. You can call your Tesla and it will drive itself from the parking lot to your location - again without killing pedestrians or frustrated parking lot attendants. But for $500m in the super-dooper mega-yacht world you don’t get this - not even as an option? Will Elon Musk’s yacht lack this feature? He can blast rockets into space but still needs a guy to park his boat! That would be irony indeed.

Not your typical English pub, but ..

In my last post, I poked a little fun at the Italian approach to parking, but this time I’d like to look at one of the idiosyncrasies of a different group - the English. (Just to remind everyone, I am Scottish not English but will answer to British if the circumstances warrant.) Anyway, we have friends who run an establishment called Vliho Yacht Club on the island of Lefkas. Vliho Yacht Club is not what its name would imply. It is rather a yacht charter, yacht maintenance and bar/restaurant kind of place.

The restaurant core is British (English) with standard pub fare, British beer and cider on draught  etc. while the ambience is essentially Greek - outdoors overlooking the water. All this is great and attracts many UK expats of one variety or another with a little slice of their former home. But here’s where I get curious.

A great English tradition is “Sunday Lunch” which features roast meats, roast potatoes, Yorkshire Pudding and various vegetables. This is a fundamental element of the social infrastructure in England. So much so that it translates directly to Vliho.  We observe multiple yachts flying the British ensign  arriving in Vliho Bay in time for the Sunday meal and leaving the day after. There is, I repeat, nothing wrong with this.

But , i wonder, do other nationalities do the same? Are there pizzerias (Lori would like one of these) or trattorias in the Ionian where every food-loving Italian goes in the summer; are there tapas bars hidden away when Spaniards can eat a little taste of home; are there French restaurants on the islands that serve Coq au Vin just like at home? I don’t know but Ido  know that I pretty much haven’t seen one, So is this an English-only trait?

But let’s get back to island life. Of all the islands here two of the most charming are Kalamos and Kastos. Let’s set the scale - Kalamos (the “big” island) has a population of 490; Kastos (the small island) has a population of 47. On Kalamos it wasn’t until the 1990’s that all homes had running water and until even more recently the only way between the two villages on the island was by boat. Kastos has a road which goes from the only village (hamlet) of Port Kastos to who knows where (there isn’t anywhere else to go). The major beneficiaries of this infrastructure project are the goats. The goats love the road; they wander all over the island but like to use the road as a goat highway. Goat lobbyists on Kastos are worth every penny of what they’ve been paid.

You can see the road just above the cliffs

And here’s the goat traffic

Kalamos has a lovely little traditional harbor that has largely been taken over by sailing yachts - it’s too small for super-yachts. Parking involves dropping your anchor on one side of the harbor and backing up to the key on the opposite. Because the harbor is not a rectangle, things can go wrong. One straight line of chain can land on top of another. Retrieving your anchor is like trying to separate one strand of very heavy spaghetti from all the others bearing in mind that each strand has a hook on the end.

To minimize the problems, one taverna owner, George, has taken over the role of harbor master and parks yachts carefully. Everyone is grateful for this and shows their appreciation by eating at his establishment. Smart! 

But George is unhappy with his lot and each time we visit he asks us about the US and has his sights on moving his whole family there. His preference is Texas because of low taxation compared with the 76% tax he pays in Greece.

Kastos is much calmer - 47 people don’t make a lot of noise. The harbor there is even smaller than on Kalamos - so much so that it’s not even worth trying to find a space. So we typically park in one or other of the lovely coves on the north-east corner of the island. This time we are here in August (European holiday month)  and it is busy! Many anchoring spots have been taken and some of the others are being occupied by small motor-boats. These boats are getting in the way of where I want to maneuver and park - they should move.

I recognize the voice of my inner Stella M and take a big deep breath; motor up and down the coast a couple of times and two perfect spots open up and we snag one of them for a night of peace and solitude.

All to ourselves.

Patience can sometimes be a virtue and an added reward.

Epirus

Today’s word association test; when I say the word “Epirus” what comes to your mind?

Nothing? Come on you must have something! No?

Actually you’re not alone. Most non-Greeks have never heard of Epirus.

To satisfy your curiosity, it’s the region on the west coast of Greece that faces towards Corfu. It’s bounded by Albania to the north and stretches down to the southern Ionian Sea. It’s fairly remote and is a place that people pass through rather than have as a destination.  But it’s not without its history, charms and special places.

Mourtos-Sivota is one of these. Sivota is a little fishing village that is now popular with sailors and usually fairly busy. This year, although there are boats, the cafes and restaurants around the harbor are empty. People are pinning their hopes of saving this season on the English (maybe) arriiving in August. If they don’t, it will be their second bad year in a row.

This is August - where are the tourists?

Lori willing to play her part in supporting the local economy at a quayside restaurant.

Typical (gorgeous) Mourtos sunset

Apart from the charms of traditional little village,  this place is perfectly located to offer great sunset views over to Corfu - most evenings you just have to wait a little and a great photo opportunity evolves in front of you.

One of the diverting features of an anchorage like this is the jockeying for the “perfect” spot to anchor.  It would be wrong to say that there are national stereotypes in this regard but there are strong correlations that should no be ignored. Italians, for example, will tend to park closer to you than you think is comfortable. This is not so much a character flaw but rather an interesting quirk or trait.  

Usually when a boat is parking close to us, Lori calls me to let me know. 

I say, “What’s their flag?”

Lori says “Italian”.

I say “Normale (Italian for “as normal”) and we go about our business. 

On the other hand if it’s a charter boat with a crew of unspecified origin and experience, the response is more like “Oh sh*t!”

Back to the Italians - One anchors close to us. Lori points out that they might be just a bit too close and they say don’t worry the wind will sort it out. A few hours later the wind is showing no inclination to sort anything out and sheepishly they move their boat a few boat lengths farther away. A second Italian boat arrives and tries to park where a little motorboat has a mooring. It is clear that if they park there they will damage the little boat - clear that is except to the skipper. He is told to move. He does so - right into the swimming area (which is buoyed off to prevent swimmers being injured by boats). Many official whistles sound on the shore and he is told to move again. He does, finally, to a safe distance.

The last act of this little drama comes when we leave. No issues except that as soon as we pull up our anchor, the first Italian boat does the same and scoots quickly into the space we are vacating. Apparently our spot was the best of all.

Socially distant sunbathers

After spending a few days in Sivota, we move south. We have three possible anchorages - two of which we have used before so this time we want to try the third.  The bay is called Fanari and the little resort town is called Ammoudia.  It’s a low key beach resort which seems to cater mostly for Greeks. It’s perfect for swimming and sunbathing. It’s pretty good for anchoring too - wide open with plenty of room to swing at anchor.

But this seemingly unremarkable little resort town occupies a significant place in the darker side of Greek mythology. (Come to think of it, is there a brighter side to Greek mythology?) Anyway, Ammoudia sits on the backs of a river called Acheron. Acheron is/was one of the five rivers of the Greek underworld and known as “the river of woe”.

The newly-dead would be ferried across this river by the boatman Charon and enter into Hades.  Those who had been neutral in life simply sat about on the river banks. It would be nice to believe that the Jimmy Cliff song “Sitting in Limbo”had its origins here,  but somehow I doubt it.

I guess the Gates of Hell aren’t as intimidating as they used to be

A very nice new marina

Our final stop in Epirus is the town of Preveza.  Those of you with long memories will recall they this used to be our base when we started sailing. For the last four years we’ve been based in Brindisi but this year, due to COVID and other factors, it looks like we’ll be back.

A new marina has been built and it is really quite nice.  One of our neighbors, somewhat unkindly, said that he likes the place because it does not feel Greek.  We know what he means but there has to be a better way to put it.

We park in the marina with the “assistance” of a marinero who is young and appears to have not been on the job very long. He has been told a process to follow and he insists that every boat follow this process whether it is wholly appropriate or not. We’re frustrated but put it down to us being rusty after two years off. However, the skipper of the Norwegian boat that berths after us also has the process imposed on him. He’s is not happy with this; he looks like either he’s going to have a heart attack from doing needlessly stressful things or he’s going to use the marinero as a boat anchor. Tempers don’t quite flare but things are tense for a while.

When you go to a new marina you have to check in with boat papers, insurance etc. Normally this is not difficult but in times of COVID things are not normal.

I am wearing a mask; there is a plexiglas screen between me and the young lady (Sara) behind the desk; Sara is also wearing a mask.

“I would like to check in True Colors”

“You have two cars?”

“No I’d like to check in True Colors”

“How long do you want parking spaces for the two cars?”

“No .. I’d like to check in True Colors.”

Meanwhile the two other people in the office are cracking up and have been happy to let this misunderstanding go on for its entertainment value alone. They finally explain to Sara what I want. Everyone is laughing.

So, the next time I go back to the office.  I say I’m from True Colors and everyone laughs again and says “Two cars?” Apparently now everyone on the marina staff knows about the boat caller “Two Cars”. We are famous.

The view from the marina rooftop restaurant at night.

The new marina comes with a new restaurant - only opened about six weeks before our arrival

With food to match the view

Preveza has always been a bustling little working town where much of the activity takes place on the town quay. This year “bustling” is not a plus-point so we tend to stay away from restaurants in the town, especially in the evening. It’s hard to know which of the many people of many nationalities are “COVID-safe.” 

We employ prudence and discretion and take advantage of the new restaurant at the marina. - open air with a steady breeze and no hustle or bustle.

Fortunately, our next leg will take us into the Ionian proper where there are islands and bays for us to anchor in. The physics of anchoring imposes its own rigorous social distancing and we are pretty much always 30 meters from any other boats and people. (Except, of course, where Italians are involved. But you know about that already.)

Corfu

Athens was a bit of a blur or more like one sleepy eye open. Arriving one day late made a short focused sightseeing expedition unrealistic. We’ve been in Athens before and are coming back here at the end of the trip, so we’ll use that time for taking advantage of the photographic opportunities.

What’s the best way to know you’re in Greece?

As I said, the Greeks have got the COVID battle well-organized. When we went to the airport to get on the flight to Corfu, they checked our passports and our vaccine certificates. When we got off the plane in Corfu, they checked our passports and our vaccination certificates again - taking thoroughness to a new level. But they seem determined to protect their tourist economy after a disastrous year last year.

Corfu, if you recall, is the northwest-most island in Greece (actually there are three little ones just a bit farther but Corfu is by far the biggest). Given its location in the entrance to the Adriatic from the Mediterranean proper, it has had a strategic role since Roman times and was once the most fortified island in the Mediterranean. Because of this it has a blend of cultures but in this entry we can focus on just one - the British.

After the defeat of Napoleon, the island was given to the British which seems a little odd but at this time Greece was not yet unified and this probably was the best way to get stable government on a strategic island. British rule lasted until the 1860s when the British gave the island back to the government of a newly-unified Greece.

Where are all the people? You don’t often see it like this.

Our rental house was in the center of the Old Town.

The streets of the Old Town are only suitable for feet or two wheels.

The footprints of the British are everywhere - Corfu has a cricket pitch in the middle of town; there is a croquet pitch (along with another cricket pitch) at the marina where we parked; English is widely spoken; and you can get a “full English breakfast” in many hotels and restaurants.

This latter development came with the blossoming of middle-class vacations (package holidays) from Great Britain in the 1960s. Before that time, and still somewhat to this day, Corfu was a vacation spot for the wealthy and sometimes bohemian glitterati. The northeast corner of the island developed to meet these, to say the least, diverse needs and it is there that we intend to spend our next few days.

But before we left Corfu Town, we enjoyed dining (twice) in one of the prettiest seafood restaurants imaginable.

Our favorite seafood restaurant in Corfu

And the best mixed seafood platters

Which Lori was fully prepared to enjoy

A feature of thenortheast coast is that the view to the east is of Albania only a few miles away. While things are said to be improving, Albania is one of the least developed countries in Europe with a rugged panorama of bleak treeless mountains. Ferries make the short trip between Corfu and Albania but they form the link between countries that are decades (if not centuries) apart.

What is generally believed to be the best way to see Albania - from a distance, at night, with a ful moon.

True Colors was delivered on time by squeezing the trip from Brindisi into an ever-decreasing weather window and we spent our first few days provisioning the boat and checking her out after eighteen months of languishing on the land. Almost everything was in good shape.

Our first night was a short trip across the bay to a small anchorage off a taverna and a little beach; the night was predicted to be calm and this would be our gentle reintroduction into our sailing world. Regular readers will know that the previous sentence has trouble written all over it. the five knot winds with gusts up to 10 turned into 20 knot winds with gusts up to 30 for five hours. It was a fairly bumpy time until about 10:30. We were just initiating an anchor-watch schedule when the winds died and we had a gentle rest of the night.

We headed north to the true northeast corner of Corfu - a beautiful bay called Avlaki. The bay is a little exposed to the prevailing northwest winds but the forecast was for only modest breezes from the south. Some of you are saying “Wait a minute. Doesn’t this sound a bit like the previous paragraph?”

”Yup!”

But this time it wasn’t s bad; our second day though was a bit bumpy and we couldn’t do the things we wanted to with our new ELECTRIC motor for our dinghy.

Ever since we bought True Colors, we have had a normal 5HP four-stroke gas outboard. It has always been heavy for us to lift onto the dinghy with much anguish and many harsh words (directed at no-one in particular). Once on the dinghy, it was a bear to start and would sometimes die in mid-trip requiring a difficult restart and many more harsh words (this time aimed directly at the manufacturers in particular). As a result our outboard became something of a hood ornament (except that it’s at the back of the boat) which had more hours running while being serviced than it did doing work for us.

An electric outboard is eerie. It makes no sound as it moves you across the water. You have this very strange sensation of not moving and yet you are. It is easy to install on the dinghy and we’ve already made successful trips for provisions and lunch. So far, a great purchase.

New (tiny and quiet) outboard safely attached to our dinghy

We stayed in Avlaki Bay for three nights and it is remarkable how quickly you become attuned to the rhythms of the life in the little village even from our slightly distant vantage point of the boat. There is the woman who walks her dog every evening along the rocky beach. The dog obviously sees many dangers lurking.at the water’s edge and barks excitedly at rocks and moves the most egregious malefactors a little out to sea with his nose. Then there is another woman who comes down to the beach with her little truck each evening and gathers rocks from the beach by hand or in plastic buckets. She loads a few dozen each time and drives back into the village. What’s she building? And, finally, there’s the guy who comes down to the beach at dusk, strips out of his work clothes and goes for his daily swim. Then he lets himself air dry before putting his close back on and, presumably, heading home.

We left the bay on a calm morning heading for the Greek mainland farther south. But as we sailed down through the channel, we passed Kalami Bay where the British author Lawrence Durrell and his family lived. Some of you may have seen the charming British TV series about their time on the island. Actually when Durrell came to Corfu first, he lived in Kontokali which is the little village where the marina we started from is located.

My own (tenuous) connection to Durrell is that for many years, he worked in the British consular service and my high school English teacher shared a posting with him on Cyprus after the Second World War. There are many rumors and some circumstantial evidence that Durrell was, in fact, a spy. So my nice, erudite English teach might also have been …. Spooky!

Odysseus had it easy - he should have tried to get to Greece in 2021

After the enforced fifteen-month layover, we were eager to get back to True Colors this year. We had left her in Italy as usual but they were amongst the hardest hit countries at the beginning of the pandemic and seemed to be adopting a very cautious approach to opening up to foreigners. Greece on the other hand has an economy that depends heavily on tourism and decided to open up sooner than some of their EU colleagues. So we felt that Greece would be a more predictable and positive point of arrival for this season.

There are no direct flights from Phoenix to either Italy or Greece, so each trip out or back implies a layover usually in some intermediate country. Hoping that a common language would be a sound basis for an easy transfer, we opted to fly through London Heathrow.

We booked our flights as soon as Greece allowed us to do so - about 8 weeks before our planned departure. About four weeks before we were due to depart, British Airways called us up and said they had decided to cancel our flight. Gnashing of teeth. But we mover our booking to the same flight the day before and everything was fine. Until a week later, when we got another call from British Airways saying that they were going to cancel this flight too.Very tempted to put a curse on British Airways but that seemed a bit pointless as they were giving a very convincing impression of being cursed already. So, instead, vowed never to fly BA again over the pond. Take THAT, British Airways!

The nice people at American found us another route which met our requirement of going through Heathrow but only flying BA for the leg from London to Athens.

Now COVID-19 testing and vaccination requirements vary widely from country to country and it seems from minute to minute. Given the circumstances this is more or less understandable and would be much more so if the countries would update/develop their computer systems accordingly and tell the public and the airlines just what they wanted them to do. But they pretty much don’t.

Here’s how that played out in our little scenario.

Fully-vaccinated people are welcome in Greece but to get to Greece we had to transfer through Heathrow. England was not yet ready to accept fully vaccinated people entering without a COVID test. Now as all of you who travel internationally know, governments are very clear that if you transfer “airside” through their country you are NOT repeat NOT entering the country. Er … well… kind of … sort of … with just this one exception COVID. It’s all a matter of semantics. But, yes, we had to get the tests needed for entry to a country we were not entering.

So far only a minor irritation until we looked at the timing. The tests had to be done no more that 72 hours before departure. This is where the semantics thing raises its head again. “Departure” it all depends what you mean by “departure”. We were connecting through Charlotte, so our first flight was domestic. the flight from Charlotte was the one which would take us to the UK. In one or two places on the UK site it says that the Charlotte to UK flight was or departure for England. But American thought otherwise and their policy was not to let people onto a flight connecting to a flight in the UK without all the necessary paperwork. So 72 hours was 72 hours before our first flight.

OK we could handle that but most tests take 12-24 hours for the results to be returned and, as those of you who were paying attention right at the beginning will recall, we were leaving on the morning of July 6. July 6 minus three looks like July 3. And in between those dates is July 4th our national holiday when things are CLOSED. the nice vaccination people suggested getting two tests - one on July 2 which was a backup and one on July 3 which would be the real one and they assured us they would be open. We got the test on July 2 no problem, but then they announced that testing and labs would be closed for July 3rd and 4th. No option but to try for a test early on July 5 and see what happens.

We got to the airport early but no results from the July 5 test. The airline pointed out that even if we had the test results the UK site and the BA site could take up to SIX HOURS to verify our results. So “no go” for us.

The American staff were amazing and re-routed us away from Heathrow (at our insistence) and had an itinerary in place for the next day. They also said that they were spending hours with each customer like us trying to understand and help them understand just what was required.

We decamped to the Phoenix Marriott spent a short night ther and flew uneventfully to Athens the next day.

The sad thing about all this is that Homer made up his stories about Odysseus, but I think even his credulity would have been strained by this saga.

Now this is the point where those of you who have ever had to deal with Greek bureaucracy are holding your breath waiting for the next shoe to drop. “The Greeks are up to the task of messing things up”, you are thinking. “Surely they won’t let themselves be beaten by the English.” But no shoe dropped (what is the sound of no shoe dropping?) The Greek app had been informative, friendly and easy to fill out. You get a temporary entrance permit when you enter your data and they say it will be finalized on the day of your arrival in Greece. And even for those of us who traveled overnight, the URL was updated automatically and it literally took two minutes to enter Greece.

It will take some time for us to recover from this and prepare for the return leg that is also through Heathrow (gulp). Hopefully things will have settled down a bit by then. if not, maybe we should just sail back.

Returning to Italy

Looking at the overall weather pattern for the next 10 days, getting to Italy doesn’t seem to be much of a problem. But going beyond Salento to the west is not looking good. There are three bodies of water we have to cross, each of which is showing stormy weather at annoyingly frequent intervals over that period. This means that everything would have to go just right to get to Sicily and back in the time we have available. “Plan for the worst and hope for the best” is our usual maxim, so reluctantly we have to give up on seeing Sicily and our friends Morella and Luigi this year. We’ll have to catch up next year.

So the morning after the Sardine Festival we head off back northwards to Corfu to take advantage of, what looks to be, a pretty large weather window to cross back to Italy. But heading north from Preveza to Corfu can be an onerous undertaking. The winds typically blow from the northwest (the direction we want to go) and there is usually a swell from the same which has had the whole length of the Adriatic to gather strength. Fortunately the island of Corfu provides some shelter from the swell - but it still can be a bumpy and slow ride.

When we come out of the Preveza channel there is, unusually, a wind blowing from the east. It’s not particularly strong but it provides us with enough forward motion to be able to switch the engine off and sail in peace. Usually (because of the aforesaid hard work) we don’t have much time or inclination to appreciate this part of the Greek coastline. But today we can. It is quite lovely - a mixture of hill farms, olive groves and beach towns all with a background of rugged mountains. I am guessing that this is a part of Greece that only the Greeks know about - the logistics of getting here would make it difficult for the average sun-seeking tourist.

The wind finally dies and we are resigned to motoring but the sea is calm with no swell so the passage is at least comfortable.

The forecast is for the normal wind pattern to start early in the afternoon but today it is earlier still. We only have to motor for less than an hour until the wind starts to pick up from the northwest. We are not pressed for time, so we can afford to take big wide tacks to head us zig-zag towards our destination.

The wind is forecast to grow in strength as the afternoon progresses - and it does.  Soon we have a steady twelve knots and we continue to tack, this time more speedily, towards our evening goal. About two hours out from our destination we have steady winds of 18 knots with stronger gusts. The sea has picked up a bit too. True Colors is zipping along between 7 and 8 knots.

The fun thing about sailing like this is that when you get to your destination you have to stop - quickly but in a controlled fashion (you hope). So we scream into our bay, swing True Colors round into the wind, and drop her sails in a fairly professional manner. The bay is one we have stayed in before and there is plenty of room for us to park.  The bay protects us from the wind and only a small amount of swell bobs the boats up and down in the early evening.

The wind is forecast to die completely in the evening. It doesn’t ; it strengthens and swings round to the north-east. The increased strength is annoying but the good news is that this bay offers near perfect protect from winds from this direction. (Of course I planned that.). The night is a bit more energetic than we expect as the wind keeps blowing all the way through.

The next day we head less than 20 milies north to Mourtos-Syvota. This is a popular anchorage that is a bit open to the prevailing winds.  This makes good holding for the anchor a prime objective.  We have found the holding here to be a little suspect and don’t really want to wake up in the night finding ourselves es dragging our anchor all the way onto the town quay.

Earlier in the season, discretion was the better part of valor and we left rather than trust the suspect holding.  But this time we are determined to do better. Our first couple of attempts produced the same insecure result but the third time was the charm. We got the anchor firmly dug in to a nice patch of sand and it wouldn’t budge even when we put the engine in reverse at 1600 revs (our final test).

We marvel at folks who pick a spot, throw the anchor over the side, check that it hit the bottom and call it good without ever testing just how secure they are. Even if you don’t do this yourself, you have to worry about boats near you that adopt this approach.

But the anchorage here is very picturesque with a view over to Corfu that is particularly attractive at sunset. We like it so much (and and are sufficiently proud of our anchoring) that we spend two peaceful nights here.

Our last leg is on to Corfu.

The weather is calm - water-skiing anyone? And we motor to the marina at Gouvia outside Corfu town.

We take the opportunity to do some sightseeing in the town and some re-provisioning for the next few days. The relative sophistication and cosmopolitan nature of Corfu makes a pleasant change from the more simple delights of Ionian cruising.

There are some good shops and a flourishing cafe society which provides a great opportunity for people watching and ice cream.

What’s Greek for “Banksy”?

Gouvia is really the best (largely because it’s the only) marina for making a short crossing back to Italy, but the logistics are more than a little stressful. To check out of the country we have to visit the Port Police and the Customs - the Port Police is in the marina; the Customs is in the Ferry Terminal a cab ride away. The Port Police is nearly always busy and can mean a wait of multiple hours. But today the line is relatively short and the policeman is friendly. He queries why we would want to leave his lovely country just to go to Italy. He also lets us know that he has visited Boston (where True Colors is registered) and he liked it. But he complains that he couldn’t get used to going to bed so early - people in Greece eat late not starting until 9:00 or 10:00pm and not finishing until after midnight. We can see how New England might be a bit of a shock. He clearly believes the USA is under-sophisticated.

The Customs (20 minutes away) is in the same place as they handle ferry passengers to Albania and they give the impression that they find dealing with private yachts a serious imposition and don’t have any apparent system in place to do so. This translates into more hours waiting in total uncertainty. 

During this “process”, Lori strikes up a conversation with a nice lady from Serbia who is waiting for the Albanian ferry (which is late and no-one has any information about what to expect). She says things like this don’t happen in Serbia any more; things are efficient, customer-friendly and service-oriented. She says Greece really needs to get with the program and she is right. Some people are preferring Albania as a tourist destination compared to Greece. Remember not so long ago Albania was known as the “Cuba of the Mediterranean” (and it wasn’t because of the coffee or the music).

When we finally penetrate the inner sanctum of the Customs office, the officer is not friendly but also not particularly interested. It is important to take a deep breath and persevere. And eventually, dismissively we get all the paperwork done and finally we are “free to go”- interesting phrase and a very different perspective from that of the Port policeman.

We have made the crossing to Italy overnight on most of our previous trips but this time we plan to break the journey at a group of Greek islands that lie off the northwest coast of Corfu. This means that an 80-mile trip splits into a 30-mile trip and a 50-mile trip - each of which can be done in a day.

These islands, called the Diapontians, The total population of the three islands in the group is just about 1200 - so you must have to REALLY like your neighbors. During the second millennium, largely due to their proximity to the strategically important Corfu, they were the site of numerous sea battles in the struggle for control of the sea trading routes. Today they are pretty sleepy and are focused mainly on very low-key tourism and, therefore, a very different proposition than the mass tourism of Corfu.

We spend a pleasant night anchored in a large bay on the south of the island and, the next day, head across another totally calm sea to make landfall in Santa Maria di Leuca on the very tip of the “heel” of Italy.

Courtesy flag changing ceremony

Lori celebrates returning to Italy by ordering pizza for dinner.

Wherein the gods remind us who’s in charge

Our intention was to make the crossing from Corfu to Italy with our friend Alphonso and his son Fabrizio. Alphonso had been looking forward to this trip for some time. The plan was for them to catch an overnight ferry from Brindisi to Corfu, meet us in the morning, and sail back with us overnight to the Italian coast.

The “real” Corfu

 If this starts to sound like the Odyssey, it was starting to feel like it too.

The weather was not being entirely cooperative. There was a window that we might squeeze through that would give us a good sail across the Adriatic. But after that it looked like there would be four or five days when a crossing would not be possible. On the night of their departure, we got a text from Alphonso saying that their ferry had broken down and would not now be able to leave until the next day.  The sound you hear is the gods snickering.

The problem was that, while on paper they lost only twelve hours, it would actually take 24 hours for us to leave because of the opening hours of the customs offices (who would authorize us to leave the country). The sound you now hear is that of a window closing.

Lori and I looked at the immediate weather forecast and concluded that we ourselves would not make a night crossing in these conditions and most certainly should not make it with a 10 year-old crew member. So, to everyone’s disappointment, we cancelled.

This created a couple of problems for us too. The trip to Italy was a precursor to our onward travels to Sicily.  Losing five days at this point in the season makes it challenging to get to Sicily and back in time for the end of the season. We will have to monitor this closely. I want to get to Sicily!

The second problem was that marinas tend to get full at weekends with their charter customers changing over. So there are few places for ordinary boats like us. And in this case, there were no berths available at all. Lori was, quite reasonably, not in favor of spending three or four nights at anchor with 30 knot winds in the forecast.

So where to go? The storms were forecast to be to our north and west, so we couldn’t go there.  There are no marinas and very few sheltered harbors on the remote Greek coast to our east. So the only option was going back south again into the more sheltered waters east of the island of Lefkas ….. where we just came from.  

“Stop snickering up there, you gods. This is not really funny.”

“Oh yes it is … from our perspective. You have been reading your Odyssey haven’t you? So you know we’ve got a lot more where that came from. Do you have any plans for the next twenty years or so?”

“OK. OK!”

On the way south we aim to spend the night in a bay that we haven’t used before. It is well-sheltered from the prevailing winds and the direction of any storm.  As we cross the last few miles the wind starts to increase and we have nearly 20 knots and a very choppy sea.

Anchoring is calm

But inside the anchorage it is beautifully protected and once we have the anchor set a peaceful night follows.

The journey south has to be timed so that our arrival coincides with the opening of the bridge at the north of the Lefkas canal. We are mostly motoring in the morning so our progress is fairly predictable. Even as the winds start to pick up, our progress is still good and we make it to the entrance to the canal with a bit more that 10 minutes to spare. But this ten minutes involves waiting, not going anywhere while the wind gets back up to 20 knots. It is a delicate dance with the other boats that are waiting too. But, in the end, it’s a pretty straightforward deal.

Which is more than can be said for parking in the marina. By the time we get there, it’s blowing over 23 knots with stronger gusts. And of course it’s a crosswind.

Proper parking in this kind of situation involves backing into the wind and then into your berth. Usually it’s the second part that’s the problem. But trying to get True Colors going in reverse into this wind is a challenge. Our first attempt results in, what would be called in equestrian show jumping, a refusal. I have the throttle in almost full reverse and we can’t even make 1 knot of speed. With the help of the marinero, we reposition ourselves and start over.  This time we take a run at it. True Colors seems to approve of this approach and in pretty much one smooth but speedy motion we glide into our berth and tie up. We try to look casual.

The next two days are very windy - even in the relative shelter of the marina.

For our second circuit of the Ionian, we resolve to spend as many nights as possible at anchor. We provision up and set off down the canal early to avoid the charter boats that will soon be trying to park in winds that continue to blow strongly.

Our first night is spent in one of our favorite little bays which gives Lori another opportunity to swim. She is becoming much more confident and often ventures off without her noodle! (Thank you, Jane!)

On our second night we anchor off the little island of Kastos. Lori, inspired by our President, likes the island so much that she makes a public offer to buy it.

The only locals to hear this are the goats that clamber down the cliff to forage on the beach.

They are unimpressed by the offer and keep on doing what they’ve always done. Just like the people in Greenland and Denmark.

With the true Odyssean spirit, we head on to Ithaka - his home. This time our destination is the largest town on the island, Vathi.

This is a superbly protected bay in which to anchor apart from one teensy problem - the katabatic evening winds blow directly into the mouth of the bay and regularly with speeds in excess of twenty knots. This makes for a bumpy ride for a few hours early each evening but fortunately the holding is good and the anchor digs in well.

This might be a good time for a diversion into the mysteries of anchoring.

In principle it’s easy - you take a heavy metal hook with lots of chain attached to it and throw it into the ocean (while keeping the other end attached to the boat - anyone remember “Captain Ron”?)

In practice - oh no it’s not.  Firstly it’s a three dimensional problem - the boat’s location on the water, its relation to the land and the depth of the water. But to this you have to add the wind (which changes over time) and the presence of other boats (which also changes over time). So it rapidly becomes a four (or five) dimensional problem Then you add to this the behavior of other boaters and how they “solve” the same problem for their boats. And all this after a long day’s sailing and before wine!

We know a very experienced sailboat racer who will not anchor his cruising yacht because, fearful for the safety of his boat and crew, he says he could never sleep peacefully at night. And this is indeed sometimes a valid problem. If the winds gain strength overnight it can be necessary to set an “anchor watch” to pay attention to what is happening. For no matter how much tackle you have in the water there is always the possibility that the anchor will drag and you will slide sideways into an adjacent boat or, worse still, the land.

Many books have been written on this topic. One of the most famous is called “Happy Hooking”. This is not to be confused with another book (and numerous films) with very similar titles which will teach you absolutely nothing about how to spend a peaceful night at sea (or anywhere else for that matter).

Our last day in the inner Ionian is an odd one. Usually the weather pattern is a calm morning followed by moderate to winds in the afternoon. We have a long day ahead of us and are prepared to motor. But this morning there is a very pleasant 12 knots of wind blowing from the  north-ish. This is where we want to go but we can beat (zig-zag) our way in the direction we want to go.  This wind dies by the middle of the day only to pick up again two hours later with a boisterous 20-25 knots that give us a couple of good sailing hours in the afternoon. It was one of those days where we really felt that we were “sailing”.

After a night in Vliho (with our friends who are surprised to see us back) we are heading back north through the canal again and towards Preveza. As often happens, just north of the canal has some beautiful sailing conditions and we have some great fun sailing in the moderate swell.

In Preveza we park on to town quay. Many small Greek villages and towns by the sea have large quays which used to serve the fishing fleets. But overfishing has reduced the fleets to a fraction of their former size and, as a result, the town quays have been re-purposed to provide mooring facilities for recreational sailors. These facilities are not sophisticated or elaborate and, in particular, tend to imply that there are no officials there to help you dock. Usually, other boaters will assist if they see that you are trying to park. But today no-one appears.

I can get the boat close enough to the quay and hold her there but getting the lines ashore and back to the boat  usually requires shore-based help (especially when there is just two of a crew.) However, this time it’s Lori to the rescue. Perhaps inspired by her earlier landing on Kastos, she leaps ashore, slips our first line through the ring and leaps back on to the boat and makes it fast. Then she does it again  with the other line. Impressive!

Thirty seconds after she has completed this action, someone on the shore comes up and says, “Do you need any help?” We smile politely…..

We plan to spend two nights in Preveza over the weekend. And it turns out to be a very special one. Firstly it is their full-moon weekend (curiously it is not actually the full-moon) where the stores stay open until four in the morning.

There’s music and street food.

Preveza has a population of about 20,000 and it looks like pretty much all of them (even small children) are walking around long into the early hours - it is quite remarkable. We are still not sure exactly why they do this.

The second night is the Sardine Festival. Sardines are a big part of the local economy so, as the website says it is “natural” to dedicate a festival to them. I think the sardines might have preferred to go unsung as nearly two tonnes of them are consumed by the 15,000 people who typically attend.

The festival starts about 9:00pm and runs into the small hours of the morning There’s food of course..

The Sampler-in-Chief at work. It’s a tough job but somebody has to do it.

And there’s a lot of music an d dancing.

There’s always something for the kids

Milk with a kick?

An d the opportunity to sample local specialties.

Greece: The Ionian Sea; Old Haunts

Firstly, an apology for the elapsed time since the last post. When sailing you get a very water-centric view of the world and you can forget just how remote some of the places we visit are. Greece, with its cellphone limitations, has brought this home to us. We have had periods of days without cellphone access or access that is so slow (Do people really still use “2G”? Isn’t that where some guy in a uniform delivers you an envelope on a silver tray and waits for a reply?) that most of the websites we use won’t even let us access them. So a blog post has had to wait until we were back in a good coverage zone. Sorry!

But perhaps it’s a benefit. The Ionian is a beautiful sailing area but it’s not full of great architecture or places of any particular interest. The charm comes from the small villages and remote anchorages (hence the limited cellphone service) along with the perfect blue sea and, almost always, cloudless skies.  So this blog entry while still maintaining a chronology will be less of a tour synopsis and more of  impressions and sense of place.

We haven’t been in Greece for three years so it’s good to be back. This is where Lori got the sailing “bug” and we want to see how much our perspectives have changed as we have become (hopefully) more capable and confident. Another objective is to spend more time anchoring and less time in marinas. This is not possible in Italy where most of the overnights are in custom-built marinas.

The first thing that has struck us is the similarity between Greece and Croatia. There are significant differences also but there are more similarities than we expected. There are plenty of  rugged islands to visit with old harbors and bays where we can tie up or anchor.  The islands and the landscape in general in Croatia are more barren whereas Greece offers a good mix of rocky islands, natural forests and olive groves. There are simple tavernas with unsophisticated, limited, but good, food. Typically, the weather is a little more aggressive in Croatia than it is in the Ionian but, as we shall see, the Ionian can flex its muscles from time to time.

The commercial differences are quite marked.  In Greece, they have recently introduced (pretty nominal) charges for mooring on many of the town quays and, even in high season, the marina charges are very reasonable compared with Italy and Croatia (compared to Croatia they are about 40% less). Croatia has put in a lot of dedicated infrastructure and they seem bent on recouping their investments as soon as possible.

But for us the objective for the next few weeks is to be “far from the grid.”

So our first stop after Corfu is in a little bay just north of Igoumenitsa (the major mainland ferry port for Corfu). We are perhaps 5 - 10 miles away from it but the bay is tranquil and quiet except for the background hum of the cicadas. We are one of four boats anchored here.The only other people we see are focal fishermen There is a herd of sleepy cows on the shore who look like they could do with a cool place to stand. The bottom of the bay is muddy so the water is not the clear turquoise that we expect to see farther south.

Our plan was to meander down the coast and go through the canal at Lefkas into the inner Ionian. Mother nature had other ideas. The next big storm was coming down the Adriatic and prudence dictated that we be somewhere safe before it arrived. There are only two options - Lefkas and Preveza.  Preveza is where we kept our boat for the first three winters so we know it well. It is great marina but it is exposed to wind and swell from the west and, of course, that is where the weather is forecast to come from.

So we make the (only) choice and head for Lefkas. It’s a long 9-hour day with a complication at the end. Lefkas describes itself as an “island” and it is - sort of.  It is really part of the mainland but separated by a canal first built by the Corinthians a few thousand years ago. There is a road bridge across this canal that only opens to boats once every hour. So the penalty for timing it even slightly wrong is a tedious and tricky wait for the next opening time.

We time it perfectly and get through on the earlier of our two projected opening times. We get tucked in and wait for the storm to arrive - which it does overnight. But we are safe and snug.

Lefkas is a fair-sized traditional Greek harbor town that has developed a tourism-based economy serving holiday makers who visit the island and its beaches as well as yacht people who spend a night or two in the marina. The marina has also become a dauntingly large base for Sunsail (a yacht chartering operation). The good thing about this is that Lefkas can offer a good number of restaurants but, sadly, many don’t offer a selection that goes much beyond gyros and souvlaki. But overall it’s a more vibrant place to be than most towns in the Ionian.

Sailing is not all fun and excitement in the sun; sometimes there are chores and problems; sometimes there are nasty problems which turn into even nastier chores.

The faint-stomached among you may choose to skip the next paragraph or so. Our  problem was that our toilet was not flushing properly (and eventually not at all). The usual  cause of this symptom is a failure of the euphemistically-named “joker valve” - this is designed to stop waste products (another euphemism) creeping back into the bowl. According to the manufacturer it is a job that takes “five to ten minutes”. And they’re right IF you have the toilet on a work bench at the appropriate level with plenty of space around to effect t the change. 

Our boat builder (Beneteau) put it in a place where you either have to be able to stand on your head for long periods of time or you can enlist the help of a passing eight-year old. Greek labor laws (totally unreasonably in my opinion) prohibit the use of children for this kind of work and i was never any good at anything that even mildly resembled gymnastics. (Lori was good a this kind of thing in high school but somehow she does not offer to take on the task, murmuring things like “captain’s job”).

So I relax the “five-to-ten minute” goal.

An hour later, I have with much sweat replaced the joker valve (which looked just fine) and the problem remains unresolved. Gnashing of teeth and rending of raiment.

Over the winter, we installed an additional line flushing mechanism to deal with situations like this. This covered nearly all of the lines in our system and we try it multiple times to no avail.

Remember that “nearly” in the previous sentence? Guess what line it didn’t flush? Yup! An email exchange with the boat yard acrimoniously confirms that they thought this was out of scope.

The only recourse now is to take the discharge line apart. Again a small but very strong child would be ideal for this task but those labor laws ….. How can they be so behind the times with telecommunications but right on the spot when it comes getting small kids to do dirty work?

And it really is dirty work - a big part of the problem here is that when you disconnect the discharge line, they warn you that there are likely to be waste products (that euphemism, again) still lurking therein and a hazmat suit is your best line of defense. Failing that, rubber gloves must suffice.

So inadequately protected, I start on the task. It is not easy. Why do Beneteau put things where they do? To torture boat owners? Or perhaps provide job opportunities for small children in less liberal countries?

Eventually I get it apart and as you can see it is, by any measure, blocked. Don’t ask what the crystalline deposits are, you don’t want to know (but I’m sure you already do).

Nasty chemicals are very useful for dissolving this stuff and again rubber gloves are an essential part of one’s ensemble. But for the lines themselves, the best thing to do is to beat them on the ground to dislodge the crystalline build up.  I always wondered where the phrase “beat the shit out of something” came from and now I guess I do.

A couple of re-assembly hours later, problem solved and everything is working fine.

The faint-stomached may rejoin at this point.

Our next destination is large bay just south of here where there is a “yacht club” run by the people who used look after our boat when she was here. To get there, we have to travel down the length of the Lefkas canal. This used to be a little stressful because the narrow canal was poorly dredged and even more poorly marked; slight deviations from the direct line could run you aground or, worse still, bring about a close encounter  a “channel marker” which closely resembled partially submerged metal fenceposts. 

This season there are shiny new markers which look like (and are) real buoys and the channel has been widened and deepened. Super-yachts can bring about change for good, I guess.

Lori feels confident enough to take us down through the canal and makes the trip without any problems whatsoever. South of the canal, unusually for this time of day, we find about 15 knots of wind and we have a great couple of hours sailing True Colors at 8 knots across the wide and surprisingly uncrowded Ionian.

We park at the Vliho Yacht Club and greet old friends and acquaintances who all seem to be thriving despite our absence. 

Our plan is to spend the next two nights at anchor in a couple of spots that we can recall from our previous trips. The first is a beautiful cove on the small island of Kastos. We are lucky no-one is there yet and we get to drop our anchor in the middle of the small cove. A couple of boats park near us later but don’t impact the  tranquility of our situation.

After a peaceful night we make a short trip across to a sheltered bay on the mainland. The main claim to fame of this shallow bay is that once twenty or so years ago the author of the definitive pilot book for the Ionian claims he saw a buzzard here. To our knowledge, no-one else has ever seen one and quite a few sailors wonder just what Rod was drinking that night and if he really knows what a buzzard looks like.

It’s a great bay to park in and is generally well-sheltered from the prevailing winds.  While the winds are not forecast to be strong, we nevertheless make sure that our anchor is well dug in. This turns out to be a wise move. The winds pick up and are gusting over 25 knots from a direction that is slightly more to the north than usual and consequently the anchorage is not as well-protected as usual.

We are fine, but other boats are not. One tries to anchor and has to change its position three times before they feel secure. Two others also have to relocate. The wind blows all night (which is unusual) but by the morning it is settling down a bit and we have a quiet motor sail across to Sami on Cephalonia.

Cephalonia in general and Sami in particular was the location for the film based on the book “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin” which established Nicholas Cage as a Hollywood star.  While some can forgive the filmmakers for this dreadful error, the book and the film are controversial in their own right for their portrait of Cephalonians and their history. This is not a topic where the innocent visitor  lacking a nuanced understanding of the times can tread unwarily, so we leave it alone.

The town is a lower-key, smaller and more workaday version of Lefkas - a good blend of traditional working town and tourist-driven economy. Its quayside restaurants are lively and thriving with great local specialties like Kleftiko and Stifado widely available and a welcome change from the usual Greek grilled food staples.

The inter-island ferry parks close to the marina. This is a pretty flamboyant affair. For its short stay, it does not even bother to anchor or tie up. It just backs up to close to the quayside drops its ramp and lets people cars and large trucks drive on and off without being secure in any fashion. (How can you have child labor laws and yet permit this deeply unsafe practice?)

When it stays longer, it does tie up and anchor. However, this is achieved by driving to about one and a half ferry-lengths from the quay, dropping the anchor and pirouetting 180 degrees on the chain until the stern is neatly lined up against the quay. Then they tie up. It’s kind of like a ferry version of a hockey-stop. I wonder how many ferries they dent when a new captain is learning the ropes?

We head next for the adjacent island of Ithaka - the legendary home of Odysseus (he of the Odyssey fame).

And on the way we encounter another example of the problems of modern-day rich and famous people. As we make our way to the capital, Vathi, we scout out a bay where we might anchor.  It is filled with a 295-foot super-yacht called Lionheart which is owned by Sir Philip Green.

It set him back about $150m. For this trivial sum 12 guests and 30 crew can enjoy the Greek islands in seclusion. However, parked next to it there is another super yacht a little more than half its size.

You have to think they’re saying something like “Bummer.” 

But wait a moment, this yacht was designed by Sir Philip’s wife, Tina.

So here’s another one of those conversations that don’t make sense to the rest of us.

“Hey, dear I’m getting a little bored and I need a project.”

“That’s nice dear. Do you have anything in mind?”

“Err, yes. I’d like to design a yacht.”

“But we have a yacht.”

“I know, but i want to design another.”

“Don’t you like our yacht? Our $150m yacht.”

“Of course I do but I want another one to play with, I mean, work on”.

“I’m not made of money. Well, actually I am. But my point is still valid. Do you have someone who will fund the project and eventually buy the boat?”

“Of course, dear”.

“Who is it?”

“Err, your 21 year-old son would like to talk to you about that.”

So, if the rumors are true, the Green family cannot spend a night on the same super-yacht as each other. But they still appreciate the benefits of really, really, really expensive family time.

Kioni is one of the nicest little villages in the whole of the Ionian.  It is a little touristy but on such a small scale that it retains its charm and atmosphere. 

It is so nice that it’s usually hard to find a good parking spot on the quay. But this year people are saying that boat numbers are down and, as a consequence, we find a nice location on the quay and decide to stay two nights.

On the hill above the town is one of the possible locations of Odysseus palace. No trace remains but some artifacts from the time have been found.

Kioni is still a fishing town and where there are fish on lan d you will find cats; where there are fish restaurants you will find plenty of cats.

Some are cuter than others, of course.

Mother Nature intervenes again and another storm is forecast. The Ionian doesn’t have many marinas and only some town quays are safe in storms. So we decide to head way south almost into the Gulf of Corinth to a town called Messolonghi. Those of you who know your poetry may recall that this is where the English romantic poet, Lord Byron, died while he was fighting in the Greek War of Independence. It would be nice to say that he died while fighting off hordes of Turks. But no - he drowned while swimming on one of his days off. Not so “romantic” but he still gets a suitably martial statue, anyway.

Messolonghi is located on salt marshes and lagoons and hence is great for sea food. The quality attracts all sorts of visitors and locals. This local was snacking just at the back of our boat; he/she was about five feet long. This close that is BIG. 

We spend the next few days at anchor in a couple of spots with perfect water for swimming. 

But today there is an added bonus. In her usual way, Lori strikes up a casual conversation with a passing Israeli ex-police officer on a paddle-board.

“I’ve never been on one of those before”, she says meaningfully.

Soon she is off on the board solo.

Despite the fact that she does well and does not fall in, I am prohibited from publishing any pictures here. However, those of you seeking some kind of record of this epic event may visit www.makecolinscottarichmanfund.com and purchase hard copies in a range of sizes. 

It is now time to head back through the canal on our way north to pick up our Italian friend, Alphonso. He is looking to make a long night passage and we have offered him and his son a place on our boat as we make the trip back to Italy.

Going where the wind blows us

If you are sitting in Montenegro (as we were) and want to go to Greece by boat, you have only a couple of options. The first is to sail straight down the middle of the Adriatic and make landfall in Corfu. The big disadvantage of this is that the distance is about 180 miles which translates into 30 hours non-stop sailing with at least one overnight session. This is not impossible (we’ve done it before) but it takes a toll if there are only two of you. Sleep-walking while trying to park your boat is not a recipe for success.

The other alternative is to go over to Italy, spend a few days there and then cross back to Corfu. Both of these sails are overnight but they are comparatively less distance and less stressful that the “one-and-done” approach. Since we have to go back to Brindisi anyway to pick up a replacement chartplotter, this is the option we choose.

The difficulty with this option is that the Adriatic is a sizable body of water - in these parts about 90-100 miles wide - and the winds can tend to funnel right down it. Additionally there is a phenomenon in Croatia known as the “bura”. While this really just means a northeast wind, sailors use it to describe a seriously strong wind that does indeed come from that direction but at speeds anywhere between 40 and 100 knots (45 - 115 mph). In case you’re unsure, this is to be avoided when sailing. The striking things about this wind are that it comes with relatively little warning and that its effects can b e felt all the way across the Adriatic to Italy.

The image above is from our chartplotter. if you look carefully, you will see the outline of the Italian coast in the bottom left third of the plot and in the top right you can make out the coasts and islands of Croatia and Montenegro. The bit in-between is the Adriatic. This plot is of the winds. As you might guess “red” is not good. And you can see how the impact of the winds from the Balkans flows all the way to Italy.

In Italy, while we’ve been away, the weather has been truly weird. It’s June in the south of Italy and that white thing is a hailstone!

A bura is forecast for the time we are thinking about leaving. if we can’t get out before it we’ll be stuck in Montenegro for another 3-4 days. But we have to be prudent. So we keep ourselves in a state of readiness in a safe harbor and monitor the weather. A window that was too small for us to cross through suddenly opens up and we think we can make it. As I check out, the harbormaster says “There’s a bura coming”. But I ask him to look at his latest update (on a weather service we don’t have) and he confirms my view. Based on our conservative average speed we will make it with four hours to spare before the storm hits - 20% “squish”.

We set sail and sail (i.e. no use of the engine) for more than half the way at an average of almost 8 knots. Wonderful! And very helpful for storm avoidance. The wind drops and becomes unfavorable for sailing, so we motor the rest of the way to Brindisi without any problem. You may wonder how we deal; with the stress of overnight sailing. Here is one element of Lori’s arduous training - creative ways to eat cherries.

Four hours later, right on cue, the storm hits. This is not the kind of weather to be out in.

We have our usual slow pace of problem resolution at the boatyard but we are eventually ready to leave for Corfu seven days later. Before we go we stock up with wine.  Greece has many strong points but their wine is not one of them. They have  much to learn from the Italians. So we set out for one of our favorite producers. But it turns out we’re not exactly sure where it is, so we  meander through small villages near Brindisi until we find the place.

You can buy wine in bottles here but Italians generally don’t do it that way.  They prefer the gas pump approach. With a suitable 5-liter container, you can have your choice of four of the wines they put in bottles but at less than 25% of the price. We should be good for a month in Greece!

Despite the previous storm having passed and having enjoyed some days of fine weather, another storm is forecast. This time it’s n to quite so bad, we have a 36 hour window in which to make a 20-hour windless motor-sail. We grasp the opportunity and have one of the most peaceful and placid overnights we can remember. The water is oil-dark in the light of a three-quarter moon; a few ferries and passenger ships glide by us; a fisherman is on the VHF worrying about sailboats (not us) getting tangled in his nets; at night the coast of Albania is so dark that it’s hard to believe that anyone lives there.

We are tired but we park uneventfully in Gouvia Marina outside Corfu and I head off to check-in to Greece. Normally, I don’t really dwell on the check-in process here, but this time it’s special. This process has always been bit obscure in Greece and a minefield for the uninitiated.

This year, after many previous failed attempts, they have introduced a new tax system for cruising yachts and you can start the process online - in theory.

You will remember the old saying, “In theory, there’s no difference between theory and practice; in practice, there is”. And the Greeks have decided to implement a system that is true to this maxim.

On the way over, I have filled out my first bureaucratic Greek form. All such forms (no matter what the country) ask some strange questions. For this one, as a non-optional part of my personal details, I have to give my mother and father’s names. There is no conceivable way they can  use or check this information. I could have put Minnie and Mickey Mouse and they would not know. But that is playing with fire - bureaucracies can be vindictive if they think you’re not taking them seriously.

My first stop is the Port Police - this is kind of like the Harbormaster. they have a small office in the marina and there is a cluster of six or so people waiting outside in the shade of the trees. I feel like we’re the followers of Socrates waiting for his lessons to begin. Sadly no; much more prosaic.

After about an hour, I get my turn. The nice lady notes my details and that I have a completed tax form.

“Good!” she says, “But now you have to take this to the Customs to get your cruising permit and pay the tax”

“Where’s that?” I ask.

“In town”

“In town?”

“Yes. Bring back your receipt and I can let you sail on from here”.

“In town” is a fifteen-minute cab ride to the ferry terminal. Here I sit for 90 minutes outside the customs office waiting for the customs person to deal with the two people in front of me. Eventually, I am sitting in front of him; the nice lady from the Port Police has let him know I am coming; he is ready for me.

I eagerly show him the paper copy of my electronic tax form. He looks at it with a totally uninterested glance and says, “It’s easier for me to do it than use your form”.

I don’t know what the Greek definition of “easier” is but his 45-minute process is grindingly soul-destroying. Some data can be entered into his computer, but the rest is done by hand. It involves the use of carbon paper to make multiple copies - all those of you under 30 should look “carbon paper” up in Wikipedia (it comes just after “papyrus”). I have to write my full name and sign at least five times. As in Italy any kind of bureaucratic process involves stamping the documents. However it does not seem to have struck anyone that quintuplicate forms that use carbon paper must necessitate five separate stamps - one for each of the copies.

But in the end it is done.

As I am leaving, I ask him about an island we might visit on the way back to Italy. His eyes light up and a big smile comes over his face. “It’s lovely there”, he says, “The color of the water is so beautiful. It’s great for swimming.” His whole expression says “if only I were there now”.

I say, “We love it too.”

He shakes my hand with an even bigger smile and says “Enjoy your time here.”

By the time I get back to the marina the Port Police is, of course, closed for the day. And this is where the storm that we dodged on the way here comes back into the picture.

The winds build up as the evening draws on, the skies darken not just with the oncoming night and the storm breaks over us. By just before midnight we have 30-knot winds, rain and lightning.

No problems really, but the nearest lightning strike seems to hit the village behind the marina. The next morning the marina has no power - this means the Port Police have no power and their office is closed for the morning at least.

We try to be proactive and go through the other vital ritual when you arrive in a new country - getting a data SIM card for our wi-fi router. In general, in Europe, these are pretty cheap; much cheaper, I would say, than the US. And, in theory, you can roam with these cards across the whole of the EU without incurring roaming charges. Neat!  But, here we go again, this is “in theory”. Someone has worked out that there might be an arbitrage opportunity if you buy a SIM card in one country and use it in another. S0 they limit the roaming usage to something that is useless for our purposes. Hence the ritual visit to a telecom store.

There is one walking distance away. It is called “Tech-it-easy”. But the owner is not taking it easy - he has no power either. A tech store without power is like a  bookstore without lights - all the products are there but you can’t really use them. He is not happy. He does not know when power will return.

He says, “Usually when this happen s ….” “Usually?” “It happens quite a bit”, he says with a sigh. “Sometimes they are planned, sometimes they’re not.”

We leave. Power is returned to the marina in the afternoon but the Port Police is too busy for us to wait and the tech store has closed for the day.

The next morning the tech store still doesn’t have power and we activate Plan B.  We take a bus ride into Corfu Town. We’re getting pretty bold these days; where we used to take taxis, we now take buses - way cheaper and almost as convenient. (And, for those of you under 40, there is no “Uber option”)

Corfu Town is unlike any other in Greece. It’s more reminiscent of Valletta in Malta than it is of anywhere on the Greek mainland. It’s not a surprise really. Corfu, like Malta, has been at the  intersection of shipping lanes for thousands of years.

As a result the  architectural and cultural influences are many and varied.

It has a great atmosphere and it is a very pleasant place to relax and watch the people go by.

It has a lot of British influences that date back to the time that Britain governed the island, and a lot of British tourists..

The croquet lawn is next to the cricket pitch

After an  enjoyable afternoon, it’s back to the chores in hand. There are a few telecom stores in Corfu Town and we seek out the recommended one. On the surface it looks like any telecom store -sleek smartphones on the wall, glitzy ads for fiber delivery on large screens on the wall - all creating an enticing view of the near future. Remember that thing about theory and practice? This is the “theory”.

In practice, we are in a line of about three customers; there are four people serving (two of whom serve the same customer throughout our whole visit. It takes over an hour to reach the head of the line.

The process is simple but, inevitably, involves paperwork that is somehow difficult for the store person to fill out. She seeks help. It is swift and decisive. She stumbles onwards and completes the order. We get a SIM card. We ask “Can you activate it for us?”

With a deeply troubled expression she takes out her personal phone to execute the activation. Her phone is not a smartphone, her phone has a monochrome screen with that strange numeric keypad we all used to use fifteen years ago where three letters are associated with each digit and you have to make multiple key presses to get the letter you want. Or not.

It takes her half an hour to activate our SIM card - mostly spent dealing with typing errors. We are frustrated/demoralized. Lori has looked like she wanted to bite someone’s head off for the last hour. We wonder how these people survive in the modern world (but I think I said that already). For Greeks, a phone store must be something like purgatory where they can see the promised land but, as a result of some unspecified failing, they are destined to never attain it. It is fortunate that the Greeks generally have a sunny disposition - otherwise the suicide rate would be sky high.

The next day, I wait another hour outside the Port Police to get our clearance to leave. The officer is dismissive of the new system. “You need a degree in astrophysics to work it out.” The paper ledger works just fine for him and with our entry safely there and our Transit Log in my bag, we can head south to our old stomping grounds.

Montenegro - the problems of the rich and famous

Montenegro is a stunningly beautiful country with a spectacular coastline, a beautiful alpine interior and a fascinating mixture of cultures that you can really only find here in the Balkans.

Montenegro is the third newest country in the world having been created in 2006 as a result of the wars that broke up the former Yugoslavia. Only Kosovo and South Sudan are newer - not exactly tourist Meccas. And that is where Montenegro is different. It has no industry to speak of and most of its economy was driven by agriculture. So it is now driving hard to attract tourists - a lot of whom are involved in water-based activities around the interior bays of Kotor, Risan and Tivat.

Development is progressing fast but, at least for the moment, what is being built on the inner bays is pretty tasteful. Spearheading this is Porto Montenegro a former military base that has been transformed into a yacht and, more importantly, super-yacht marina.

We call Porto Montenegro “Disneyland” but we’ve heard other folks call it “Tinseltown” and this is probably closer to its essence. But before I let you experience all that Porto Montenegro has to offer, I need to put it into context.

The gross average monthly wage in Montenegro is just over $850 per month. This would pay for two nights in the resort hotel (if you get a modest deal) or six nights berthing for True Colors. But berthing True Colors is nowhere near the center of the problem.

Meet Yas.

She is one of the largest super yachts in the world at 141m (453 ft) long and was built on the hull of a Royal Dutch Navy frigate for a cost of about $180m and each time you fill her up with diesel you write a cheque for about $500,000. No, I didn’t put one too many zero’s in there. It’s half a million dollars. She is, of course, owned by a member of the ruling family of the United Arab Emirates. Maybe he gets fuel at a discount?

But this kind of opulent lifestyle is not without its problems and you have to feel for the owners.

First of all, there is the problem of dusty helicopters. Yas has two and they get dusty.  So, as I was walking past at 6:30 in the morning, two of her 56-person crew were dusting the helicopters on the upper deck. It seems to be a feature of super yachts, large and small, that they have to be kept shiny at all times and it is not uncommon to see crew in the pre-dawn and post-dusk hours hand washing and polishing the hulls and brightwork.

Then there’s the problem that all sailors have of forgetting to bring something important. Porto Montenegro tries to ease this problem by providing its own BMW store - not just for accessories but actually for the cars. So if you forget yours, you can pick up another one without leaving the marina or maybe you just want a change of color. And, just in case you doubt me, Yas has a “toy” garage easily large enough to hold one or two.

Bringing the right clothes is also a problem.  So Porto Montenegro provides a number of haute couture boutiques that cater for a wide range of fashionable adult tastes. But what about the kids? Well, if junior throws up on his little onesie, you can rest easy. There’s a Dolce & Gabbana Kids store where you can buy a dress for your two year old for as little as $495. If Donald liked yachting, Melania would be here.

But the biggest problem when you bring any number of super-yachts together is envy and status. And here you again have to feel for the owner of Yas. His dad runs the United Arab Emirates and he has a certain status to maintain.

So, when his son excitedly told his dad about the new yacht, the conversation went something like this.

“Dad! I take delivery of my yacht today. It cost $180 million.”

“That’s nice, son.”

“I saved a ton of money by building it on the hull of a frigate. Neat, huh?”

“Just a minute, are you saying this is not a new boat?”

“ Yes it is …. well, mostly”

“So, if I understand correctly, this is a USED boat?”

“Kindof”

“What have I told you about about buying things “used”. This family does NOT do that. It’s like that time when you wanted to buy that used country. What was it called? France? You can’t buy used things, you don’t know where they’ve been.”

“But, dad …..”

“Don’t “but dad” me! No son of mine is going to become a socialist! get out of my sight until you have bought a proper yacht.”

And he did.

Meet Azzam. The largest super-yacht in the world that cost about $600 million.That is roughly half of the annual budget of a city like Scottsdale.

Time to head back to the real world.

Real boats; real people; real Montenegro

Mama Mia! Here we go again.....

What goes north must eventually go back south again if we want to get to Brindisi. There are relatively few options here, much fewer than there are in the multitude of islands further north. However we decide to head back to Vis - the farthest inhabited island off the Croatian mainland.

We have visited Vis Town before, so this time we will go to the other side of the island and the only other town of any size, Komiza, on the western side of the island. The trip started off completely calm and we motored for a few hours and then, as predicted, the wind picked up and we had a very enjoyable sail to just off the island.

Around here, close to Split and Hvar, you have to be careful what day of the week you arrive in a place.  The schedule of the sailing charter boats is quite critical - if you go to a place at a time when charter boats might be able to reach it, it will be busy; otherwise it will not. We planned to arrive at the weekend when the charter boats are back at base and, as a consequence, it was really quiet.

An island of 3600 or so people doesn’t usually have much of a claim to fame in the modern world. However, Vis is a little bit of an exception.Some over-achieving business development individual from the Croatian film industry managed to land Vis as the main location for the second of the Mama Mia films which is odd given that the location is supposed to be Greece. The first was shot in Greece which has 227 inhabited islands, so it wasn’t that they were running out of islands. And Croatia has only 47 inhabited islands, so it wasn’t that there was a broader choice. Just one of those off-the-wall marketing coups, I guess.

Now in case you’re worried (as you should be) about the possibility of Pierce Brosnan singing again in this movie, I have bad news and good news. The bad news is “Yes he does”; the good news is that it’s an under-played semi-mutter of a rendition of “SOS” (how appropriate). Almost passable. To be safe, we kept our distance from any establishment that looked like it might want to highlight his well-hidden talents.

Inevitably, we have to head somewhat eastwards from Vis the next day and we decide to go back to the west end of Korcula. The weather forecasts we have are all at variance with each other in both the strength and direction of the wind. We reef the main just to be on the safe side (wise) but don’t quite succeed in reefing the genoa.  So with a slightly unbalanced configuration, we head off into what rapidly becomes 20 knots on our beam.  We have too much sail (probably) or the imbalance id not helping us (most certainly). So with a certain flamboyance we turn into the wind and reduce sail. The crew was unhappy with this maneuver. But we survived without even getting wet.

As soon as we did this, the wind dropped to less than 2 knots and looked like staying there. We put the genoa away and motor-sailed with the main along the south shore of the island.  Given that the wind was likely coming from the northwest, I has hoping to pick up wind as we left the shelter of the island. Good prediction - the wind picked up to between 15 and 20 knots and we could sail again. But along with the wind we got a messy swell that was over three feet on occasion. Nothing to worry about but the ride, though fast, was a little sloppy at times.

By the time we got close to Korcula, the wind had swung behind us more and we had to thread a needle to get into the entrance to Vela Luka without gybing (deliberately or otherwise). We chose the second of the two bays on the north side this time - it was empty; all five buoys were open. Pretty easy mooring - we’re getting quite good at it, even in moderate winds. We thought we might walk into town but the wind was blowing directly into the bay and we didn’t feel like a bumpy dinghy ride after a bumpy sail.

The next day we planned to revisit a remote little anchorage we had used a couple of years ago off the northeast of Lastovo. This secluded spot is where Lori had to endure a chorus of malevolent goats angered by her consumption of their distant cousin.

There was almost no wind and we motored pretty much the whole way. But we diverted ourselves es to a nice little bay called Zaklopatica on Lastovo that had four good restaurant ts with quays where we could tie up.  But there was no room at the inn - every space was reserved for later arrivals.So back to Plan A. However, a bay that two years ago had only us was now holding upwards of seven boats! This was not what we had in mind when we thought of “remote”.

On to Plan C (just as well there was a Plan C), we merged two days into one and motored over to Polace on Mljet where we found a nice restaurant quay with space and we could settle down with visions of a beautiful dinner to come. All roads seem to lead here. We’ve had three sets of family members join us here in the past. And it is a lovely spot.

The north end of Mljet is also a national park with two small but very beautiful lakes and some very enjoyable walks through the pine forest that surrounds them. Croatia, when it puts its mind to it, does a really good job on conservation.

As we walk through the forest there are butterflies everywhere and the scents of the forest ranging from the under note of pine to the  more luscious smell of the flowering shrubs and plants. 

I don’t remember ever seeing so many butterflies in one place.  The most striking are white with yellow and orange markings and make a wonderful contrast with the dark green of the pine.  from a distance it looks like the trees are blooming with live blossom. The aromas from all the different species of plants make a very heady mix (just right for the butterflies). 

And it’s not that you just smell the plants every now and again, the perfume is everywhere, all the time.  It is quite unlike anything we’ve experienced before. 

Yes, that’s four butterflies

Dinner at the restaurant where we are moored features fish (of course) b ut we decide to try a whole fish baked in the oven.  We’ve not really done this before.  First of all, it can be pretty expensive. These are not farmed fish in any way, so catching them takes a bit of an effort.  Also, we are not familiar with some of the varieties and so don’t know what is best and least challenging from a bone perspective. So we get input from the waiter and he fillets the cooked fish at our table.

His choice was excellent and his technique flawless. An excellent meal - we will do this again.

From Mljet we head south again to Slano - a nice bay that now has a marina in it.  But we ignore the marina (which doesn’t warrant its price tag) and anchor (free) where we always have. It is just off the shore where there are a few increasingly sophisticated holiday homes and traditional fishing boats.

Lori likes to swim here.

Our final stop is back on Mljet, but this time on the leftmost end in another little bay which has a restaurant that we like.  We know the people there now and they remember us each time we visit.  It’s a family-owned and run place and we get to celebrate the upcoming arrival of a new member of the family. We start to be let in on the all the in-jokes and are treated like “regulars”. Some places just have an amazing vibe.

The food is excellent and we decide to go the fish route again.

If one fish was good, two different ones must be better. An d they are.

It’s time to leave Croatia for Montenegro and this involves checking out of the country in a place called Cavtat. In the past this has been difficult, but it has been steadily improving.  However this year, they’ve moved the Harbor Master’s office to a new location and staffed it with new people.  As a result here is a line which is waiting for one boat captain to get the cash he needs to pay for his cruising permit.  No-one else can be processed while he is at the bank apparently.  Those of us in line come up with a whole new set of use cases, develop the requirements specification, build the project plan, secure funding and are well on the way to implementing the first prototype by the time he gets back.

“Sorry..”, he says.

“Sorry..”, the Harbor Master says.

But it’s not really too bad. And Lori gets one of her favorite meat pastries as compensation from her captain.  She looks wistfully at it (before devouring it). Could this be the last one of this season?

Dolphin in the dark - a mystery is solved, another takes its place, and a controversy persists.

We set sail for Croatia late in the day once our lines finally arrived.  This made things awkward since the overnight sail would now start with the dark part and then linger on into much of the following day. This is not good from a physiological point-of-view.  However, it did give us the opportunity to take a picture of the obligatory “first sunset of the sailing season”.

The wind was tricky. It wasn’t that there wasn’t enough; it was just coming from the wrong direction. Pretty much directly behind us. Too much fine manipulation of sails for two people to do in the dark. So we resigned ourselves to motor-sailing - not the most auspicious of starts.

But that was soon to change.

As everyone knows dolphin are intelligent, cute and incredible swimmers.  They love to play with boats - they dive across the bow, through the wake, and pass the boat at speeds  that have to be seen to be appreciated.  It is impressive.

We have seen this many times and it is always a highlight of any trip.  But all our sightings have been during the day. This time we got to see them at night.

First of all, remember that it is pretty dark out these in the middle of the Adriatic - there are many, many stars and the Milky Way is a pale cloud of light spread in a streak across the sky. Every\thing is quiet with only gentle noises from the wav es.. Then the dolphins arrive. The first thing you hear is more splashes from the waves that you heard a few moments ago: then you see a linear splash that is almost parallel to the boat. It disappears for a few seconds and then something leaps out of the water only to dive beneath the bow. More and more dolphin appear and as your eye starts to get accustomed to the scene, you can suddenly see even the fine details of the bodies of the dolphins under the water! This is because of the phosphorescent bubbles that seem to cling to their skin as they swim.I It is an astonishing and slightly eery sight. All the more so because they stayed with us in two major episodes for over ninety minutes. I guess they had nothing else planned as Brexit has gone quiet.

And this leads to the solution of a mystery. Four years ago Lori’s sister and her husband Brian made a very similar night sail with us.  Lori and Brian were on watch, chatting, facing each other.  Suddenly, as Lori tells it, Brian’s jaw dropped and his eyes opened wide as something large , very large, splashed in the water behind her.  More than slightly shaken and with visions of the Kraken awakening from the deep, they resolved  to persevere rather than throw themselves into the ocean. The remainder of the watch was spent on edge with few words spoken. 

Just like the well-knit crew we are, Lori has taunted Brian about this ever since and Pam and I have discounted it altogether as yet another “tall tale of the sea”. We had no explanation for this until now - dolphin in the dark!. Just think, if Lori and Brian had thrown themselves into the sea, they would have been surrounded by dolphin laughing their asses off.

But we can all rest easy, the Kraken remains dormant until it is fatefully summoned to punish mankind.

Coffee in the morning. I can say this when there a no Italians around.

But the manifestation of the dolphin in the water, led me to thinking (admittedly at two in the morning) that perhaps this is how we see ghosts (those of us who do, that is) as a spectral phosphorescence in the world that we inhabit but they no longer do. Admit it, it’s as good as some of the other “explanations” out there.

As a courtesy we change flags when we enter Croatian waters

As you may recall, Croatia didn’t impress us much when we came here first four years ago. It is, however, remarkable how far they’ve come in that time. Harbormasters and border police are friendly, helpful and above all extremely professional. The cuisine has started to show some flair - wasabi and soy sauce with tuna (in Croatia!?!) The wines have always been good and there are now some excellent premium vineyards and labels.

We meandered north through some of the most westerly islands - Lastovo, Korcula, Solta and  Vis - revisiting old favorites and making some new discoveries. I thought that I might try something a little different this year and give you a better view of the locations we stay in - a seagull’s eye view. I don’t have a drone on board so these have to be photos other than my own.

Lastovo is a former military island that was off-limits to foreign visitors until 1988. This has enabled it to retain at least a part of its traditional charm. But it’s a remote kind of life for its 792 inhabitants where you have to take two ferries to get to the mainland, high school pupils spend the week in Split and only come home on weekends, and any raw  materials for building and development have to be ferried in along with the skilled labor needed.

But on the other hand, this isolation has had benefits for the flora and fauna. The WWF (World Wildlife Fund) has declared the area of the park as one of the last ten treasures of biodiversity in the Mediterranean Sea and it is a remarkably tranquil and unspoiled place to spend a few days as we did.

We had a great sail of over twenty miles from Lastovo to Korcula with the wind steady at 17-18 knots and gusting to almost 30.  True Colors was loving it; it was almost as if all three of us were shaking off the winter lethargy and eagerly pushing forward into summer.

Korcula is best known for claiming to be the birthplace of Marco Polo although evidence to support this claim is at best “sketchy”. This had not stopped a thriving tourist theme from developing in Korcula town.  However this time we visited the town at the other end of the island, Vela Luka. A much more “normal” place that relies on fishing and water-based tourism for much of its growing prosperity.

Vela Luka Town Center

This isn’t working … It must be broken… I’ve been standing here for hours.

And it is in Vela Luka that our new mystery has its origins.  Showering and swimming naked from the back of boats is quite common and unremarked upon. There are also “naked boats” where the occupants sail without any clothes. This can be disconcerting an d you have to resist the temptation to go closer to their boat and say “Don’t you know the damage you’re doing to your skin!”

But this year we saw our first “semi-naked boat”, where some of the occupants were clothed and others not (at all). This must make for interesting meals and casual conversations. There were six guys on this boat, all in their fifties (at least) and three went about naked all the time. The vision of a naked guy raising a dinghy is one that stays with you for quite a while. As does the one where they had clearly lost something in the water and a guy (naked) was standing up at the bow scanning the surface of the water with binoculars while his crew drove him around the anchorage.

I wonder about them when they’re back home.. Do they all work together? “Hey, Helmut, how’s that bruise on your …? Errr, never mind let’s get back to the meeting agenda.” Or are they old school friends? “Otto, I see you still have that scar from when you got caught on that barb wire fence when you were ten.” 

And here is the mystery.  Just as it was getting dark, the three naked guys get into their dinghy and potter off to the middle of the large bay leading to Vela Luka.  A large ferry passes them (was anybody watching?); they buzz around for a few minutes and then they return.  What were they doing and why? There might be a prize for the most creative (but printable) answer to this riddle.

Leaving behind the “sights” of Vela Luka, we set sail the next day for the small island of Solta where there is a restaurant and a mooring that we really enjoy.  It turns into another great day of sailing. The winds increased and became steady again at over twenty knots with gusts again of about 30. We sailed with the wind behind us for the first half of the day (which is always deceptive because you don’t really feel the strength of the wind). I had been hoping to get past the Pakleni Islands and then come closer to the wind for the final leg to Solta. But there was not quite enough room. So we gybed twice at the far end of the islands and headed north to Solta with the wind on our beam.

Two things about this are worthy of note. Lori has clearly overcome her nervousness about gybing in big winds. She was totally up for it and was mellow through the whole thing. I was proud of her. Secondly, with twenty-plus winds on our beam and True Colors racing along at up to nine knots, we sat in the cockpit and had lunch. Our sails were trimmed perfectly (thanks Lori), the wind was steady and lunch was a stable and mellow occasion. It doesn’t get much better!!

Sismis (which is Croatian for “bat”) is a nice slightly upscale restaurant in a narrow inlet on the west of the island. Parking the boat here is unlike anywhere else and you have to rely on the marineros  to get your boat into its final position. We end up moored about 10 feet from the quay. Rather than have us take down our dinghy for the short trip, they say they’ll pick us up and take us back any time we want to go ashore - that’s service!

We defy you N ew York Times!

The food is creative and delicious in  a beautiful setting looking west into the sunset.

Who are these clean people?

Croatian white wine passes the Lori test.

The next day we head north to the mainland. One of the challenges in Croatia is restocking supplies and water for the trips among the islands.  There are not many supermarkets on the smaller or more remote islands and those that exist are pretty small with limited provisions. So calling into a marina, like to one at Rogoznica, is sometimes necessary.

The pretty little town offers some modest-sized supermarkets,  but also a little farmers’ market, an adjacent fish market and many ice cream stands - Croatians seem to love ice cream in quantities that would make other countries blush

And a lot of bakeries.

“Sladoled.” What a great name for ice cream

Lori’s first version of borek

And this is where we ran into the controversy. You may know that Lori likes a specific pastry that looks like it has been squeezed out of a tube (I suggest squeezed out of somewhere else but she will have none of it). This is one variant of a Croatian street food called “borek”. The other is a more conventional-looking meat tart. The flaky pastry is phyllo and there can be a little yogurt added to the meat to give it a tangy flavor.

And the second version

The origins of this dish are where the controversy arises.  It probably started in Turkey (Anatolia, actually) but has been claimed by the Serbians and the Croatians as “their own”. In a volatile region, this is cause for concern. But then there is the whole “filling issue”. Can real borek have any other filling than meat? Purists say “no”. but the bakers round Rogoznica don’t seem to be purists - you can get fruit fillings like apple and apricot.

And now, if you’ve been following along, we can broaden the whole controversial mess. A phyllo-like pastry tart filled with apple. Sounds a lot like apple strudel to me. “Oops, sorry Austrians”. A phyllo-like pasty tart with a non-meat filling, say spinach. Sounds a lot like like spanakopita to me. “Oops, sorry Greeks.”

This is going to take some diplomacy to resolve. Historically, not exactly a strength in this part of the world. Not even Donald has a fantastic solution. We’ll just keep our mouths shut and eat. Wait a minute, how does that work exactly?

Brindisi and Italian intimidation

I know what you think I’m going to say - when we got to Brindisi it was freezing. Well, no, it actually wasn’t. The sun was shining bravely and we grabbed a cab from the train station to the airport where we  had scheduled to pick up our car  I often wonder about that (well not exactly “often” but definitely “sometimes”). Why is it so less common/easy to be able to rent a car at a major train station than it is at an airport? And rental car companies rarely offer shuttle from train stations to airports for their customers.

But back to the weather.  It’s spring here in Puglia and the wild flowers are blooming everywhere.  Someone said that flowers are just weeds that have learned to grow in rows. These poppies clearly have designs on making it into local gardens.

The next bit explains a key difference between the north of Italy (which considers itself the sophisticated, industrious and intellectual heart of the country) and the south (which doesn’t). The former farm where we stay has an outdoor patio where they serve breakfast but, on our first morning, it was being served inside - because it was too cold.  The owner’s characterization was “Disastro”. This is one of those times where you realize your subconscious Italian vocabulary has one more word in it. It was May and it was a disaster not to be able to eat breakfast on the patio.

In Italian, the type of establishment we stay in is called a “masseria”. The best comparison I can think of is to the country house of a gentleman farmer in Britain . (Think of families in Poldark). The houses are big and are surrounded by many other buildings that have been converted into accommodation for guests. They usually sit in the middle of the farm which, in this part of Italy, means acres and acres of olive groves. The older trees can be hundreds of years old and are planted in neat rows with the gnarled trunks about fifteen feet or so apart. Whatever land is not given over to olive trees is dedicated to vineyards - these people have their priorities right.

People work hard on the farms here - even the dogs are tired by 7:30 am

While Italy is only the second largest producer of olive oil (Spain produces twice as much), the Apulia region (Puglia) where Brindisi is produces 45% of the olives for Italian oil.  This means that there are about 75 million olive trees in Puglia alone, more than one tree for every man, woman and child in the whole country. As I write this, I realize that this phrase (“every man, woman and child”) is one of those that may have to be re-formulated to take account of modern sensitivities (at least in the States) but I got too confused trying to even work out where to start.

Our masseria only serves breakfast and the options include cake. Freshly baked on the farm with local fruits and other fillings. Only a sliver (or two…). The focaccia too is freshly baked and a Lori favorite.

Lori’s pre-launch activity - thinking about fresh Italian food

Our pre-boat plan has been refined over the years and we have a pretty good formula.  We expect the outstanding work on the yard’s part and on our part to take two weeks. So we spend the first week off the boat trying to keep out of the way while simultaneously trying to keep the work on schedule.  This year we arrived in time to see True Colors launched.

During this week we can take things a little easy and do a little sight-seeing. We went back to Lecce (one of our favorite places here).  In Lecce there is a column on the top of which is a statue of the local patron saint, St. Oronzo. There’s a Brindisi connection here. The column is one of the two that marked the end of the Roman Appian Way from Rome to Brindisi. The other is still in Brindisi. The column is being restored and the statue has been taken down and we can get a closer look at the details.

You have to feel a bit for the sculptor though. The dialog must have gone something like this.

“Signor, we have some good news for you”.

“What’s the news?”

“You are commissioned to sculpt a statue of St. Oronzo.”

“Wow!” Where will it be?

“In the main square of Lecce.”

“Wow! And will lots of people see my work?”

“Of course.”

“Wow! And will they be able to appreciate my skill and craftsmanship?”

“Er, sadly not really.”

“Why?”

“It will be on the top of a column 100 ft high that you have to squint into the sun to get a good view of?”

“Shit! I mean, thank you my lords.”

Can you tell that Lecce is a university town? This is the music for their craft fair.

And these are some of the crafts

We added San Vito dei Normanni and Mesagne to our list.  Most of the hill towns in Puglia have attractive old centers with narrow alleyways. Of these, Ostuni is the best known but some of the others are quite striking. While, sadly, San Vito is not one of them, Mesagne most definitely is.

It has a tiny center inside the old walls with some wonderful buildings and restaurants. The food highlights here were tuna tartare 

followed by veal cheeks in red wine sauce. Amazingly rich and tender but perhaps a little too much for lunch!

It was also an opportunity to go back to Bari which is about 100km north of Brindisi.  And another opportunity to try the Italian railway system. Bari has great shopping with many designer stores - it’s not yet sale season so Lori was well-behaved. We also found a part of the town we didn’t visit the last time - it’s called something ambiguous and unenticing like “the historic center”. Don’t have any idea how we failed to find it last year. 

Organic food is becoming more obvious in Italy (but I can’t imagine, with their general quality  and traditional farming, that they really need to push this). Nevertheless we ate at an organic restaurant with a superb fritto misto and a lovely Chardonnay. A local specialty, which we had as a starter,  is called “Tiella”. This is a baked dish of mussels, rice, potatoes and tomatoes.  The rice and potato blend seems odd in concept but it is delicious.

Apologies for a photo other than our own but this one gives a better impression

Our masseria has a sister property about 2 kilometers away which does serve dinner and we try to go there once during our visit.  Once is enough because it’s a four-course meal with a set menu. So we book; and we turn up at the restaurant; and we are the only diners; they opened the restaurant just for us. In other parts of the world this might be embarrassing or uncomfortable but not in Puglia.  At one end of the restaurant, the owners and their families are having dinner and at the other so are we. It is all pleasant, relaxed and thoroughly enjoyable.

One of the things about being married to a realtor is that you spend idle moments looking at the ads for houses for sale and for the furniture to put in them. (Well I know, but we don’t have a TV on the boat so the Brexit saga is unavailable to us). And this is where the intimidating Italian design comes in.

The residents of non-Italian countries are systematically intimidated by the brand that covers Italy and most things Italian.  We are sold this image of the quintessential Italian couple. He is an art historian and professional cliff-diver. He has 0% body fat, a classic red roadster and his name is Marcello. 

Her name is Giulia and it’s not entirely clear what she does but she is always beautifully dressed and coiffed even when she gets off her Vespa motor scooter. They live in a large, stylish, modern apartment with designer furniture, natural fabrics and stone and a window that opens onto a view of some iconic Italian monument.

I’ve got news for you - this is all marketing.

The average Italian home that we’ve seen on the market is comparatively small (particularly by US standards), traditionally furnished and, most surprisingly, seems to have only a small kitchen. If Italians are cooking classic dinners in these areas, they must really know some organizational secrets that we don’t. In the ads we saw, bathrooms are also on the small side but do almost always feature a bidet. Of course, we don’t know what Marcello and Giulia have in this respect because they don’t ever seem to need to use one. And in the real old towns of Italy windows tend to open onto narrow streets with other buildings on the other side.

So the good news here is that our idols have feet of clay (or furniture that comes from IKEA).

But the bad news is that this doesn’t stop you from being intimidated (even in the nicest possible way).  Four years ago when we came to our boatyard and we were drinking coffee in our mugs in the morning, we’d offer some of the workers a coffee. They’d look at us with an amused but pitying expression and say “That’s not coffee”. We run the risk of being classified coffee-wise as “American”. This is actually a real problem. if you go into a coffee bar and ask for a “cafe” while appearing (or sounding) American they will give a large cup full of American-style coffee which they made by drowning an espresso in hot water.  If you go into the same coffee bar and ask for a “cafe” while not appearing American, you will get an espresso just like everyone else does.

So we’d been thinking about getting a little espresso machine for the boat (the intimidation thing); we do research and boil the choice down to an Italian machine from Bialetti and a Nespresso machine like the ones we have at home.  We test the Bialetti and it is good. We ask the nice Italian lady in the Bialetti store what’s the difference between Bialetti and Nespresso? We get the same amused but pitying look that we get in the boatyard. She answers “Nespresso is good coffee, but this is good Italian coffee”. End of discussion (apparently); we buy the Bialetti.

And as you can see, it’s undeniably well-designed and cute. It also makes good coffee.

The second week of our pre-sailing activities we spend on the boat trying to be just politely annoying enough to keep the necessary people focused on our boat.  This gives us the opportunity to get some exercise by walking into the little village next to the yard and shopping at the little stores - greengrocer, butcher, baker and meat/cheese shop. It also gives us the opportunity to ‘murder” some Italian  much to the amusement and confusion of the locals. But they like us.

The third week (yes, this is the third week of two) is chasing down the last, last, last-minute items and waiting, ready to go, for much longer than we would like. This year the very last item was a couple of new dock lines (ropes). Now every yard, chandlery, marina etc. has these. We choose some “from stock”. It still takes five days for them to travel less than half a mile to our boat.

But tonight we set sail for Croatia!

Spring(?) in Bologna

With all the wedding arrangements, we had decided on a more leisurely approach to getting to Brindisi this year. We would break our journey in Bologna (which neither of us have visited) and then take the train  down much of the length of eastern Italy to Brindisi.

It was a very short walk from the Sofitel at Gatwick to the terminal, EasyJet lived up to its name and the flight to Bologna was uneventful. But we should have known what to expect.  We were sitting at the front and as the plane descended, the flight attendant looked out at the clouds and said “I was expecting sunshine”.

When we got out of the terminal it was freezing. We grabbed a taxi to our apartment and when we got to the management office, the nice friendly young Italian lady said something like “Avresti dovuto essere qui qualche settimana fa, il tempo era davvero caldo.”

This is where you readers discover that you know much more Italian than you think you do. There will not really be a prize for those of you who get it right, but those of you who have no clue should really pay more attention in class. There might be another quiz later.

It was indeed cold - temperatures that would normally be about 25C (say 75F) were struggling to get close to 12C ( approx. 55F) and it was gloomy. First impressions of Bologna were not favorable. Might this be the first Italian city we could not learn to love? The weather was definitely challenging. The usual Italian custom of drinking an aperitivo (Aperol spritz - the New York Times has no hope of changing this no matter what they say) became an endurance test for the young folks in the cafes - down jackets, ski hats, scarves and gloves were all necessary - but, to their credit, they persisted. And it was here that I encountered the age-old photo-journalist dilemma - should you take photographs of a miserable scene and focus only on the shot and not the content? I confess I couldn’t - but Lori could!

We wandered round in the cold for most of two days and I was unimpressed by the graffiti and that it seemed that so many young people were smoking in the streets. This seemed much more prevalent than it is in the south. Perhaps they had to do something to take the edge off the weather. One local resident refused to only curse the gloom and brought her own patch of sunlight to brighten up the street scene.

There was one thing could not be dulled by the weather and that was the quality of the food. Bologna is famous in Italy for this (and not just Bolognese sauce). All types of pasta and a wide variety of rich meat sauces were all wonderful - the pasta supple and beautifully textured; the sauces rich and complex. It didn’t seem to matter where we went, food was reliably of the highest quality.

And, wile travel may broaden the mind, it certainly corrects your recipes.  Although I can defend my use of beef in my Bolognese sauce, I had completely forgotten what my “Italian grandmother” Marcella Hazan taught me - there is milk in true Bolognese sauce and it adds a lightness and suppleness that would be missing otherwise. For all those of you who know this, I apologize for my lack of couth.

In the same vein (i.e. how not to live and act like a foreigner), we were in this little osteria (the lowest level of authentic Italian restaurants) when we saw someone make the international sign for “I want the bill” that is scribbling in the air with an imaginary pen on imaginary paper. The waiter then hollers across the crowded restaurant, “Are you trying to send me a postcard? If so, I can give you my address!!” Oops! We’re glad we’re not those people. When our time comes we politely and audibly ask for “Il conto, per favore.” Lesson learned!!

We ate in one night and bought prosciutto and fresh pasta from a little store round the corner. It looked pretty traditional, the two guys serving behind the counter looked like they’d been doing it for years and the quality was excellent. One thing about prosciutto that’s not too obvious in the States is that there are many different types (largely depending on where it comes from). So asking fro prosciutto in a store triggers a clarifying question.  A safe answer is “Parma” (which is just down the road) but we don’t yet have a good feeling for all the variants and their strengths and weaknesses. Now there’s another existential Italian dilemma: so much prosciutto so little time!

After dinner, we were watching the Food Network in Italian (we thought we might just be able to follow it) and the program was about ….Bologna! It featured a local chef, local culinary experts and the best local sources of the best ingredients, and who do we see on the program - the two guys from the store round the corner who are being deeply deferred to on their knowledge of prosciutto.

This seemed to be a good omen for the skies brightened the following day and most people shed their gloves, some shed their wooly hats but puffy jackets and scarves looked like they were not going to be discarded any time soon.

The old center of Bologna is comparatively small and there are not really any superb architectural marvels. 

For example, the Basilica of San Petronius in the main square is considered a “minor basilica”. Construction was started in 1390 (how old do you have to be to be a “major basilica”? Are we perhaps setting the bar a little high here?) and due to unforeseen planning and logistical reasons like war, religious factionalism, political intrigue, vacations and lunch, its facade remains incomplete to this day.

In the same square is the famous statue of Neptune dating from the mid-1560’s. It is a popular meeting point for Bolognesi and has its own subtle way of making a political statement.

Neptune turns his back on Huawei; Huawei is shocked.

This fountain has some interesting physiological perspectives on the female anatomy.

Certain lawmakers in a least three US states actually believe that this is where water comes from.

Bologna also had some trouble with towers.

This must be an Italian thing - consider San Gimignano and Pisa. Indeed, Bologna did consider these examples and chose the worst excesses of each - close proximity as in San Gimignano and “leaning” as in Pisa. This tower in Bologna actually leans more that the one in Pisa AND it’s surrounded by buildings that people live in and traffic that makes things shake. Hmmm.

None the less, it’s the consistency of the buildings rather than their individual merit that is pleasing as well as the colonnades in front that seem to tie the buildings together (and keep you out of the weather).

We provisioned for the next day which was to be our train ride south in another little traditional food store.  We had seen on the Food Network that another local specialty was “torta di riso” (rice tart/cake). It is rich and superb - Lori and I are not big cake fans but this was quite special. We researched on the Internet about the store where we bought it and, again, we seem to have stumbled upon the torta di riso motherlode!

Italian high-speed trains are actually pretty good. And by “high-speed” they mean “high-speed” with the fastest being able to reach 350 km (200 m) per hour. And they run pretty much on time. So it was a highly civilized smooth no changes ride from Bologna to Brindisi. The scenery was not quite as varied as we had expected with a lot of the journey following the coastline REALLY closely. Any climate change worries here?

But we arrived quite fresh and relaxed in Brindisi, where the weather was …….

A heavenly wedding, a satanic GPS and Brexit limbo.

This year’s pre-sailing logistics were even more complicated than usual. Our daughter  Meredith decided to celebrate her wedding in Scotland in the early part of May. A risky call based on the weather but it tied in nicely with our plans for getting to Brindisi and True Colors this year.

However, we had to take account of multiple travel arrangements - Lori’s mom and Meredith’s brother were traveling to Scotland with us but traveling g back to the US on their own after the wedding; Lori’s sister and her family were meeting us in Scotland and sharing accommodation for the five days surrounding the event.

Surprisingly we didn’t lose anyone on the way or leave anyone behind.

As I said, the weather in Scotland in May can be tricky and during the five days we had snow, rain clouds and, yes(!), sunshine. We rented a lovely cottage on the north shores of Loch Tay. By chance, this was the loch where I first learned to sail many years ago at university The only downside of this location was the narrow roads that had to be navigated to get to the property (and the slightly complicating factor that Americans are driving on the “wrong” side of the road).

When we arrived at our cottage it was freezing and they said “You should have been here a few weeks ago, the weather was really warm.”

The wedding was a great success and the bride, of course, looked radiant (but I might just be a little biased here.)

People who hadn’t worn kilts before did so and looked handsome (and even those of us who had didn’t look too bad either); people who hadn’t eaten haggis before, did so and many liked it; people who hadn’t done any form of Scottish country dancing before, participated with an enthusiasm that more than made up for any shortage of skill; people who hadn’t drunk any alcohol before …. wait a minute…. there weren’t any of those.

Weddings in the UK are, of course, also an excuse for mothers of the principals to wear extravagant hats

This is Anne, the groom’s mom. Sadly, Lori couldn’t find a hat that would survive the trip in a sailing duffel!

And for the giving and getting of cross-generational advice

But, in the end, the day belongs to the beautiful woman in the almost-as-beautiful dress …..

After the wedding, various subgroups split off - some heading for the iIsle of Skye, some to Edinburgh and our little band of four driving back to Manchester so that Lori’s mom and Blake could catch their flight home

Lori and I took a few days to travel south through England towards London before flying from Gatwick to Italy. Our first stop was in the Peak District just south of Manchester. 

When we arrived at our hotel it was freezing and they said “You should have been here a few weeks ago, the weather was really warm.”

 Even beautiful rolling hills and ancient dry-stone walls look pretty drab in low cloud and horizontal drizzle. But “navigating” turned out to be the sport to brighten even the dreariest day.

In this part of England, the farms are old and the tracks that nave grown into roads try not to trespass on anybody’s field or farmyard.  So blind right-angle turns are common.  And when I say that the tracks have “grown”  into roads, this is more related to their stature than their dimensions. One lane is common - with walls or hedges on either side just to reduce the visibility and add that frisson of mortal peril to the whole endeavor.

Because the road (i.e. track) network is so intricate, the prudent driver uses GPS.  In Britain, GPS is called Satnav. The alert among you will notice that this is an anagram of “satan” (with an extra v). We quickly found out why.

Our GPS had not been programmed to understand that cars can turn around and, more or less readily, face in the opposite direction.  It preferred to take a circuitous route on the above mentioned tracks for about a mile or so and bring us back to our starting point (but indeed facing in the other direction.) Another nice feature was that it made no differentiation between “shortest route” and “fastest route”. For it, “shortest” meant “fastest”. So it happily ignored major roads with multiple lanes and average speeds that could exceed 60 miles per hour in favor of the above-mentioned tiny farm tracks where 15 mph felt like Formula One racing.

Our usual mellow and cordial interaction between navigator and driver became tense.

Then we saw it.  There was a sign (indeed we were to see more than one).  It was a properly-made, official British roadway sign. It said “Do not follow Satnav.” This was one of those existential moments like Sisyphus rolling his rock up the hill where you realize that all human endeavor is futile - the gods will always win.

We eventually escaped the labyrinth and headed out towards London and Gatwick airport. I used to live on the border of Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire and this was to be an opportunity for Lori to see some of the perfect little villages in this beautiful area.

Long Crendon

When we arrived at our hotel it was freezing and they said “You should have been here a few weeks ago, the weather was really warm.” But at least this time it turned out to be sunny and we got to visit Long Crendon and Hambleden as well as enjoying some of the better examples of English cuisine.

We were close enough to London to make a day trip possible.  Lori had never visited London before.  She has often subtly hinted to me that she might like to go by saying nuanced things like “When are you going to take me to London?”

So this would be the time and we would do it by train. In principle, this would be easy; in practice it was not. I had forgotten that in Britain people spend the work week breaking the rail network through the sheer weight of numbers of passengers and then stalwart rail personnel spend the weekend putting it all back together again.

So the simple one-hour direct trip to London became a two-hour saga that involved a train, a bus and another train. We got there and it was freezing.

However we had a good walk taking in many of the major sites - all of which were fortunately in the same place as they were the last time i visited and they’d added a few more.

Westminster Abbey

It’s called the “London Eye” - looks more like an “O” to me.

By lunchtime it was still cold and we sought a hot meal in a pub.  When we commented how cold it was the waitress said “You should have been here a few weeks ago, the weather was really warm.”

Outside people were trying to keep warm by dancing.  In England, especially in country villages in May, there is a tradition called Morris Dancing. Men dress in very idiosyncratic outfits that include bells and they hold stick with which they beat each other (actually each other’s stick). all this is accompanied by traditional pipe music. The whole visual effect is somewhat like a very polite gang fight with a backing track.

What was odd however was that we saw this dancing only in the big cosmopolitan city of London - in the traditional villages we saw no evidence of this at all.  Hmmm!

For the trip home, the rail network had more delights in store.  This time we traveled on just one train, but it went to a station on a completely different line than that on our itinerary, then backed up to the branch that we should have taken and changed direction again to take us to our destination. The other travelers seemed to think this was completely normal.

For our last day in the UK, we drove on to Gatwick and stayed at the hotel at the airport.  When we got there it was not quite freezing but they said “You should have been here a few weeks ago, the weather was really warm.” But the sun was by now starting to gain the upper hand.

Before  we move on from England (and the UK), I have to explain a littler bit of popular culture. For those of you who like long multi-episode dramas with people talking in British accents - “Downton Abbey”, “Poldark”, “Outlander” etc. and political dramas with the same British accents like the original “House of Cards”, there’s a new really good new one called “Brexit” You may not have been keeping up with iIt but it is well worth your attention. It has been playing to rapt audiences throughout Europe. The French, apparently, treat it as some kind of reality TV series to be enjoyed with popcorn and beer. If the French stoop to popcorn and beer, it must be good.

It has both fairytale and Shakespearean dimensions. It all started when a simple minister’s daughter drank from a poisoned chalice prepared by a wily wizard (who swiftly left the scene before the real drama began). The poor lass vowed to lead her nation to freedom. In another historical parallel, she could be compared to Joan of Arc.  However in this case it is the maid’s own army that’s trying to kill her and burn her at the stake.

And the drama of her quest has been playing on TV almost constantly for three years. It has more factions than “Game of Thrones” and more than one cast member who reminds everyone of Donald Trump (and not in a good way).

The final episode was supposed to be on March 29, but by popular demand (and because no-one can remember what they did in the evenings before Brexit was on TV), it has been extended into a new season which now May or May not (did you catch that one?) end on October 31.  In the UK this is date known as “Halloween” when all the witches and evil spirits are supposed to rise and roam the land. (See I told you it was Shakespearean).

And in breaking developments it seems that there will be a cast change for this final season. The lass finally heard the voices from above saying, “Resign for heaven’s sake! (And everyone else’s for that matter.)”. The new leading player might just be another wily wizard who can best be likened to an intellectual Donald Trump. (if that doesn’t give you nightmares, nothing will).

But the problem with this drama (and why it might not play well in the US) is that no-one who is not living in the UK can really understand it. Actually not many of those who live there do either. And everyone we met either didn’t know what was going on or were sure that their personal  perspective was right but found it hard to say just why it was.

Interesting and worth watching late at night (but you might be better to stick with the next season of Downton Abbey)..