Leaving Italy

Included in most of the diagrams of the ports provided in Rod Heikel’s books are the location of the Customs office. Unfortunately, this was not the case for Crotone. We set off from the boat looking for food and customs around 09:00. …. It turns out that we don’t really have any command of the Italian language and we didn’t have a computer or iPad to do a translation .. so we wandered around town, asked at a couple of places and then were helped by a civic employee who told us we needed to visit the Polizia … and gave us rough directions to get there. We wandered around the city and found ourselves in the car repair district – hopelessly lost. We asked this old guy where the Polizia were and he pointed down a street – we could see a building that had all sorts of antennas and such – voila – oops, wrong language. We found ourselves directed to the second piano (floor) and found the right office … OMG what incredible luck. To make it even better there was a guy that spoke English too. After a debate whether Albania is a Shengen signatory (as if) they took our passports and crew list and photocopied them and processed us out of the EU. They then drove us back to Tara to verify the two kids – who were just getting up from sleeping until noon. They then offered to drive us to a Supermarket so we could buy some provisions and were just really nice helpful guys. Amazing … now and then you find really nice people along the way.

Albania is out there...in that direction.

We left the dock just before 2pm, we wanted to fill up with diesel but they were closed for Siesta. When we were leaving the harbour the Q8 gas dock guy (who was filling up his tanks) started whistling and gesturing to us …. It took a second but I realized I was headed for the sand … so a quick 90 degree turn to the left and we missed the sand-bar – though we got within 20cm of hitting the bottom – assuming our calibration is correct to the millimeter. Not the beginning we wanted to have that’s for sure. We powered out towards the off-shore gas drilling platforms and pointed our nose at the north corner of Corfu – some 145 miles away.

Fun along the way.

More fun along the way.

We had all our sails up and were chuffing along close-hauled at around 7.5 knots with each of us driving for a half hour stint. Then the wind cooperated and lifted for us … making it a close reach – that Otto can easily manage. We had a 15 knot close-reach that lets us do about 7.5 knots of boatspeed … and we carried on like that until Midnight.

Sunset

Marina and Jessie take the 20:00 to 24:00 shift while I slept and Ross read his Nook (ebook device). By the time I came up top at 23:30 it was blowing in the 20’s and Marina and Jessie had just taken down the mainsail and had reefed the jib to the first reefing point. By midnight we were close to clearing the heel of Italy called Cap Santa Maria di Leuca and the waves and wind built. The midnight to 4am shift is managed by Ross and Matt … we had the Autopilot driving and started shortening sail even more.

Once we are solidly in the 8+ knot-speed boat range at night we shorten sail so that if a big puff comes it doesn’t overpower the boat. We ended up waking up Marina at 03:30 who came up and helped us shorten sail for the 3^rd time … leaving little more than a postage-stamp up – and still averaging over 8 knots for an hour. The waves continued to grow as we sent Ross to bed. I asked Marina to get us some harnesses as the waves were regularly 2 meters plus in height and a set of three would come every 5 minutes or so that were noticeably bigger. Harnessed in we continued to press on towards Corfu – with the sky beginning to lighten at 4:30 or so, to being quite bright by 5:30 and dawn just before 06:00.

Sunrise

We pulled in between the islands of Nisos Othoni and Mathraki, carefully avoiding shallows one mile off the coast, then turned in towards Sarande Albania. We had hoped the wind and waves would die when we tucked in behind Orthoni but they grew instead. Marina and I rolled up the jib we had let out and carried on for another hour in fairly big seas … 2-3 meters and winds 25-28 knots … then the wind died, we sparked up the motor and headed into Sarande.

Coming into Sarande, Albania

At this time I hit the hay having been up from midnight – Marina called me up at 10:00 saying we’ve arrived and it’s time to dock the boat – and we did. Handed our boat documents and passports to the expeditor and waited an hour for him to return with everything stamped.

After that Marina and I walked the beach and checked out the town – found an air conditioned grocery where we spent an hour cooling off and picking up some beer, wine and juice, then back to the boat, out for dinner and then home. When you stay up all night you may not seem tired but you’re not particularly functional either … off to bed and off in a day or two to head to Greece to meet up with our friends ….. 

Roccella Ionica to Crotone

The bottom of "the boot" with our track.

Thank goodness for Yanmar and diesel fuel otherwise we’d still be about a mile from Roccella Ionica. We powered the entire 70+ miles, even though we could have sailed the last hour or so. We pulled into the marina and were directed to a slip but we had a 17 knot wind on the beam – I think the puffs were a little more.

As we pulled into the slip I lost control of the boat and we basically parked against the boat beside us. Just that morning I commented to Marina wondering why so many people have difficulty docking when we grease it every time – should have known I was tempting the gods.

Anyway, the big problem was that the laid mooring wasn’t pulling our bow far enough left so we got another anchor rope further out and put it on the windlass (the motorized anchor winch). The Ormeggiotore and I put the rope on the winch and tightened it up – worked perfectly but we were getting an over-ride – because I led the rope incorrectly. Anyway, in the process of freeing the over-ride I managed to get four fingers of my right hand between the winch and the rope – with about 20,000 pounds of boat pulling on it. I reckon that when my finger got caught I tensed my leg that pushed my toe onto the foot switch and my hand kept rolling onto the winch until my entire hand was between the rope and the metal winch drum.

Crotone Marina

Holy crap! I managed to extricate my hand by stepping on the ‘down’ button with my foot and releasing some line. Then we re-routed the rope, pulled it in again and tied it off. It was at that time that the pain started to kick in. I also managed to get the Ormeggitore’s pinky in the winch too – and I feel terrible about that. We offered him some ice and a can of beer …. later he was fine and Marina said one of the other staffers was joking about how he could still fully function with just a thumb anyway. 
Personally, I can’t wait to see what colour my fingers turn. (In the end, they faired much better than expected and are healing quickly).
Crotone isn't much to write about. The marina was nice and so were the people there, but the town itself seemed not well cared for and not well laid out. It wouldn't be a place I'd recommend for a holiday.

Messina to Roccella Ionica

At 7:30 we sparked up the Yanmar and left Marina Nettuna di Messina, turned into the channel and promptly set a new speed record – 11.7 Knots – under power in our ‘mid-cruise’ RPM position.

We reckon that we had a 4 knot push from behind. I had a temptation to raise the sails for a minute to claim a pretty big number for the new speed record – but then decided that we should just take advantage of this positive current – as current has a tendency to even itself out over time. After about an hour of powering we pulled out the sails and continued to sail at 9+ knots (GPS) for the next two hours until we rounded the bottom of the boot of Italy … then the wind promptly quit. Rolling up the sails to become a powerboat takes about a minute on Tara so we continued along the coast of Italy for the next hour or two. 

Views along the south Italian coast...cool highway!

Two boats going the other way had their mainsails reefed to the second reef-point (reefing is the term used to describe reducing sail area – which is a good thing to do when it’s really windy) hmmm … wonder why. About 10 minutes later we experienced a 20 knot wind from the east that let us sail close-hauled all the way to Roccella Ionica. 

Games behind the boat before the wind hit. 

This is why we were swimming...
the bottom number is water temp.

An then...some great wind! 

We sailed the last 30 miles chuffing along with main and jib. Everyone took a turn driving – the kids are actually able to sail, they just pretend that they cannot. When we are sailing close winded the Autopilot is pretty slow – I can regularly get 1.5 knots more boatspeed out of the boat in those conditions than Otto can so we try to hand-steer as much as possible.

Our first dolphin sighting! Yay!

Getting into Roccella Ionica provides a bit of a pucker factor. You need to start 200 meters from the breakwater and go perpendicular to the entrance, turn hard right onto the inside line of the opening – avoiding the silting up right side of the entrance. There’s a 50 meter wide a 20 meter high pile of sand they’ve dredged up from the entrance just off to the side, so you know it silts up regularly. Marina was calling out the depths as I was going as slow as the boat would go in gear – 1.0, 0.9, 0.8, 0.4 meters under the keel. Getting 20,000 pounds off the bottom is not easy – but after the 0.4 the readings started getting deeper and we made it no problem. Inside we found a nice marina with lots of dockspace, plenty of help and only 20 Euros a night.

At the dock in Roccella Ionica

A fellow in a US-registered boat came by to say hi. Al is from Bodrum Turkey sailing around the Med with his wife Esin and their new Beneteau Oceanis 46. They’ve been out since May and are making their way back to Turkey. We had a lovely time on the back of Tara talking about where we’ve been and places we’d like to see.

The pizza and the service was amazing!

On shore there is the biggest pizza restaurant we have ever seen – I tried to count the tables but a rough guess would be 1500 seats. Our waiter was an Australian guy whose parents emigrated from Italy to Australia and then decided to come back a few years ago. They have an wi-fi based ordering system. We ordered our drinks and a plate of chips and swordfish carpaccio as an appetizer and – no lie – they arrived in about 1 minute. You order pizza by the meter and you can mix and match the flavours – so we had Salccica, Quatro Stagione, and, for Ross: Margarita (a plain cheese pizza – go figure). At the end of the evening we decided to order another meter of pizza so we would have lunch the next day.
Jessie wanted to get back to Skype and we sent her and Ross back to the boat. Marina and I were shocked that Ross came back after depositing his sister safely on the boat. By this time I was getting so tired that I went back to join Jess on the boat – but in reality I wanted to hug my pillow more. Marina and Ross chatted in the restaurant, waiting for the extra pizza we wanted to take with us on the road the next morning. 

Isla Vulano to Messina

Messina is a major shipping channel in Europe with a deep water passage between Italy and Sicily. There is traffic galore and it gives us a chance to try out our AIS system on the chartplotter. We were quite fortunate to have the wind from behind all the way from Vulcano. Marina and I woke up and took the dinghy to shore to get some groceries for the day, then powered for an hour to charge up the freezer and then pulled the sails out. We contemplated putting the spinnaker up but chickened out as the wind was pushing the high teens. 

Main and Jib...wing on wing.

We ended up sailing most of the way wing-on-wing with the main and jib on different sides of the rig – the autopilot has trouble with doing this in waves so it let us hand steer for a while. As we made the turn into the Strait the wind died so we powered in watching the intricate patterns of the swordfish boats looking for fish.

Swordfish boats.

Swordfish are prized in the Med and are worth a fortune. The boats are quite unique with very tall masts where 3 guys sit in a crows-nest, and a huge bowsprit – probably twice the length of the boat – where they harpoon the swordfish from. We were hoping to watch them catch one but fortunately for the local swordfish population, it appeared to be a slow day.

Marina Netuno di Messina is very nice but pricey (120Euros) and we settled in, got directions and went grocery shopping. We knew we needed a few days’ provisions so we went into town – nice waterfront, though a bit seedy in some of the areas we walked, and then found the grocery store.

Tara at Marina Netuno di Messina

We got beer and wine, water, some meats and Ross’ favourite, a kilo of Parmesan cheese. It’s 13Euro per kilo here –a little less than half the price we pay … so we load up. On our last stop in Italy will try to buy a few kilos – it is way better than chocolate.

Ross and his 13 Euro parmesean wedge...yum!

After filling the water tanks and hosing down the boat, the kids revelled in the high-speed wireless internet access – just as fast as at home. Ross downloaded some new games from Steam and Jess spent the entire evening Skyping to friends. No problem, Marina and I enjoyed each other’s company watching the ships come and go.

It's not often we get a dock to hop down to...was weird actually.


Marina and I felt that we would like to spend some more time in Messina – it has the feel of a town with a lot of history – like Rome or Venice. Unfortunately our schedule is pushing us forward. One great thing happened however, we found out that Roccella Ionica – our next stop was deep enough for us to go in. Phew one of the big potential obstacles turns out to be no problem at all.

The view from the boat.

Someone getting married...again, seen from the boat.

On the way out of Messina

Castellammare di Golfo to Cefalu to Isla Vulcano

We left Castellammare di Golfo in the morning on our way to Greece. That leaves Sicily, the Straits of Messina, the east-coast of Italy, crossing the Ionian and Albania – some 450 miles or so on the direct route calculator. Of course we don’t always get to go in the exact right direction, but we hope that we can find some wind and wave luck over the next week or so. This table shows the plan...

 It is funny but after sitting in a marina for more than a couple of days the knots on the mooring lines seem to get tighter and we worry more about weather and the boat than when we’re sailing more frequently. We fussed quite a bit but decided … what the heck, we’re sailors. 20 knots of breeze in Tara is nothing we cannot handle, so at 7:30am we cast off. Our first day out of Castellammare di Golfo had us going about 65 miles to miles to Cefalu.

On the way to Cefalu.

We powered past the airport, then past Palermo – after that the wind arrived and let us sail downwind the next four hours until we were just a couple of miles away from Cefalu. The highlight of the passage was coming across an old surfboard floating upside down in the water.

Good sailing.

We contemplated picking it up and then decided that it would probably just clutter up the deck so we left it behind. We arrived at Cefalu and a very nice young man helped us fill our tanks with diesel and then we threw our anchor out behind the breakwater.

The harbour is on the other side of the town.

Cefalu’s harbour is about a 20 minute walk from town so we decided we would pass on going to town, made dinner and had an early night.

View at anchor.

Marina and I woke up around 7 and prepped the boat, lifted the anchor and at around 7:45 we were away to Isla Vulcano – a place we had visited last year. Again there was little wind in the morning and with 2 full tanks of diesel fuel we decided to burn some of it up. We had a choice to go to Marina Nettuno in Milazzo or to Isla Vulcano. We decided Vulcano because the day was a bit shorter, and it saved us 120 Euros in marina fees. We had enough water to last to Messina (another 120Euro per night marina) and thought what the heck, let’s go anchor near the stinky volcano.

On the way to Isla Vulcano

Finding things to do.

The volcano and some smoke coming out.

Isla Vulcano is a difficult anchorage. 250 meters from shore it’s 100 meters deep, then 50, 20, 10, 9, 8, 5, and 0. So you must be close to the beach to have any hope of holding an anchor. We dropped once but were too close to another boat so we moved closest to the breakwater.

Ross dropping the second anchor.

We were concerned that if the wind changed we might be blown onto the rocks of the breakwater, so we threw our second anchor out. Ross rowed in the dinghy a couple of boatlengths away and then dropped the anchor – literally. When I pulled it up the next morning it was tied in a mess of chain – lesson learned – pay the anchor out slowly. The other lesson was that just like everything else on Tara, the secondary anchor is big – 20 kilos. We probably need to put a 10 kilo anchor on the list of equipment we need to add to the boat.

Vulcano is an incredibly busy harbour – with tripper boats – fast Catamarans, small ferries, big ferries, hydroplanes coming and going several times per hour until around 11pm. We took Bonnie Blue to shore, hoofed around, bought a T-shirt or 2 – Jessie is so excited about her new Superman shirt, and had Sicilian Pizza and Calamari for dinner. Next stop Messina.

Sunset as seen between the dodger and the bimini.

Some Long Days Ahead

We have forgotten about the lack of shelter and anchorages in Italy in the last 12 months … I guess the excellent food and lovely towns made us forget, but now that we’re here it is hitting us full force. So we’re hanging out in Castellammare di Golfo and are trying to figure out the route …. Our best case is a 60 miler to Cefalu about 55 miles east on the North Sicilian coast, then either to Isla Vulcan or Milazzo about another 40 -60 miles, then through the Straights of Messina – staying either in the more industrial city of Messina – or proceeding to Riposto – 120 Euros and 30 miles out of the way, or Reggio do Calabria – where yachts are regularly burgled or robbed at gunpoint. Hmmm… Decisions, decisions.

Then on to Roccella Ionica – a nice marina but very shallow – plus with an on-shore breeze a wicked shore break exists that flipped a 37 foot Hanse sailboat a few years ago. If we can’t get into Roccella Ionica because of weather or silting up the entrance, then we have another 60 miles to go up-coast to Crotone. If we don’t get to Crotone in the light we might as well carry on to Otranto – another 90 miles up-coast …. And that would be a 200+ miler …. As you can see not much in the way of choice, it’s all a long way … hopefully we’ll have favourable winds and waves through the next week or so.

Then we have about 60 miles across to Albania from Otranto, then 50 more to Greece then we have most of a month to slow down; but it is going to be a very l-o-n-g week.

Hayden and Chelsea Depart

Tuesday the 24^th has arrived and it’s time to send our passengers home. After four days in Castellammare di Golf, the Tara crew is getting wanderlust. While the town is very nice, it’s also pretty basic without the water sports (beach) needed to keep our crew interested.

We got up early – I think it’s the first time I’ve seen Hayden before noon, we had a nice breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast (our toaster works when we have shore-power going) and we watched the two visitors pack the final things into their bags.

A quick tearful goodbye on the dock with a lot of pictures taken by our new Dutch friend Joost and we were ready to go. Chelsea wanted to get a picture with the North Shore News … where travellers often send pictures with the NSN in them to get published in the paper. Clearly she doesn’t know about the immense following we already have in the blogosphere :-P.

We piled into our Fiat Punto – that struggled to make it up a 10% grade with the four of us and the bags … I had to push the clutch in, rev the motor, get some wheelspin so the revs advanced above 2000 where there was at least some torque available. Typical Italian engine, lots of revs – 4500 on the highway at 125kph and no torque at 1500 – very different than what we have in Canada.

We found the airport thanks to our Garmin GPS and the two of them checked in (different parts of the airport naturally). We walked them up to Security and gave them a quick hug and off they went. Hayden’s routing was Palermo – Munich – Montreal – Vancouver, arriving 10pm Tuesday. Chelsea had a more scenic route: Palermo – Rome – Frankfurt – London – Vancouver and she’ll arrive sometime next home week.

Sometimes it is hard to believe that they can make it 6,000 miles in about the same time it takes us to go 60 miles … but that’s about the difference in speed … Now we’re on our spring to Greece, across the top of Sicily, then up the boot of Italy on the eastern side, then to Albania for a couple of days and finally into Corfu. If all goes as planned we should arrive there in the first couple of days of August.

A Couple of Days in Castellammare Di Golfo

As you may remember, our maxim on safety says that we can pick a time to meet, or a place to meet, but never the two together. Sailing is too weather dependent and a good way to get in trouble is to press forward in spite of the weather. The big challenge comes when you must drop off or pick up crew … then you need to be there at a specific time. As a result we usually give ourselves leeway in terms of when we can return, and sometimes that doesn’t work out. Remember last-year when we had to make our passage to France from Minorca in a gale. We had left ourselves a ten day window and that wasn’t enough.

Anyway, we made the passage from Sardinia to Sicily on the 19^th and 20^th of July – then we had four days in Sicily before the kids had to get to the Palermo airport. After an all-nighter, the first day is pretty much a write-off. We usually do a little bit of exploring and then check out where to buy food and wine, some restaurants we might want to check out and get a feel for the local culture.

The "marina" dock.

We chose Castellammare di Golfo for a couple of reasons – one was that it was less industrial than Palermo, it was reasonably priced at 50 Euros a night (that became 60 Euros when we arrived) and it’s closer to the airport than Palermo with a much smaller, more yacht oriented harbour. Another contributor was that it was 20 miles closer – doesn’t sound like much but 3 hours at the end of a long trip is 3 more hours of rest.

As for places we’ve been I’d give it about a six – the harbour was good but there weren’t many water sports nearby – unlike Isola Rossa on Sardinia, but it had nice people, lots of good restaurants and bars to hang out in and many places to buy provisions – including a deli that made some of the best pesto we’ve ever had.

Always time for gelato!

After our ‘recovery day’ we had a good day in town marketing – I was on a hunt for an oil filter and our fuel filters were clogging up so I had a chore to do before we left.  

Out for dinner is so fun!

That night we went out for dinner and the kids were all served wine. Ross decided to drink more that was appropriate but he was more funny than out-of-hand so we let him proceed. He kept analyzing how he was feeling and how we was affected by it ….I’m sure the next time he comes home with liquor on his breath he’ll tell us that he was doing research. It was Hayden's treat which made it especially fun...and on top of it all it started to rain just as we were finishing up...which doesn't bother us Vancouverites at all.

The girls dressed up...

The boys..."dressed up"...and another girl who loves a camera!

Fun at dinner.

Hiding from the rain.

Hayden taking care of the tab. 

Jessie taking her turn at the helm of the RIB.

The next day we picked up a RIB (rigid inflatable boat – a Zodiac with a fibreglass hull) with a 40 horsepower engine made by the Canadian company Bombardier Motor Products. The motor was the source of many jokes by the boys “how big’s your Johnson”, “Hey Matt …. Nice Johnson” and so-on. It got us laughing. Anyway we took off in the RIB and the guy at the rental place said that it might rain – and was he right. We were anchored off off these caves having lunch when this big Thundercloud appeared and we quickly ran back to harbour – where we found our venerable dinghy Bonnie Blue floating away on its own untied to Tara. 

Playing "King (or Queen) of the RIB".

Apparently a big wind gust lifted her off the deck where she was upside-down but not tied off. Fortunately for us we arrived in the nick-of-time and rescued her before someone else laid claim to it. We waited for a couple of hours and then the weather cleared and the kids and Marina headed out again to use up some more fuel. Marina here...which we did. Each of the kids had a "go" driving the RIB, Ross thinking it would be fun to do S curves at top speed before testing it at lower speeds...so he was fired. After that it was a good game of who can stay in the RIB the longest, Marina and Chelsea spectating. After that, on the way back the kids decided jumping off at high speed would be fun, and it was! Again, Chelsea spectated and well, someone resonsible has to drive so I did that. We got our money's worth with the RIB by staying out and goofing around until around 5 pm as it had to be back by 6 pm full of fuel. Back to Matt.

No fun at all...



Feels good to be Queen!



Hayden about to hit the water at about 20 kts.

It was a pleasant surprise that after nearly an hour of powering it had used only a few liters of fuel – much better than our Boston Whaler that uses something like 30 liters per hour. Maybe I can justify a new engine based on fuel economy – yeah right.
While the kids were off using gas I took the fuel filters off the engine and ended up dismantling the Racor fuel filter to get a ton of plastic shavings out of the bowl at the bottom.  We had thought we had that fuel problem licked and clearly the stuff is better in the bowl of the Racor than stuffed into the fuel pickup hose like last time. One of the nice things about having problems is that when they reoccur or when similar symptoms happen you can figure them out quickly. I had the problems figured out, disassembled and back together within an hour or two … thank goodness for mechanical aptitude, though I have no idea where I got it from as nobody in my family can change a light bulb without calling an electrician.