So it’s about 260 miles back to Brindisi and our best source of repair services. We are retracing our steps from earlier in the season and going back along the Jasmine Coast which, if you recall, is a “coast of passage”. This means long days without the autopilot and therefore one or other of us at the helm all the time.
The first leg is back to Roccella Ionica. We are cutting across the southern entrance to the Straits of Messina and then hugging the coast for a while. It is supposed to be a calm sail but there is a good breeze blowing down the Straits and we can get the sails up. Soon I am helming True Colors as she slides across the swell at about 8 knots. This is good for many reasons - the engine is not on and the annoying alarm is off, I have something interesting to do, and the sailing is great.
This goes on for about an hour and a half and then, within the space of a very few minutes, the wind dies away to nothing and we must be resigned to motoring (with the annoying alarm) for the rest of the way.
Again, if you’re keeping track, you will remember that Roccella Ionica is one of those places where the pilot book and the local advice differ. The pilot book says there’s a sand bar and silting and the marina folks say there’s not. They were right for our first visit but now I have the fun of navigating a shallow entrance without the benefit of instruments.
“Keep to the middle”, they say, we do, and we’re fine - just don’t look down through the clear turquoise water and see how close the bottom is!
When we were here last the restaurant wasn’t yet open and the wi-fi which didn’t reach to our berth was about to be upgraded. We expected to find the restaurant open (and it was) but were were skeptical about the wi-fi upgrade. It was down when we arrived but this was due to the same storm we had had in Riposto. There were people fixing it as we berthed and soon they were fully operational again. The storm had struck one of their buildings and set a small dinghy on fire. Fortunately no-one was hurt.
The restaurant serves pizza by the meter. You can get 1/2 meter of full meter-long pizzas. You can guess who wanted one!
Hint: She's the one on the right
We stayed an extra day not only to recover from the 12-hour day before but also to see ifIi could poke around at anything to see if I could bring any systems back. No luck but the day off was welcome.
An early start with a little bit of drama. We usually slip our lines round a cleat so that they don’t hang us up when we leave but this time the marineros from the marina had tied our lines. They could still slip but one was tied on the other side of our pontoon rather than close to the boat. No real problem unless it sticks which, of course, it did, Lori tried to flick it off but managed to catch on the other horn of the cleat. So for a few seconds (long ones) it looked liked we were snagged and our stern was drifting slowly towards the dock and the boat next to us. But we pulled hard on the line to create some slack and managed to flip the line off before we made contact with anything around us. So much for “Be cool, look cool” - 0 for 2 on that one.
We hug the coast a bit and then head out across the Gulf of Squillace. It was pretty windy here the last time and everyone says it’s always windy here, so we are hopeful. But not a breath of wind and we motor with the annoying alarm all the way across the gulf.
A moment for useless but interesting trivia. Squillace has an ancient tradition of making pottery. The style is created by putting a white layer on top of the earthenware and once it dries they scrape off the desired areas to create the designs that you see. This technique is called graffiti in Italian. The origin of the same word in English.
We have to work out a way to get here sailing/ Looks tricky but might be worth it.
We’re heading back to our nice little mooring in a small bay on Cape Rizzuto. We're concerned that we are now into the full summer season and it will be more crowded than the last time. “Plan B” is not ideal - it involves going into a harbor we don’t know which is, you guessed it, just a bit on the shallow side in places. But we don’t need it, the three buoys are empty. Lori is worried about the depth but I point out that it was OK last time so, if we take the same buoy, it’ll be OK this time too. But the large rocks we can clearly see on the bottom are a little unsettling.
A refinement of our buoy lassoing technique is a huge improvement. We are on and secure in about five minutes. We look at each other and can’t quite believe it. “Be cool and look cool” is back!
Another day, another gulf. This time it’s the Gulf of Taranto. This is another 70-mile day across open water that leaves us out of sight of land and soon also out of cell coverage. “Out of sight of land” is not usually any kind of issue, but, when you have no instruments other than your compass, it is incredibly boring, like really incredibly boring to stare at a compass needle for hours on end with the annoying alarm adding to your pleasure. We see very few other boats, so we don’t have even that as a highlight.
Approaching Santa Maria de Leuca
But with glazed expressions and frazzled brains we make it to Santa Maria de Leuca. We will stay two days here by executive order of the captain - three days in a row would be very bad.
Due to the runaway success of our last "Where's Lori?" competition, can you spot the evidence of Lori in this photograph of True Colors?
A great seafood lunch on the second day does a lot to revive our spirits - never under-estimate the power of tuna tartare!
On a personal note, this lunch marks a milestone for me. All my life I’ve had this “hate-hate” relationship with fried calamari. I think it is rubbery and tasteless but Lori loves is and thinks that I just haven’t had the good stuff. So on this trip I started with trying a little bit of the examples that she particularly liked, then I graduated to sharing a fried calamari starter with her and, today, I ordered it all by myself - just for me. OK I admit it, it’s pretty good when you get the good stuff (which is of course what they have here).
The last day; 60 miles north to Brindisi. We had thought of breaking it into two legs but there’s weather coming and we decide to push on even with the annoying alarm.
It’s weird, we are now in high season and for the whole 60 miles we see only three sailing boats. We see almost no marine traffic at all even when we approach Brindisi. We both have the same thought “Has there been some kind of cataclysm that we don’t know about? Has the world ended?”. Shades of “On the Beach” (good movie by the way). Or on the brighter side maybe there’s some major football match that everyone feels compelled to watch., But none of the above, it’s just quiet. Maybe too quiet but there goes our paranoia again….
We tie up elegantly alongside in the almost deserted boatyard and feel relieved that it is over and we don’t have to listen to the annoying alarm any more. But the weekend watchman emerges and says “You can’t park there! I need you to move about a boat’s length down the dock.” No amount of “You’ve got to be kidding” looks, gestures and broken Italian makes any difference. We half-pull, half-nudge True Colors forward to where he wants us. And we are done in more ways than one.
This is what a really tired Lori looks like. She's too tired even to be grumpy.
By the way, did I forget to mention how annoying the alarm was?