Sicily's Left Coast

While I said that Sicily is basically a triangle, there is actually a little bit of a left coast to the island.  Once you round San Vito Lo Capo there is a small stretch of coastline where you’re heading basically south.

Capes are like the punctuation marks is the narrative of our voyage.  The trouble is you can never tell exactly which one they will be. Sometimes they are benign like ampersand or semi-colon and other times they are aggressive like full stop (and go back where you came from). Today wehave the former, just a slight change of nuance but before and after the cape is pretty much the same.  The swell has died down to a gentle roll and we have a current helping us motor along.

Our destination is one of the Egadi Islands off the coast of Sicily.  These are part of a marine park and there are regulations on what you can and cannot do here. We choose one of the smaller islands and grab a mooring buoy in a little bay sheltered from the prevailing wind.

As we move back towards the mainland (of Sicily), the water is shallower and the sandy bottom gives it the perfect hue for a tranquil day.

We even let Spot helm.

Actually she does this all the time but just not in this character.

Our next stop is Marsala (where the fortified wine comes from).  we had some idea of what we wanted to do here, but sometimes it’s best to go with the flow.  In Palermo we are parked next to a French couple.  We didn’t speak much but the next night they arrived in Castellammare a bit after us. And now when we aerobe in Marsala, they are parked just down the quay.

Pasqual and Annie are academics and archaeologists from Nice in France.  They tell us that there is a good exhibit in the local museum relating to a 2000 year-oldship that was discovered in the water near Marsala. They are going to get a personal guided tour and we can join them.

The thing I took away from the visit was the degree of interconnectedness in the Mediterranean 2500 years ago.  Ships are owned by Greeks, leased by Turks and transport cargoes from North Africa to Italy and Rome. We see inscriptions from Lefkas in Greece (where True Colors spent three winters). It seems a long way away but we’ve done it and so, I suppose, could those guys in their galleys with square-rigged sails.  It’s a weird feeling of historical connectedness.

So we don’t see much of Marsala and don’t actually drink any of the fortified wine.  Maybe next time… However, we did introduce a new concept.  We all understand "food miles" and we told you about "food yards" where the restaurants and the fishmongers are just steps away from the boats that bring the fish in.  But in Marsala we have the concept of "wine yards".  The winery was right next to the supermarket where we could buy the wine.  Talk about a convenience store!  These Sicilians are on to something.

But in Marsala as we are walking out of the marina to get some provisions, a young lady in a car stops and asks if we want a lift into town.  (We’re only going to the nearby supermarket, so it doesn’t work this time.) But this is the second time this has happened.  The first time back in Roccella we thought this is either very nice or this little old lady is some kind of serial killer. But no, people in southern Italy are just that nice and that friendly.  Not something that would happen much in many parts of the US - sad.

The next day we set out and have our first serious encounter with fog. We have about an hour or so where we can see very little and there are fishing boats around.  Fortunately we have our radar and can see through the fog electronically at least.  Just as we are coming out of the fog, the local coastguard comes on the VHF to broadcast a warning of banks of fog and "very poor" visibility.

"Thanks we know".

We continue on to Sciacca.  Another town that, according to he plot book, doesn’t have much going for it.  But we find it scruffy but charming.  It has a lovely trattoria that serves great seafood.  When we are coming back from the restaurant we meet a Dutch couple that Lori met in Marsala. Over a beer, we chat about sailing, life, politics and sailing in about those proportions.

It is gentle and easy.

Dining Family-Style

We just briefly touched the Sicilian coast at Taormina before passing through the Straits of Messina.  But now we are going to spend some time on the island.  In fact, we are planning to sail right round it. An unexpected schedule change has made this option possible.

Although it is fully part of Italy, Sicily is, to borrow a phrase, like a whole other country.  For example, while Italian is the official language, Sicilian which is spoken by many if not most people..  Reflecting Sicily’s history of conquests or occupations, Sicilian has Greek, Latin, Arabic, and French influences in its vocabulary.  

Possibly, because of its shape, Sicily’s flag bears an emblem called the Triskelion or Trinacria.  Given Lori’s likely family origins in the Isle of Man in the UK, it is a remarkable coincidence that their flag bears the same device.

Sadly for Lori, this connection has not manifested itself in a natural fluency in Sicilian.

We have been told that Sicily is divided into three parts - the north, the south and the interior.  By boat we can easily do the north and the south coasts but everyone who has visited here says that we must go into the interior too.  So once we reach a major marina on the south coast, we will make an expedition inland.  It will be a nice change.

Starting from Milazzo, we travel west across the flat “top” of the island.  Milazzo is an industrial and resort town which seems slightly nondescript until you start to wander through the old town.  Here there is a beautiful castello and some very old churches. 

Milazzo church (note the closed door and, yes, we did try the handle)

Oddly, all the churches were closed and they didn’t want to let us into the castello because it was about to close. Worse still, many restaurants were not yet opening for lunch; clearly they rely solely upon the dinner trade. We're in Italy so, needless to say, we eventually find a nice little osteria.

Before leaving we carried out our sea trial on the engine and everything seems to be fine. So we head off for Cefalu.  We had intended to stop en route, but this option is roundly dismissed by the lady in the marina office because the intermediate places are either "not open yet" (Capo d’Orlando) or “not nice” (St. Agata). We do as we are told and get to sail a good bit of the way but there is a swell building from the northwest which makes the ride a little bumpy.

The somewhat minimalist marina at Cefalu is inside a breakwater that forms a little harbor. However it is completely open to the east and it is a little disconcerting to moored looking directly at the open sea.  Not my usual definition of a harbor. Some of the swell gets into the marina and causes a lot of slopping at the stern.

The town of Cefalu has been here since about 400BC but its claim to fame is its Norman Cathedral that was started in the 12th century.

While we are here, we buy fruit from a street vendor.  The fruit is, as always, amazing but it is interesting to hear him alerting people to his presence by making the same street cries that have been made by these vendors for hundreds of years. He weighs the fruit on little hand scales with a design that is probably of comparable antiquity.  (You can just about see them in the picture.) His only concession to modernity is his little motorized cart.

Our next stop is Palermo, the capital of Sicily.  Another day where we can sail with a favorable wind into an unfavorable swell.  More bumps and the waves are a bit bigger today.  For about the last ten mies or so we put on the engine and push our way through the seas.

Initially, Palermo is just what we expected - a scruffy-looking sea port that suffered badly from Allied bombing in the Second World War.

But take a closer look under the grime, behind the facades and, particularly, at its churches and you get a completely different story.

It’s hard to comprehend that there are so many churches that are so old in Palermo.  Most have their origins in the 12th century and show an amazing mixture of stylistic influences. Here are four that particularly took our attention:

The church of Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio, more commonly called La Martorana,,

This church is squeezed in between buildings and is comparatively simple from the outside with a Norman tower that would not look out of place on a country church in England. But the interior is certainly unlike anything found there or anywhere else for that matter.

The detail is quite  sublime.

The Cathedral of Palermo presents a different picture. 

This time it is the exterior that astonishes. Here we see the blend of influences from both the Norman and Arabic periods of Palermo history.  In theory you wouldn’t be sure that this kind of mix would work but it practice it is superb.

And the interior does not disappoint.

Perched on a hilltop adjacent to the town is the Cathedral of Montreale. This is another church in the Norman style with Arabic influences.

It is the sheer scale of the interior that is so daunting here.  I included a picture with people in it to let you get a sense of the enormous area covered by the mosaic.  The gold bits are indeed gold.  And the detail is quite remarkable.

Finally, we have the Chiesa del Gesu - the first Jesuit church. 

Despite being near the main streets it is surprisingly hard to find in part because it looks like very little from the outside.  They are preparing for a wedding which looks like it will start in the next hour and we fear that we will miss the interior.  But no.  No-one seems to mind that a small handful of tourists is there as they prepare. And the interior ……..

Not your average wedding photographs in this context -the bride might be upstaged by the church.

Incredible detail

Under a superlative ceiling

This has to be one of the most beautiful churches in the world and it is all the more remarkable because there are no lines and no entrance fees.  It’s not a monument, it’s “just” a working church slightly off the beaten path.

At the end of our first full day here, there is a concert of popular Italian music on the waterfront intended for teenagers.  Because of the recent bombings in the UK, security is extremely tight with roads blocked to vehicle traffic for most of the day. Fortunately, everything passes off without incident.

And in the early evening of our second day, there is Palermo’s Gay Pride parade.  This is a typically boisterous Italian event with unbelievably loud music, car horns, singing, and chanting reverberating through the narrow streets. It is delightfully unreserved and unrefined.

We end up staying an extra day in Palermo because the weather, while still following the same pattern, is intensifying and we have a tricky little cape to round before we can head towards the south of the island.

Our last night in the north was supposed to be at San Vito Lo Capo -the cape in the northwest corner of Sicily but the wind and the swell weren't dying away quite as quickly as predicted.  So, to avoid another rolly night, we headed for Castellammare del Golfo - a rather endearing fishing and resort town just south of the cape.

According to its general reputation, this little town is noted for having been the birthplace of many American Mafia figures.  It is the origin of the Castellamarese war fought between two of the clans for control of the Italian Mafia in New York City.

There is no evidence of this as we eat a lovely seafood dinner perched above the sea. But who knows who is sitting at the next table ..... (Actually it was a family with a two year old but she did look pretty intense!)

What Do Snails, Volcanoes, Knots of Trash and Donald Rumsfeld Have in Common?

Once the liberals among you stop having fun with the last two, the real answer is they all have an impact on our trip through the Tyrrhenian sea.  But more on those at the appropriate time.

Our first stop is Tropea. 

We have been here before.  True Colors came through here on her maiden voyage from France to Greece. That time we had a captain and there were four people on board.  Now it’s just us.  It’s amazing how far we have come to get back to where we took our first steps.

Tropea is pretty impressive from the sea.  Another one of those towns that are built on a rocky promontory high above the water. This one has very picturesque little town beach where everyone and their dogs can go swimming.

It also has the largest sandcastle in the world.

Just kidding but the stone of the building blends so perfectly with its surroundings that it just might well be.

But back to the title of the blog.  Firstly, the snails.  Last season, Lori’s friend Cristiana told her about a face cream/lotion made from snails. (It’s called “Bava di Lamaca" in Italian.) At this point, the audience for this blog is immediately split into two.  The women are saying “Interesting” and the men are saying “You’ve got to be kidding.”  But I am not .

We find this in Tropea and Lori decides to buy some. It is not actually made from snails but from snail secretions which I think is code for snail poop. Personally, I think this is part ofthe Greenpeace “Save the Snails” campaign. “ You can’t eat these little creatures, they have valuable secretions.”

Check with Lori for her assessment of the product and she may be able to take some orders for fulfillment on our return,

In Tropea we had the first glitch of our trip.  We went off to town for the afternoon and came back to a non-functioning air-conditioning system.  This system is not exactly reliable but it has never been totally out of operation before.  We call a local electrician who comes promptly; he tells us both pumps need to be repaired; he says he will bring them back tomorrow.  We ask when and he says he will call.  In Italy this can be code for “I have no idea when I will get this done but it certainly won’t be tomorrow”.

But no.

At 9:30 the next morning he turns up and re-instals the pumps and everything is fine! So we regather from what might have been a wasted day and set off to see volcanoes.

This part of the world has three active volcanoes - Etna (which we’ve talked about), and two in the Aeolian Islands, Stromboli (which is the most active) and Gran Cratere (on the aptly named island of Vulcano).

It is said that all other volcanoes in the world are designed after this original iconic model.  You can moor on Stromboli but Lori has been (ever so subtly) advocating mooring on the neighboring island of Panarea and watching any fireworks from a “safe” distance.  I have a different view. We decide to compromise and  .... we go to Panarea.

This turns out not to be a bad idea.  Firstly, Stromboli is quite quiet right now so there’s not much to see apart from weird red glows from what you thought was solid land. But, secondly, Panarea is an unusual place.

The car-free island is tiny and what seems, at first, to be a sleepy little summer resort town is far from it.  Apparently, the truly discerning glitterati come here as evidenced by the following:

“Princess Alessandra Borghese lives in a stately converted army barracks overlooking the violet-hued Mediterranean on Panarea’s Via Vincenzella, a narrow cobblestone footpath overgrown with frangipani and wild cacti. A list of her neighbors, all slumming it in simple bougainvillea-shaded limestone retreats, includes a Bulgari and a Visconti, while just a bit farther down the road is Prince Laurent of Belgium. Days in Panarea are lolled barefoot, often on wooden boats anchored for lazy, late-afternoon swims beneath secluded rocky coves—or on jagged Lisca Bianca, where Michelangelo Antonioni filmed his 1960 classic, L’Avventura.

This tiny island off the north coast of Sicily—the smallest of the seven-island Aeolian chain—has quietly become the epicenter of the chicest summer scene in the Mediterranean. Gaining admission, however, takes a bit more finesse than simply writing a seven-figure check: If you wish to possess one of the few, highly coveted homes here, you need to know someone who knows someone. And while a famous last name and a loaded bank account may be a given, if you’re not charming, forget it. “It’s all word of mouth,” Borghese says, “so the wrong people are simply not allowed.”

So now we know people and you know us and if you meet all the other criteria, you may just be able to find a cute little place here with a view of a volcano.

By the way, the pilot book says there are only a few anchoring spots here but it turns out that there are two good-sized mooring fields.  We think this must be a recent addition and we ask the attendants how long they have been in place.  “Fifteen years” is the answer.  Rod Heikell and his crew need to get out more!

On to Lipari, the capital of the islands.  This is again much more chic than you might expect but more the you-and-I kind of chic than on Panarea.  But what strikes us most is the quality of the produce.  The fruit and vegetables are amazing - like we said last year, you know why tomatoes are fruit when you taste the deep red, sweet, juicy ones they have here.  And the fish is abundant and fresh.  You can forget the concept of “food miles”, here we are talking about “food yards”.

Our final stop in the Aeolian Islands is Vulcano.  It has a small marina at the foot of the volcano.  We decide to get up early the next morning and climb up to the crater. At six o’clock we set out and are at the rim of the crater by just before seven.  The climb is not bad apart from the soft volcanic sand that covers most of the bottom two-thirds.  It gives your calves a great workout.

At the top you are suddenly looking down into the vast crater.  The white clouds in the photos are not mist but instead clouds of sulfurous steam with that slightly rotten-egg kind of smell. But what is most surprising is that in the areas where the steam is billowing, it is noticeably warmer and the ground feels hot under your feet.

Our Leading Lady

Now on to rubbish and Donald Rumsfeld.  We had just left Vulcano when suddenly the engine sounds unhappy and lumpy.  It doesn’t seem to want to run smoothly at normal revs.  I back off on the throttle and things seem better but when I increase the revs again we get the same uneven result.  We can’t run the engine at anything more than 1000 rpm without getting this effect.  That translates to a top speed of 3 knots compared with our usual 6 or 7. We need to get this fixed.

But what is “this”? And here is where Donald Rumsfeld comes in.  We have a “known unknown” - we know we have a problem but we don't actually know what it is.  There are two options. Go back to Vulcano.  This would be good if it is a minor problem but useless if something major is wrong - Vulcano is too small to have any major engine repair facilities. The other option is head slowly for the mainland where I can find the resources I may need. This would be a bad option if the symptoms continue to worsen.

I choose to go to the mainland 18 miles away and we spend six uneasy hours motoring slowly to Milazzo - a major port in the north of Sicily.

We let the marina staff know that we have reduced engine power and, possibly, reduced maneuverability (I have no idea if the boat will go in reverse at all). They send out a tender and have set up an alongside berth for us.  With their excellent help and the fact that we can go backwards we get ourselves tied up safely in an excellent harbor and we both breathe a sigh of relief.

The next morning a diver removes a knot of plastic from our propeller and says that everything else looks perfect. We decide to take a breather of a day before performing a sea trial to be wholly sure.

The weird thing is that we've been here before too.  On that maiden voyage we had a much more dramatic garbage knot incident that stopped the engine entirely and we had to sail slowly to the Italian coast and again get a diver to free us.  Odd.

A Monster Called "Sheila"? I Don't Think So!

Moving north from Taormina we have to pass through the Straits of Messina.  This narrow stretch of water connects the Tyrrhenian Sea (to the north) with the Ionian (where we are today).  Because of different water temperatures and different tides in the two seas, this stretch of water can be tricky on bad days and sometimes even downright nasty on days when the wind and current are moving in opposite directions.

The trick here is to time your transit correctly.  With modern technology we have websites that show the net current flow at any time of the day.  You want to go through when the current is helping you; if you try it when it’s against you, you’ll have a slow day and may not even make it through.

One of the manifestations of all this disturbed water is a number of whirlpools.  This is not so bad as it sounds; these are not the “sucking down vast oil tankers never to be seen again” kind of whirlpools but they do make helming a little surprising sometimes.  However their locations are well-known and you can avoid them if you need to.

In history, the Straits of Messina are where Odysseus (yes, him again) encountered the two monsters Scylla and Charybdis.  Both of these are references to whirlpools.  Charybdis is still there today and we will get to meet her on the way back.  But Scylla is gone.  An earthquake changed the shape of the seabed and Scylla moved and became less significant.

In Greek, Scylla sounds like “Silla" and has pronunciation overtones of “scimitar”, “scythe” etc. - just a little ominous.  In Italian, “Scilla” (as it is now spelled) is pronounced “Sheila" - not scary at all.  It is as if King Kong was remade as “Queen Sheila” - marketing would not be happy.

We leave at 7:00 to make the best time window to get through the Straits.  It is calm and quiet and it looks like we will be motoring for most of the day.  As we make our way north, the wind starts to swing round and strengthen.  Soon we have about 12 knots on our nose; not usually anything to remark on but remember that bit about wind against tide?  If this continues, we will have exactly that situation when the tide switches to our favor about 11:30 or so.  Hmmm.

We plough on.  the other thing about the Straits is traffic.  Big ships go through here in each direction.  Also there are ferries, many, many ferries going from the mainland of Italy to Sicily and back.

The big ships are easy - you can avoid them without too much trouble.  The ferries zipping back and forth are a slightly different matter.  They will come quite close to you but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before in other parts of the Med and is almost entirely uneventful.

At the north end where the Straits are at their narrowest, the tide turns just about when predicted and we are just about where we predicted. Perfect.  But to give you an idea of the change in a period of about two minutes we went from making about 2.8 knots of forward progress to making over 7 knots without changing our throttle setting. Sometimes nature just likes to remind you of who is really in charge.

Our overnight stop is in the harbor of the little fishing town named after the monster, Scilla.  It’s a very traditional town that has lots of fishermen’s houses clustered along the waterfront.  It’s still an active fishing harbor but slowly the houses are being turned into holiday apartments and restaurants. However its character still remains.

There are a few buoys here for visiting yachts and we have reserved one for the night.  The owner of the buoy comes out in a dinghy to help us moor.  While we are in this process a beautiful 60ft yacht , Simeron joins in the dance. She decides to anchor in the entrance to the tiny harbor.  She is 60ft and the harbor entrance is about 90ft with the moored pleasure craft.  By the time you add her anchor chain, she is covering the entrance and her stern is between us and the guys helping us moor! Nothing for it but to let them do it.  Once they are done they make a mock bow suggesting that we may continue mooring now.  What is the Italian for “dumbass”?

True Colors (center) moored in Scilla

We moor nicely out of the way of local craft and Simeron.  But a little while later a local swordfish fisherman comes up to them in his boat.  From the language, the tone, gestures and the reactions it is clear that he knows the Italian for “dumbass” and, apparently, quite a few other terms in a similar vein.  He makes his point and they slink away looking a little lessself-satisfied than when they arrived.  it is sad that a classy boat has a less than classy crew.

The swordfish fishing is quite a fascinating enterprise.  I don't know if this is done like this anywhere else in the world, but here they have specially-fashioned boats.  The captain and maybe one other are perched atop of a structure which must be more than forty feet above the boat.  He steers from there. Apparently swordfish like to sleep near the surface of the water and this enables them to be spotted from the boat superstructure. Once spotted they creep up on them and and snag them.  Not entirely sporting (like catching Bambi when she's napping) but the result is quite delicious.  Ah! - the ethical problems of being an omnivore.

Taormina, Etna, and a new Appreciation of Italian Driving

We are going to be here for a few days.  Firstly because we want to spend the time but secondly because there are three imminent storms - one on each side of Sicily. Nowhere to go!

in general this is not a hardship.  At the mooring, we roll a bit in the swell but George (who runs the field) helps us by adding a stern line to a second buoy.  Still bumpy but quite tolerable.

Our first excursion is to Taormina town and to the smaller village of Castemola perched even higher up on the mountain above it.

The best way to go is to take two buses.  The first goes up seemingly impossible hairpins/switchbacks to Taormina itself.  The bus is a regular coach and going round the corners it takes up both sides of the road.  I am sitting behind the driver and the front of the bus is about three inches from the stone wall that prevents us from plummeting back down the hill (the quick way) and into the ocean. There are about 15 or so of these turns; the driver remains calm and, at the bus station in Taormina, he drops us all off and gets ready to do it all again!

That was the main road…

Castelmola is a tiny village, much smaller than Taormina so it doesn’t merit a wide road.  But it merits just as big a bus!  Now we have serious bends that make those up to Taormina look like an expressway.  Same calm demeanor of the driver; same complete competence and effectiveness under all circumstances.  No shouting, gesticulating, insulting or cursing. Where are we again?

Starting at the top, Castemola was recommended because of its views and one of its restaurants. Castelmola is almost 1750 feet above the sea and, as the crow flies, it’s only a few miles from the coast.

The restaurant was suggested because of its food and the views of Mt. Etna the largest active volcano in Europe.

The menu looked excellent and the waiter reminded us each time we ordered a dish, 

“You know that’s fish …” 

“Yes”

“You know its raw…”

“Yes”

The food (Tuna Tagliata)

Lori's "Content" face

It was as delicious as we hoped it would be (never had raw shrimp before) and in the end he seemed pleased with us.  There is, however, something slightly incongruous about eating the freshest fish imaginable so high up in the mountains.

It had been suggested that we might walk back down to Taormina from here.  Right idea, wrong shoes. Calves ached the next day from trying not to slide down of the polished stone of the pathway.  But it was great to be getting the exercise.

Taormina is one of the most elegant medieval towns in Sicily. In late May, it hosted the G7 Summit and that makes this the second time we have almost intersected with Donald Trump on this trip (the first being in Rome when we arrived).  This whole thing had caused us much concern since we were not sure which of our Dolce and Gabbana outfits we should wear to show our empathy with the everyday Sicilian people.

The town (although it is described by one travel writer as “tourist-choked”) has some quite beautiful buildings and the throngs seemed to abate as the afternoon wore on and we could enjoy wandering around the narrow streets with some very high-end stores side-by-side with the usual vacation trinket shops.

We spent our second day on the boat riding out the bumps just in case something went wrong.  It didn’t; we were snug and solid all day. This would have been a little boring but there was an air show right in the bay in which we were anchored.

It is surprisingly difficult to take pictures of an air show from a rolling boat.  Well it's not really "that" surprising, but if anyone says my horizon's not straight ......  

Since, we’d been looking at Etna for the past few days, we decided that the third day should be a tour of Etna. There are six of us in a little 4x4 that should really only hold four.  Lori and I are in the back.  Every time we go over a bump, our heads hit the roof of the car.  Strategic slouching is the strategy from hereon.

Being a volcano, Etna is surrounded by lava fields (long cold) and our guide takes us to see one.  Remember the road to Castelmola?  For this episode we abandon the whole road concept entirely. Lava is very rocky, jagged and quite hard at times.  The suspension in a lower-end SUV is barely up to the task.  Strategic slouching employed extensively.  The sheer scale of the lava fields is astonishing but after a while one patch of former molten lava starts to look much like another.  But our guide is highly knowledgeable and fills in historical details, geological details and botanical details that add much color to the landscape. For example, Etna is the only active volcano that has a glacier.  It is tiny and in a lava cave but it meets all the criteria for a glacier and, on top of all that, it is where the idea for granita (Italian water ice) came from.

It's cooler up here and can be a little windswept.  Lori tries to get in tune with nature.

After a simple but thoroughly enjoyable lunch in one of the rifugios on the mountain we head off to see the Alcantara Gorges. The stone that they are made from is crystallized lava resulting in some of the regular patterns that you can see.

Strange and quite impressive. Equally impressive was the route to the Gorges.  Not for us the highway that runs by the river.  Oh no, we use the cart track. It is absurdly uneven with large rocks, unexpected dips and sharp drop-offs at the sides. The people in the front of the car laugh nervously; we employ strategic slouching yet again.

We wonder how many cars our driver goes through in a year but don’t like to ask.

Back at the boat, George has delivered the wine that we ordered yesterday (a great service - takes a lot of the heavy lifting out of boat provisioning) and we are ready to set off tomorrow for the Straits of Messina.

Our Idols Have Feet of Clay

Getting across the south of Italy by boat takes a bit of effort.  It is what is euphemistically called a “coast of passage” which means not very may places to spend the night and what places there are are spread far enough apart to imply overnights or long days.

We decide to avoid the overnights, if we can, and commit to early starts to ensure not too late arrivals.

Lori has been itching to take True Colors off the dock rather than letting me do it.  So we switch roles and she makes a flawless departure from the deserted harbor (even at our early hour, the fishing fleet is already gone). She is elated! We settle in for a long day and it’s amazing how far you can get in a day if you start at 5:00am. We make good progress helped by the wind and a current.  We see two more pods of dolphins, a turtle and, we think, a shark with its iconic triangular fin darting across the surface of the water. It’s the first time we’ve seen one here.

Crossing the Gulf of Taranto, the first landmark we see is Punto Alice.  Idly, I think, “How nice naming a point after a woman, maybe somebody’s sweetheart.” But, wait a minute, this is Italian.  “Alice” in Italian means “anchovy”.  “Anchovy Point” doesn’t have the same romantic connotation but in the US we were just as creative with “Cape Cod” in Massachusetts. Not much romance where commercial fishing is involved, I guess.

In order to make landfall safely, sailors rely on charts (paper and electronic) and, for more detailed information, pilot books.  These describe harbors and anchorages and their approaches in great detail.  For this area, the books were researched and produced some years ago by Rod “the god” Heikell. They have been frequently updated but that’s hard to do with paper-based media.

Our first stop was supposed to be Crotone which gets a grudging nod from Heikell but doesn’t sound like much of a place.  Lori prefers that we give it a miss and Heikell's pilot book says there are some mooring buoys farther south in a little national park.  Sounds great; only snag is they’re not there.  The only buoys in sight are marking a swimming area - wrong type of buoys and legally you can’t park there anyway. The wind, which has been building in the late afternoon, is now 18 knots and it’s near the end of a long day. Much cursing and rending of raiment!

We head farther south, into the waves of course, past more buoy “locations” with no buoys. Our electronic chart shows a possible anchorage on the leeward side of a cape a couple of miles away. They crowd-source data and so we have an entry from at least one boat that has successfully parked there. We get there and there are three mooring buoys in the little bay!  They look official and so we snag one.  Our buoy-lassoing technique developed last year is a bit rusty and, because of True Colors' high freeboard, it takes a little time to get snugged in for the night (OK an hour!!!) , but the location is perfect and the night is peaceful.

The next day we slip out early again with the prospect of another long day. But early starts do have their upsides.

Yesterday’s wind makes for a lumpy sea but the wind itself has died and we can make good progress. And then the wind starts to build.  Lori, not really a morning person, is back sleeping below.  The wind is favorable for a sail but I am loathe to wake her.  But the wind keeps building and I need to let True Colors have some fun.

I wake Lori and we get the sails up.  Soon the wind is at 20 knots and we are close-hauled. It keeps building and tops out at about 25 - 28 knots.  We keep the full sails up for a while just to have some fun and practice; True Colors is doing well and looks like she’s shaking off the cobwebs of the winter.  We hit a maximum of 9.1 knots before we have had enough and decide to take a couple of reefs in on the main.  The ride is much smoother but even with a handkerchief of a main we are comfortably doing 8.5 knots.  Whee!

The wind moderates and we are eventually motoring again towards Roccella Ionica. Harbors on this coast have a tendency to silt up with sand during the winter months and the pilot book has warnings about this one.  However we negotiate the sandbar and enter the harbor safely.  We talk to the new owner of the marina, Francesco, who says he's has been dredging the harbor entrance this season and will continue to do so until there is about 4.5m of water on the entry. We need to make a manual alteration to our pilot book.

The marina is well planned but has finger pontoons that are a little on the short side for out 15 meters.  We try one berth but we don’t like it and finally move to against a stone quay.  The marina is being redeveloped so things that were closed will soon be re-opened and we will check them out on the way back.

Roccella Ionica located on the so-called “Jasmine Coast” (which gets its name from the long tradition of cultivation of jasmine for oil production)  is a Calabrian working town with influences dating back to the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines and Normans and is dominated by its castle. Unusually it retains its medieval “city” plan that dates back to about 1000 AD.

Roccella also has a wonderful long stretch of light-gray sandy beach. Typical of the many beautiful beaches along this coast.  But it is June and most of them are still empty.  It is like some post-apocalyptic disaster movie.  All the beach chairs and umbrellas are set out but there are no people, none.  “But what's that coming over the hill?  Oh no, it’s the zombie army. Back to the boats everyone!”

Another early start puts us on our way to Taormina in Sicily.  Taormina lies at the foot if Mount Etna - the largest and most active volcano in Europe - so our mooring should be quite spectacular.  Another slow start to the day wind-wise turns into 15 - 20 knots on our stern. We are comfortably running at over seven knots.  Lori confesses that she has been nervous about this point of sail for the past three seasons.  Visions of crash-gybing and corkscrewing into the ocean have apparently been running through her head.  She is still a bit nervous but grows more comfortable as she sees how smoothly we sail in even this strength of wind. Our skills and comfort levels improve through practice and experience.

We moor in Taormina Roads under the old town and with a view of the volcano. A beautiful location.

Setting Sail

One nice thing about our new boatyard is that, after the work they did over the winter (which we thought was pretty routine), they insisted that we take the boat out for a sea trial so that they could check the engine temperature after its service and other comforting things like that.  These guys are professionals and know how to look after boats.

We set off only four days behind schedule (which is some kind of record) and headed south for Santa Maria di Leuca.  The wind was not supposed to be too favorable (10 knots on the nose) but turned out to be 15 knots on the nose - not in any way uncomfortable but more work and slower. One good sign, however; we saw our first pod of dolphins.

In the end, we decided to put in to Otranto. Using our agent we managed to wrangle one of the very few spots on the quay.  There is not much space here at all and I would not like to rely on finding a spot, even at anchor, under most circumstances.  Of course, the wind for parking was >12 knots and across our beam.  Just perfect (sic) for the first stern-to moor of the season.  It turned out to be not pretty but also not embarrassing (so that’s a good start).

Otranto is a nice small medieval town that is negatively impacted by tourism - cheap trinket shops abound and the restaurants are merely average.

We could have lingered here a day but decided to push on down to Santa Maria di Leuca to get back on schedule.  Leuca is right on the tip of the heel of the Italian :”boot” and it turns out to be a very idiosyncratic place.  Firstly, there are these serious villas overlooking the water built mostly in the 19th century and in whatever style took the fancy of the owners.  There are Tuscan villas, some with Moorish influences and some in styles we’ve never seen before. 

Secondly, this is the location of the highest lighthouse in Italy which shares its location with a church in honor of St. Peter who is supposed to have made his first landfall in Europe at this point. 

Finally, it is situated at the end of an aqueduct bringing water here.  The Italian dictator Mussolini liked projects like this and built two flights of steps up from the harbor to the lighthouse along the side of the cataract that ends the water flow. This doesn’t turn on very often but it’s apparently quite a sight.  There is also a Roman column that Mussolini had moved from Rome (presumably to add more historic grandeur to the concept). Honestly, it just looks odd.

Only two days in and we have our first contact with Europe’s migrant crisis.  Across the other side of the harbor the Italian coastguard brings in a yacht that is about two-thirds our size and unload about 25 or so men.  There are police, customs, coastguard and medical services.  With an efficiency that can only come from practice they process the people and move them off in a bus presumably to some staging point on their way into the EU.  One of our neighbors goes over to take a look at the boat; it is completely stripped down with no instruments whatsoever.  Apparently the skippers navigate by cellphone.  The migrants have probably come from Turkey and are part of the “luxury” end of the spectrum of people smuggling. Not scary; just sad.

We stayed here for three nights in order to avoid some more awkward weather and then headed north up the inside of the heel to Gallipoli.

This is not the “Gallipoli” of the First World War - that is in Turkey.  However the name of both towns is Greek in origin and is a throwback to the time that all of this area was under the influence of the Ancient Greeks.

This is a town of the size of Brindisi but with a very well-preserved old city on a promontory into the Ionian. There is a tourist impact, of course, but it is better managed than in Otranto.  There seems to be much more of a balance between locals and visitors and this makes the experience quite enjoyable.  Nice, if not exceptional, restaurants with an emphasis on local seafood; a good laundry (a must for sailors) and a conveniently-located marina.

The trip so far has been colored by stronger-than-expected winds from inconvenient directions and at the wrong time of the day (when we have to leave or park),  Our next few legs are long and we need to hit the right weather pattern in order to make a concerted drive towards Sicily.

In Brindisi, in a Bar, with a Floozy

As headlines go, that’s not bad! Perhaps I have a future in the British tabloid press?

So this is a tale in three parts.

First, Brindisi.  As I said last year, Brindisi is an odd place. It’s in many ways a typical southern Italian town.  It’s dusty; it has a mix of architectural styles; a lot of the buildings have seen better days and, while it has some historical significance, it has few artifacts that reflect its past.

But it grows on you.

While it is sleepy and hot in the afternoons by eight or nine o’clock in the evenings before dinner everyone promenades along the waterfront.  Whole families together ;frequently three generations just strolling and chatting and generally enjoying life.

Today two little girls who are both less than two and dressed in their best are out with their mothers.  The little girls are enjoying each other and life in the biggest possible way. They squeal, they laugh, they hug each other all the way along the waterfront. They are already lifelong friends and look like they are destined to be that way forever.  They have a destination. Throughout the summer Brindisi sets up mini-carousels for the toddlers at various place throughout the town. Our little girls are heading for one of these which has little chairs hanging from the top so that when it rotates centrifugal force makes them fly outwards.  The little girls get into chairs one behind the other and it starts. They look calm and satisfied. The one in front reaches out a little toddler arm and holds onto her friend’s chair - support, comfort and friendship in one tiny gesture. “Don’t worry, girl, we’re in this together and I’ve got you!” 

It is the official start of summer this weekend - marked by the June 2 Republic day holiday (celebrating Italy voting to become a republic just after the Second World War in 1946).  So it’s a long holiday weekend for everyone.  People typically head to the beach but it’s a little cool and overcast so it’s not exactly the best weather.  British people will be glad to hear that it’s not just their holidays that are dampened by poor weather!

But the Italians are resourceful and have planned events for the whole weekend.  Most notable is the Vinibus Terrae wine festival.  Puglia is a major wine producing region (OK which region in Italy isn’t!).  While they are not well-known in places like the US, the Primitivo wines it produces are deep red and full-bodied and fairly inexpensive. Well worth seeking out!  So, all along the waterfront, there are booths from the local vineyards where you can sample their products (five samples for 10 Euros). We have fun tasting but realize that we should moderate a bit because we have dinner to follow!

Which leads me to the second part of the tale.

Eating out in Brindisi is a mixed bag. Many restaurants are average at best and most of them on or near the waterfront fall into this category. However there are exceptions. We ate in La Nassa with some new friends that we met in the boatyard.  These two couples, Gary and Louise and Mel and Jackie have been sailing more or less together for the past 17 years.  Two beautiful big boats - an Oyster 61 and a Trintella 51. It’s a straightforward, genuine pizza place that has a great atmosphere. Also on the waterfront is a contemporary wine bar, Numero Primo, which has a superb local wine list and serves some great creative local light meals and appetizers. But our favorite is La Sciabica.

In a new and exciting variant of "Where's Waldo?", can you spot the evidence of Lori in the above picture?  There might be a prize....

This is an osteria which means it’s not in any way fancy a a restaurant and they typically offer simple but good food.  La Sciabica is an exception. There is a focus on traditional local dishes like potato and rice pie or their assortment of local antipasti - a delicious mixture of seafood, meats vegetables and cheeses. They bake their own bread and we are fortunate to get some straight from the oven. The ambience in an old stone harbor building completes the experience.

Oh, yes, the floozy.

She hangs on the wall in the osteria. The artist has done a great job showing her in all her detailed colorful finery but the ogling men are grey and roughly drawn - no message here!

On to Brindisi

We head on south from Campagna towards Brindisi, but not before Lori has a small steak dinner.

We ask the waiter if people finish these and he says “Of course”!

Our route takes us across the southern part of the Apennines -the mountain range that runs down the center of Italy. The terrain is beautifully alpine and the area seems remarkably remote, green and unspoiled.  We come down from the heights and press towards Brindisi.

We are planning to stay in one of the hill towns near Brindisi.  These medieval towns are very characterful with narrow alleyways and white-washed houses. This area is renowned for its food and wine and we are looking forward to trying both.

Our little town, Carovigno, is the least fashionable of the main hill towns but is clearly working on improving its presentation. The medieval street pattern means three things: 1. you can’t find your hotel, 2. you can’t park anywhere near it and 3. you have to twist and turn your way in the car to get there.  We get lost; we ask; we eventually find it and it is utterly charming.

Our plan is to spend part of the next few days working on necessary boat stuff snd then enjoy ourselves in the afternoon and evening.  A major advantage of having a car is that we can load up with provisions at the hypermarket and transfer them easily to the boat.This works pretty well.

True Colors is in the water and all the major work on her has been done.  Her topsides do not look particularly clean but they’ve just had a major storm here so we will ask them to do it again and add some deeper cleaning to get her looking her best.

Of all the hill towns, Ceglie Messapica is our favorite - it is less sophisticated than Ostuni but no less charming and has some wonderful restaurants.  We go back to one of these - Cibus - that we visited last year.  The food and the ambience is as good as we remember it.

At the other end of the experience spectrum, we go out for pizza in Carovigno one night and find that it is karaoke night at the restaurant also.  Pizza and karaoke - strange.  Only our lack of Italian saves us from participating and then only just!

We finally transfer ourselves to the boat in time for our scheduled June 1 departure.  We know that we won’t leave on this date but it is only minor things that will cause delays and compared with previous seasons and almost everyone else’s experience we look like we will do well.

A “Day Off” in Amalfi

The plan was to spend a day in and around Campagna before heading down to Brindisi and True Colors.  Our choices were the Roman ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum covered in volcanic ash by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 (that’s AD79 not 1979) or check out the Amalfi coast which could be on our sailing itinerary later this summer.  Amalfi was the winner.

The Amalfi area has a coast road which qualifies as a “little scenic route”.  In my experience these always have their thrills and tensions.  i can think of driving around Lake Como,  the Shafer Trail in Utah and a back road through the Austrian Alps all with the same “affection”.   Amalfi is a worthy entrant on this list.  The road twists and turns; it is barely wide enough for two cars; there are tour buses going in both directions which frequently have to back up to find a place to pass; people park on the side of the road cutting the width down even further.  It is one of those routes where the driver has to “drive” and not do any sightseeing.  It was hard to get out of second gear on this road - third is possible but you would be throwing yourselves round bends into oncoming traffic more often than you would like.

The towns are picturesque and the location and views are as spectacular as you would imagine. But you get the feeling that their reputation comes from a bygone era when mass tourism was not in full swing. Now the towns are over-run with tourists, their cars and their buses and all the shops and restaurants are geared at this market. What special charm they once had is sometimes difficult to uncover when you are close up.

On the Amalfi coast road what goes out must come back (or at least not without a detour) so we had round two of our battle with the traffic and the road engineers.  It was later in the day and it seemed a little less frenetic than the morning drive - maybe we’re getting used to it.  Lori says I’m starting to drive like an Italian; I think I need a few more years before I could claim that.

So I think we chalked Amalfi off the list of our sailing routes for this summer.  It would have been a long way for comparatively little benefit.

Local Color

We set off for Italy on May 22nd. Flying from Phoenix you cross the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico.  It is remarkable looking down from the plane how devoid of color it all is.  There are no reds, blues or greens to se seen anywhere. It is almost like looking at a the negative of a color photograph (for those of you who know or remember what that is!) You look at odd tones and hues that don’t relate in any obvious way to colors that you normally see.

But as you travel east into Texas, green is the first color that comes back with trees and grasslands becoming more prevalent.  But it was remarkable when we flew into Dallas that the blue roofs of a small industrial complex stood out so vividly - it was the first blue we had seen for hours.

Blues are definitely present in Italy.  We arrived in Rome in the early morning with the sun just coming up.  The Mediterranean was as blue as you could wish for.

We rented a car in Rome so that we could drive down to Brindisi and also spend a few days getting over our jet lag.  Early in the morning, jet lag, manual transmission, Rome rush hour and Italian drivers - welcome to your vacation Colin!  It wasn’t too bad actually but the one thing you really notice is how fast Italian drivers drive.  You look in your rear-view mirror and an approaching car seems (to American senses) to be a long way off and then it hurtles past you a startlingly few moments later. Couple this with the common habit of cars wishing to pass coming right up behind you (less than a cars’ length) and sitting there until you move over into the slower lanes.

On the trip south the reds in our color palette came back with a flourish -fields of wild poppies were everywhere! A full palette restored.

Our first stop was a hill town called Campagna in the region of Campania.  I know they’re spelled differently but they sound the same to us.  But when you say “Campagna” to Italians they look confused and say “Oh you mean “Campania”” or vice-versa.

Campagna is an old town with nothing remarkable in its history apparently.  Its wikipedia entry is almost non-existent but it has a ducal palace and some interesting buildings - so something must have happened here surely.  Our biggest challenge is finding our hotel.

In old Italian towns the streets are narrow - by “narrow” I mean they are alleyways that were just wide enough for a farm cart to pass along in the old days and now they have cars!  Most towns have a one-way system (because there is n room for another car). But this is not really a solution because there are cars parked and people walking where you want to go.  You just have to be patient and urge the car to breathe in and squeeze past all of life that is going on around you.

Another problem is the lack of street signs at the times that you really need them. We drove through Campagna once and failed to find the hotel.  We started again and this time asked someone.  Not a lot of English is spoken and we don't have a lot of Italian, but the hotel is easy to find just off the piazza, just keep going straight ahead. We keep going straight ahead and get to the other side of the town without seeing a piazza.  We try again and ask again. Same answer - just keep going straight ahead and the hotel is in the piazza.  It even has a sign. We keep going straight ahead and get to the other side of the town without seeing the sign, the hotel or even the damn piazza again.

Once more with feeling and a very slow pace and we spot the piazza.  By “piazza” they mean a space for parking six cars next to a coffee bar.  Over in the corner is a sign that relates to the hotel but the hotel is tucked away out of sight.  Success!

Our victory is short-lived The hope has no parking and the six slots are full.  The hotel concierge says we must park in the parking garage on the edge of the town - we know where this is (we’ve passed it three times already today).  I drop Lori and the luggage, drive to the garage, park the car and make my way back on foot to the hotel.

It has been a long day - but someone is maintaining a positive attitude  Perhaps it's the prospect of a local Italian dinner...

2017 Sailing Season

Planning for this year’s trip has been a little unusual.  It’s largely because we are in a new sailing area with very different characteristics than the Ionian on the west coast of Greece.

True Colors spent the winter in Brindisi, Italy (at the top of the heel of the “boot”). She was in a small boat yard in the inner part of a very safe ancient harbor.  The owners of this yard have been in their family business for about 140 years, so we figured that they might know a thing or two about looking after boats.

The planning challenge has been how to link some interesting sailing areas on the south coast of Italy and Sicily with the necessity of getting out of the Schengen zone for a month to comply with EU regulations.  It's a long way across the south of Italy with comparatively few good places to stop and some longish legs that make timing and accurate weather forecasting important. The back end of the plan hardened up reasonably well with a couple of weeks in Croatian, a couple more in Montenegro and then back across to Italy as the finale.  But the first couple of months is a little fluid. So planning to meet up with friends is a little bit of a challenge right now.

First impressions

Our plan isto be in Venice for three full days. This will give us time to explore the city, visit the island of Murano (where the glass is made) and watch a gondola regatta on our last day.

On the night of our arrival we walk into the local neighborhood (Sant'Elena)  to seek out a restaurant.  The neighborhood is quite delightful - the buildings are elegant multi-level houses that have been turned into apartments.  Kids are playing in the streets (remember no cars) and the windows are open to the sounds and smells of Italians cooking dinner.  We are hungry and find a little trattoria.  The food is good but not out of the ordinary.  However even modest Italian cuisine is a welcome change after two months in Croatia.

On the morning of the first day we decide to walk into the center of Venice - St. Mark’s square. It’s about a 20 minute walk but we started later than we intended and it is hot.  We walk alongside the main canal with the sun beating down on us and reflecting off the buildings.  It is time for a shady lunch.

Venice gets a bad reputation for food, but we had seen articles saying that it has been improving.  So we are optimistic.  We decide to try pizza.  Oh dear! My prosciutto pizza is OK but Lori and Brian order sausage pizza.  expecting Italian sausage.  It is hot dog sliced up and arranged whimsically on top of the cheese.  No amount of whimsy can make up forthe pitiful nature of this offering.  But the surroundings are pleasant enough and it is good to be in Venice.

As an antidote to the pizza, Lori and Brian have gelato from one of the many vendors.  They feel better.

We walk on to St. Mark’s with gondolas lining the quay to our left and passing the Doge’s palace with its astonishing facade. 

This part of Venice was planned, with much the same intent as Washington,  to impress and to be a manifestation of the power of the state. It succeeds even now.

We spend some time window-shopping the expensive jewelry stores that line the colonnade that goes round three sides of the square.  Mixed in with the stores are historic cafes like Florian which, founded in 1720, is the oldest cafe in the world. Ithaca had patrons like Goethe, Casanova, Proust, Dickens and Lord Byron.  And still has some characters today……

There is a long line to visit St. Mark’s basilica so we share a bottle of wine opposite the Doge’s palace and wait for the crowds to go away. 

Once they do we go inside the church.  This is a Byzantine-style church whose construction began in 1063 and was completed about thirty years later. Inside, the walls and ceilings are covered with vast gold mosaics whose area is equivalent to that of one and half football fields. The mosaics on the floor are marble and almost equally as stunning. We are all impressed but Brian perhaps most of all.

We walk through some of the narrow alleyways that cross the little canals and take our first vaporetto (water-bus) ride back to our marina.  We were going to go into town for dinner but we are hot and tired and eat in another little restaurant close by.  Again the food was good but, again, not especially remarkable.

Venetian landfall

We slipped out of Umag at about 8:30 just after the customs office opened.  There were no problems with clearing out and we slipped off the quay quietly and without incident.  The sea was flat calm and this was what was predicted for the rest of the day.  We were resigned to a long day motoring.

About two miles out the wind and the swell from the Gulf of Trieste picked up quickly and we put the sails up and were on a broad reach in 15+ knots of wind.  In these conditions we were making 7.5 knots easily (much more than we could make with the engine).  This kept up for about three hourswe were pretty much on the same tack the whole time.

A couple of interesting things about this area are that, firstly, it is quite shallow - only about 20 meters deep the whole way. Secondly, even though the straight line distance is 56 miles, the coasts run in such an orientation that we could see land all the way.

The last half of the trip we motored over a sea that had become flat calm again.

We could see Venice from quite a long way off with the bell tower in St. Mark’s square being one of the most prominent landmarks.  There is a long approach channel before you get into the canals proper.  This is full of Italians in power boats zipping around wherever they want.  Add to this tripper boats full of people heading out to the beaches of the Lido and then, as you get closer, the vaporetti (water buses) which drive fast and expect everyone to get out of their way (just like buses on land).  It is, as you might say, a fairly fluid situation.  Even Lori’s “Do you see that boat?” questions can’t quite keep up with the number of boats here!

The marina is well-located at the outside end of the main set of islands that make up Venice.  The approach is a little shallow but fine.  A guy meets us in a tender.  He is one of those young Italian men who is clearly aware of just how cool he is.  This is not a stereotype but so many of them can do it so well.  It’s also a necessity because it is very clear that young Italian women wouldn’t give them the time of day if they weren’t. And that would be bad…..

As a preface to the next part, if you have been following along, you will know that there are a number of ways we can park.  These are anchoring, grabbing a mooring buoy, coming alongside and stern-to mooring in a couple of variants. Well, there’s another one; one we haven’t ever done before.  Guess which one we have to do here.

This is actually another variant of stern-to mooring that is pretty common in the western Mediterranean but not used in Greece, Croatia, Montenegro and all the other places we have been. In this model there are two wooden posts or pilings about 15-20 meters off the dock (we are 14 meters and a bit).  They are spaced just wide enough to take a boat and the idea is that you slide smoothly between these pilings turning the boat as you go until your stern is at the dock and your bow is neatly between theposts at the front.

It may come as a surprise and a relief (as it was to us) that this is exactly how we did it.  No mishaps, no angst just “Be cool, look cool”.  Frankly, it would have been very difficult for just the two of us to have done this but Pam and Brian’s help made all the difference.  Also, I think not having the time to worry about it was very helpful also.  As a crew, we can be just a tad over-analytical at times.

We take a deep breath and realize that we are in Venice.  For Lori and I this is the culmination of four and a half months of sailing and a couple more months of planning.  True Colors has done a wonderful job. It all feels very satisfying. We have followed the Venetian trading routes backwards from Malta to here looking at all the evidence of their presence and marveling at how expansive was their reach.  The Venetian buildings and towns we have seen have progressively become more common and more imposing and for the next few days we will see where it all started from.

Finally, the crew is complete

Pam and Brian arrived tired but on time in Pula. Lori was very excited to see Pam again and they chat away nineteen to the dozen.  (I suspect that might be a Scottish term but I think you can work it out.)

Back at the boat we crack open a bottle of champagne to celebrate their arrival and have a light dinner with the Colosseum as backdrop.

Pam and Brian’s first day is planned as a rest and jet-lag recovery day (and it appears champagne-headache recovery day also - I, for one, shouldn’t drink even a glass or two of the stuff).  So we take a leisurely walk around Pula and visit the Temple of Augustus.

We also  go inside the Colosseum. It is both smaller and larger than you perceive from the outside.  The arena itself is fairly modest in size but the building around is is quite remarkable in its size and completeness.

The next day we were supposed to leave mid-morning to travel the short distance back north to Rovinj. But it is blowing 15 - 20 knots across our beam another is a boat just downwind of us with no fenders out - high mishap potential!  So we decide to wait it out but it takes a while.

Fortunately the boat next to us leaves first (which I hoped they would do) in a fairly inelegant fashion but they get away safely.  This clears a nice comfortable space for us and, despite the wind, we make a smooth exit would never have been anywhere near the other boat anyway.

The good news is that the wind means that we can sail and we have a very pleasant reach up to Rovinj.  I had been worried that our late departure would cause problems of buoy availability in the little bay we like but it is late in the season and the Italians have mostly gone home so two of the three buoys are open.  Lori introduces Brian and Pam to our buoy-lassoing technique and we are tightly moored in no time.

We take the little ferry into Rovinj and are pleased that Pam and Brian enjoy the charming little town as much as we do.  We find a nice little trattoria in an alleyway close to the harbor and have a pleasant dinner before heading back to the boat.

Our final Croatian leg is back up to Umag because this will set us up for the shortest possible leg across to Venice,  Again, the wind is blowing but it is easy to slip off our mooring and we have a fun sail tacking our way north.  The wind is so enjoyable that we take some wide zigs and zags and let Pam and Brian get the feel of helming True Colors again.

Istria (where Umag is) is famous for truffles and we had introduced Pam and Brian to these in Pula.  However Brian insists that there are truffles in chocolate truffles.  We are skeptical but he insists he is correct.  There is a little specialty store in the marina that sells all things truffle.  There to his intense pleasure he finds chocolate with truffles in it.  We are crestfallen.  Then we taste it.  It is possibly the most disgusting thing I have tasted in a long time.  We are vindicated (somewhat); Brian is downcast. How to win the battle but lose the war!! 

[Editor's Note: There are no truffles in the typical chocolate truffle that you buy in the US.  Just as there are no girl scouts in girl scout cookies.  But in the truffle case, it now appears that it may be wise to check!]

Today's Quiz: Can you think of place names that are anagrams of other place names?

[HINT: Read on ...]

We are back in Pula again after a quiet week in the north of Istria.

Early in the week we sailed from Rovinj to a little bay just south of Umag.  The forecast said we could expect another bora wind (from the northeast) and this bay is quite sheltered from winds in that direction.  We picked up a mooring in the bay and settled down for the evening and night.

When we don’t have the engine on and are not connected to shore power (in a marina) we have a generator that we use to charge the batteries.  It stopped working.  The fault light said “blocked sea water flow”.  This is used for cooling. I eliminated all the straightforward causes and we were left with a fault in the generator itself or a blockage where the sea water comes into the generator through the hull.  Checking this would involve going into the water and taking a look with a mask and snorkel.  Not really a problem, apart from ……

These cuddly little creatures are commonly known as “fried egg jellyfish”  They are quite common in the Mediterranean especially in July - October.  They only mildly irritate you when they sting but they DO sting.  Also just looking off the port quarter of the boat, I can could 28, yes 28, of them.  I conclude that going into the water in not a viable approach, so we will go to Umag the next day and get a service person to look at the generator. We were going to go to Umag anyway to get someone to look at our autopilot and there is a good technician there apparently.

The night is quite rolly with a noticeable swell coming into the bay.  We are fairly comfortable all night but in the morning we see that one of the boats that was anchored in the bay has moved.  They must have been dragging their anchor and needed to reset it in a different location. Not a great thing to have to do in the dark.

We motor the short distance to Unag and as we are tying up we meet some Americans (Ann and John) who are sailing here with her sister and brother-un-law.  Our rolly night had apparently had quite a strong bora and they too had had to move their boat in the middle of the night  We were glad that we had paid attention to our pilot book.

We have some wine on board with them later and talk about plans.  The problem is that, unusually, we are going to be in bora conditions for three or four days.  Jim is unsure, but the weather data and the locals, convince him that moving on is not wise.  People who straggled in the next day were wearing their full foul-weather gear and .talked about 25- 30 knot winds.

So we schedule the generator to be looked at and it turns out to need a part replaced.  So going into the water with the jellyfish would have been fruitless (and gross and possibly painful). Good decision! But fixing the autopilot will have to wait until the next day.

Alan comes to fix our autopilot and he does a quick confirmation that all it needs is to be re-tuned.  This has to be done at sea; so he shows me how to do it.  Lori takes a video just in case I forget.  I will have a new skill to add to my profile - “autopilot technician”.

Alan seems so capable that we raise another problem with him.  Ou boat seems to draw an inordinate amount of power from its batteries.  We had confirmed this by having our folks in Vliho fit a new gauge that measure not just the voltage in the batteries but also the current.  The numbers were very high (absurdly so) and the Vliho team had spent almost two days trying to track down the problem. 

As we are going through the scenarios with him he eliminates possible causes and homes in on the gauge itself - it seems to be reading about ten times too high a value for the current.  As he is rubbing his fingers over the screen, a piece of dirt come off.  The piece of dirties what we thought was the decimal point!!!!  So the gauge is completely off and we will need to have it replaced. This confirms the benefit of having a second disinterested pair of eyes looking at a problem.

Sometime during all this, our head (toilet) stops working.  Continuing in my role as diagnostician, I suspect that we have a blocked discharge tube A constipated toilet is not something you can ignore on a boat. So we delay our departure from Umage again and wait for the guys to take a look at it.  My diagnosis is correct and they take awayone disgustingly blocked tube and replace it with a shiny new one.  Our toilet is now flushing with serious energy.

Finally, we leave Umag and head back down to Pula.  It is a quiet trip but we managed to sail a very short part f it before the wind died only to have it pick up again when we got close to Pula and the time to park!  But no problems and we get snugged up into a berth with a view.

The view from the back of True Colors

There is not only a view but there is also a soundtrack.  Tonight Oliver & Gibonni (very famous in Croatia apparently) are playing in the Colosseum which is used as a venue these days. The music seems to be mostly big ballads but the crowd love them all.  It is a great atmosphere.

Are we there yet?

No. But you could almost be forgiven for thinking that we are.

From Pula north we are starting to see a whole other side of Croatia - a much more European side rather than its Balkan one. Apart from the Roman and Venetian influences, we are walking by a lot of buildings that look like they belong in the Austro-Hungarian empire.  More at home in stylish Vienna or Prague than Croatia.

But their presence is not so surprising given that Pula was such an important Austro-Hungarian naval base and shipbuilding center for the empire as well as the summer home of their royal family.  The juxtaposition of these often pastel-painted buildings with their more solid Venetian neighbors gives a tremendous sense of the varied impact that history and geography have had on this area.

This area is also called the Istrian Riviera and it is certainly justified by the number of tourists and holiday destinations that we are seeing as we sail north.  We have been getting a little tired of sitting in marinas so we seek out a little bay with just three moorings a mile or so south of our next objective - Rovinj. 

The bay is fringed by pine trees and a fairly upscale hotel offering a number of outdoor activities.  It is not frenetic in any way; just families enjoying their vacation in the sun.

One advantage of this location is that the hotel provides a ferry service to Rovinj town.  On our second day, we take advantage of this and head into town in the afternoon.

The town is quite beautiful and things are starting to be more reminiscent of Italy than of the Croatia we saw down south. Narrow cobbled alleyways wander up the hill to the church.

Here the cobblestones are made of marble worn smooth by the feet of the centuries.  They are not just laid out in rectangular patterns; there are intricate designs that add to the multi-faceted nature of the street scenes.  They are also very slippery; it is clear that it cannot rain here very much otherwise all the inhabitants would be piled up at the bottom of the hill in tangle of broken limbs.  Parents with children in strollers look worried as they pick their way down.

Part of the town was once an artist community but now it offers more mass-produced art and souvenirs.  Some artists and craftsmen are still here though and we buy a nice little etching to take home.  We are also considering a piece of art to put on the boat (which is still way too white).  We will pass this way again and may snag it.

The waterfront has more of the historicist-style buildings that slowly transition into traditional tenement-style buildings clinging to the fringes of the promontory on which the town is built.

The Italian influence is everywhere (and this is not just because most of the tourists speak Italian and the locals speak it back.) To our surprise, the cuisine has become considerably more Italian and there is a notable amount of chic cafe society along the water’s edge - a taste of things to come!

Talking about food (Lori’s almost favorite subject) again.  The farmers’ markets here are a wonderful antidote to the sladoled culture. The variety and quality are quite astonishing and the vendors are justifiably proud of what they produce. We keep saying "This is the best peach/nectarine/apricot/watermelon we have ever tasted". And it's amazing what you can get for less than $10!

Finally, there is a little-known phenomenon in Rovinj that relates to the preponderance of similarities between pet-owners and their pets. Although this phenomenon is noticed in other places (you know who you are ....), here it is particularly pronounced.

For the next week (until Pam and Brian join us) we will hover just 60 or so miles off the coast of Italy and our ultimate destination - Venice.

This was a quiet little place until those Romans moved in ...

Pula is quite a surprise.  After all the places we’ve seen each with some historical influences from the Ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Venetians, the Turks and all the others, Pula has about the complete set.

A little like Nafplio in Greece, the marina is on the waterfront which it shares with larger commercial traffic.  The part of town overlooking the water is not anything special but literally go one block back and it’s a completely different place.

The most obvious feature (which you cam actually see from part of the marina) is the Roman amphitheater.

This is among the six largest Roman amphitheaters in the world and is rare because of the degree to which the original plan and construction is still intact.  The town and its Roman ruins date from the time after the death of Julius Caesar when the Roman empire was in some turmoil. (Time to dig out the Shakespeare again!)

For you Monty Python fans, “What have the Romans ever done for us?”  In Pula the answer was, as in the TV show, a water supply, a sewage system, roads and city gates. And for you Eddie Izzard fans, “We’re the Romans”, Pula sheds absolutely no light at all on what Latin sounded like.

After the Roman empire eventually broke up and following a confusing period in the middle ages, the void was filled by the Venetians in 1331 and they would rule the city until 1797. The Communal Palace is probably the most notable building of this period.

The main streets are very much as they were in Venetian times.

Tourists are everywhere and the town has a very cosmopolitan atmosphere that in some places is quite reminiscent of Paris.  The long ties with Italy mean that Istria is officially bilingual with every citizen having the right to use either Italian or Croatian in official communications. This is a very different Croatia than the areas to the south.

One thing we haven't commented on up till now is the consumption of ice cream (or "sladoled" as it is in Croatian - not the best word from a marketing perspective).  There are ice cream shops everywhere and Croatians consume it with a fervor that is daunting.  Almost half of the people you walk by are eating it.  This may have something to do with the fact that almost half of the people you walk by are really quite fat.  I don't know if this is a post-Communist phenomenon or if  the sweet tooth is genetic.  As  with most good things that come from Italy, moderation is advisable.

While we are on the subject of food, those of you who have been paying close attention will recall Lori's quest for her morning pastries.  This has been a good place with a fine bakery across the road from the marina.

This is what a pastry looks like ....... And, yes, it is filled with meat!

Another situation where  moderation is seriously in order.

The thunderstorms finally caught up with us this evening but we were safely tucked in to the harbor and it was not really a big event.

We finally run out of islands ....

Last night's meteor shower was pretty spectacular. The clear sky and no light pollution meant that we had optimum viewing conditions. The sheer frequency of the meteors in the shower is quite remarkable.  We even got to see some where you could clearly distinguish the gaseous nature of the trail.  I’d never seen that before.

However, we have to head north.  The weather has not been as good as we would like for crossing the Kvarner gulf but it looks like a window has opened and we need to take advantage of it.  We will do it in three legs - Zapuntel, Ilovik and Pula.

Zapintel is at the north end of the island of Molat.  This location was recommended to us by Paul and Diane.  It is a lovely little bay with just one restaurant but it has been thoughtful enough to place mooring buoys for the visiting yachts.

This has to have been out best “picking up a mooring” yet. I drove round the buoys to check out the depths without Lori telling me I should just pick one and get on with it. I drove up to it nicely, stopped and Lori made a perfect throw and snagged the buoy on the first attempt.  This time we pulled up the buoy till it was close to our deck and we threaded our mooring line through the ring at the bottom without having to deploy the dinghy.  We looked cool and were cool! Finally!

The fried squid in the restaurant was as excellent as we had been told it was and we had a long slow dinner overlooking the yachts in the bay.

It is still much cooler than we expected. The next morning there was mist and the boat was soaked in condensation - a far cry from the oven of last August.

The next leg is a short trip to the island of Ilovik.  This is a pleasant little anchorage in the narrow channel between two islands.  Again there are mooring buoys for the use of visiting yachts and, again, we snagged one in our increasingly stylish manner.  A nice thing about this location is that they provide a water-taxi to take you over to the little town.  The young man driving our taxi had visited the States a few times and particularly liked Boston.  But we wonder how you can reconcile Ilovik, permanent population 100, with a major US city like Boston.

An odd feature about Ilovik is the unique dialect. It is based on the Istrian dialect of Istria and is much comparable to it as well. It is really a combination of Italian and Croatian, with many of the words being Italian. This dialect is only understood around the Lošinj archipelago and Istria, and not on mainland Croatia.

We ate what was probably our worst meal in Croatia and had some very poor wine to go with it.  Ah well, it has to happen sometimes. Afterwards sitting in the cockpit, even though the sky was clear above us, we watched a violent thunderstorm over the mainland twenty miles away.  Summer thunderstorms in the middle of Europe can be quite a spectacle and this one was no exception.  It lasted for at least half an hour and the sky in the distance was permanently lit up by the lightning; each flash overlapped with the illumination of the preceding one. Not a place you’d want to be!

Lori is taking the opportunity to take True Colors off her moorings in the morning.  It is really helpful that she is getting more capable and confident when she is at the helm in even slightly tricky circumstances.

The final leg is a long one - 38 miles to Pula.  When we have a longish day like this, you may remember, we like to start early.  This doesn’t waste time and gives you that bit of a margin if things don’t go as planned en route or at the other end.  Today we left at 6:15.  It is incredibly still at that time in the morning, no-one is stirring on the boats and the only sound is our engine and the bleating of the sheep from the little island next to us.  By the time we have pulled slowly away from the buoy only the ripples of our wake are left to disturb the calm of the Ilovik morning.

Ilovik and its larger neighbors are the last islands in the long chain that stretches all the way up the Dalmatian coast from Dubrovnik.  From now on (until we get back here after Venice) we will be on the mainland.

There is almost no wind for all of the trip to Pula.  There also seems to be a favorable current because we are making close to seven knots all of the way.  By the time we reach Istria, there are quite a few boat, many of them Italian, but most of them don’t seem to be heading for Pula.  This coast is a great stopping off point on the way to or from Italy.

Pula harbor is a far cry from the islands .  It is large and has a ship-building yard and a deep enough basin for large commercial ships to dock.

And they manage to have fun with the infrastructure that they have.

But the small marina is very well sheltered and close to the historic stari grad (or old town).  Indeed the old town is quite a surprise.  We’d never really heard of Pula as a destination before but in the next entry (when I’ve had time to take some pictures), I’ll show you what is has to offer.

It’s August, it’s 72°F, it’s been showery and there is a cold wind from the northeast. Where are we?

“Scotland” might have been the right answer but this time it’s “Croatia". We’ve now had two weeks of on-and-off storms, all out of the northeast, which bring cold weather and not the “Croatia-hot” temperatures we had last year. Even Lori has been able to sleep without air-conditioning (by choice) and we have occasionally resorted to wearing long sleeves and pants in the evening!

The strong winds mean that we’ve stayed more nights in harbor than we would typically choose but it has enabled us to complete many of the little jobs we needed to have done on True Colors. We also took some time to visit Zadar.

Zadar could have been a destination like Dubrovnik, Korcula and Hvar but it suffered a lot of damage in the Second World War and was re-built in an uninspired low-budget manner by the Communists.  Needless to say much of the “modern” buildings are not looking nearly as good as their neighbors that were built more than 500 years ago.  On top of that, the old town has been surrounded on three sides (the water is on the fourth) by a very ugly modern industrial town with no charm whatsoever.  Lori says that Croatia, in general, looks a lot better from a distance - the ochre-colored roofs and cheerily-painted buildings are quite attractive. But when you get close you can see how poorly maintained and finished much of the infrastructure is.  I think that this is a bit of a generalization, but in this case it’s pretty much spot on.

Zadar dates back to the 1st century BCE and has a Roman forum as well as some later Romanesque churches. 

These are quite beautiful and there is evidence of much work being done to ensure that they remain so.  Zadar gets its fair share of tourists from ships but not to the same extent as Dubrovnik or Corfu.

The weather is hindering our passage north to Pula to meet up with Pam and Brian but we still have plenty of time to get there and the weather forecast is a lot more promising.  

Last night and tonight are the highlights of the Perseid meteor shower but it was so cold yesterday that we did not even attempt to stay up for them.  But today we have moved (with 25+ knot winds) to one of our favorites, Luka Telascica, where there is no light pollution whatsoever and the prospect of a clear (and hopefully warmer) night.  In the meantime, we are watching a magnificent golden eagle soaring over the pine-covered hill behind our boat - he is huge!  When he fully spreads his wings, the sunlight catches the paler feathers beneath them and he seems to glow against the pure blue background like some ancient heraldic design.

As the sun sets we wait for the show to begin.