Swinging at anchor and Volcanoes

Andre' who lived in Rome, and who had the Hallbergy Rassey moored two boats in front of us, had a family home on Salina, one of the Eolian Islands, and he was taking his family down there over July and August. He wasn’t sure if he was going to sail there, due to work commitments, but he invited us to go down, apparently they knew an English family on the island and he thought it would be good if we were down their with his family, to help his children with English. I did rather want to go down there, and see Stromboli doing its stuff, but the pilot books warned of strong winds coming up out of nowhere, so I was having second thoughts. However armed with local knowledge, provided by Andre’, that there was always somewhere to shelter no matter which direction the wind came from, and the chance of strong winds during July and August was minimal, and after meeting his family, his wife Federica, who spoke a little English, Danieli who was Nicks age and Lavina who at Phoebes age spoke fluent English, we decided to head that way when we left.

After a couple more trips into Rome, where Nick got his head dunked into the Trevi fountain, by his horrible dad, and to make matters worse he didn’t know whether to be cross or not, as all the people round him, which on a summer day amounted to a good 300 people, where laughing, although he did say to me quietly afterwards that it was not a nice thing to have done. In fairness I agree, he had gone in a bit further than I anticipated, but it did cool him down. A trip back to England for Phoebe's birthday, and to attend to some medical appointments, regarding our car accident. A visit out to us by Grandma, with a trip to Rome, which included a E60-00 bill for four ice creams and three coffees, I did think that when I left I should try taking the table with me, as I must have bought it for the price they charged us. Travel broadens the mind and flattens the wallet. A trip to Ostia Antica, a fantastic place to visit, really hands on Roman ruins of a town abandoned by its inhabitants when the Goths invaded Rome. Only for a flood to them change the course of the river, leaving no reason for the town to be re-inhabited, although a lot of the marble got reclaimed, and had been taken into Rome for inclusion in Temples and churches over the years. It lay abandoned covered in earth until Victorian archaeologists rediscovered it, and started excavating the site and planting trees to provide shade, it is hardly visited by tourists, as it appears not to be on Tour Guides schedules. We engaged the services of a guide, a German lady who had been studying the site for many years, she pitched the tour at the kids at our request, and seemed generally impressed by Phoebes level of knowledge, stating she knew more about the Romans than a lot of adults she had shown round the site. Mosaics laid in the floors of the old market, depicting the trade of the stalls, fish, cereals, wine etc, bathhouses, Thermoplia it was all there, to be seen touched and experienced.
Watching Italy win the world cup, in a bar on the quayside with the kids sharing one of those enormous polystyrene hands, provided by John from a boat further up the quay. The party was almost instantaneous with parachute flares, foghorns searchlights from the coast Guard. Car horns, big flags and lots of noise from everyone else. Phoebe discovered that while walking back to Dreamcatcher, a simple wave of her enormous hand at the passing cars, would inject renewed vigour into its inhabitants whose noise levels would rise further. The party carried on until after we went to bed at 02:00.

11/07/06 We had slowly been moving in towards the quayside, so when it was our time to leave we where against the wall with two yachts to our outside, fortunately there was an open space in front of us, and we were pointing into the stream. After saying goodbye to new friends, and with a fair bit of line juggling we moved into the gap, we were now able to use the stream to ferry glide slowly out of the gap, being constantly alert to any increase current as we headed into midstream. We had been planning on leaving a couple of days earlier, but Michaeli the owner of the yard had asked us if we could wait as he was going away for the weekend, and he wanted to be there to assist in our smooth exit, so we had waited and used the time to bring trolley loads of bottled water and provisions back to the boat. We were a bit early, for the bridge opening, so we took the time to tidy up lines and fenders, and get familiar with the controls and the feel of movement once more. Without incident or mishap we passed the end of the breakwater at 10:30. At 11:20 we turned the engine off, at 11:30 it came back on, as we were wallowing along at 1.5 knots, the engine finally got turned off at 12:30 as the wind began to fill in, at 16:00 the mizzen was dropped as we ran before the wind, we negotiated the tricky entrance into Anzio, missing the apparently ever changing sandbar, and did our first stern-to mooring since Corsica, all squared away by 18:00, 32 miles in a little over 7 hours.
The biggest problem of going stern-to, is getting off, the shape off Dream catcher’s stern makes the step off the back a very long step, with the plank rigged, you have to take a couple of unsupported steps, a half swing half throw gets the kids off, Sara manages, but I struggle, possibly due to the lack of movement in my back, or the lack of confidence to jump, knowing that if it goes wrong and I land awkwardly, I am going to be in a world of pain, and then not able to get back on board, we managed somehow, it was not elegant.
We had only just left Fiumicino, but once more we off shopping for provisions. Whilst having ice creams, a convertible F350 Ferrari, in red, well this is Italy, parked outside, Nick displayed his petrol head credentials, by having his jaw drop and issuing an appreciative noise. We arrived in the main plaza as the sun was setting. A beautiful place, we felt guilty about not having left Fiumicino earlier, while my mother was with us, as she would have loved this town. We didn’t get to the war memorial which was the other side of the bay, and was probably only of interest to me.

12/07/06 Anchor broken out, covered in mud, at 08:30, as we set off towards Ponza, trying to get some miles in before the heat of the day. The children were being a bit grumpy this morning, partly due to a late night, and Phoebe and Nick didn’t want to leave so many Gelateria. A rather uneventful day, with some good sailing towards the end. We lost the wind as came under the lee of Ponza, so motored towards Ponza Town, we had been warned that the harbour was expensive, and judging by the size of the motor boats tied up, it would be, however there is an unofficial anchorage just outside the harbour, we found our spot among the boats and dropped the hook at 18:00. We were all hot and sticky it was time to cool down, the kids donned their lifejackets and we all went swimming off the back of the boat, in the ‘Big Sea’. The water was clear and warm, one of the reasons we came down to the Med. Bucket showers rounded off the day.
It was a beautiful spot, sheltered from the wind, with occasional wash from the big motorboats that seemed to charge into the harbour, without any consideration for their wash. We found we were one of the smaller boats in the anchorage, with a large proportion of ketch’s. While at anchor we saw something at a distance in the water, we couldn’t make out what it was, but it seemed to be moving purposely towards the shore, when it emerged it turned out to be dog that had jumped off one of the boats and had swum over 300 meters to shore. There was boat between us and the shore with a beautiful seemingly constantly topless woman onboard, who seemed to be joined regularly by a procession of different boats, maybe it was imagination, but they appeared to be redefining the term ‘swinging at anchor.’

The plan had been to take ‘Bob’ into the harbour, and wander round the town, but we, spent the whole of the next day at anchor, reading and jumping into the sea. Nick plucked up his courage and jumped off the side, he got so confident doing it, that sometimes he was jumping before Sara or myself was there to assist him.

14/07/06 09:00 anchor weighed, and off we went towards Ventotena, no wind motored all day. While on passage we experienced an interesting phenomenon, the magnetic attraction objects exert on boats, the rhumb line between the two islands is 23 miles, with a big finger off rock sticking up out of the sea, approximately half way between the two and about 1.6miles off the rhumb line, we missed it by about three hundred meters. I learnt two things today, when you lay off a rhumb line on a large scale chart, you need to go to a smaller scale and just follow up on your course to make sure you have identified any hazards, and when sailing in a featureless sea, if you see an object and keep looking at it, that is where you end up going. For those that are interested Scio Della Butte lies at 40N50’40 013E06’16, it is nice looking lump of rock, very solid. We arrived at Ventotena at 15:15, the concrete harbour was empty, a chap in scruffy shorts appeared and waved us to a spot, after taking our lines he asked for E20-00, Ventotena is a free harbour, so I argued that E10-00 would cover, his time, this was not possible as the small boat next to us had paid E10-00, and this would cause him problems, therefore we settled on E11-00, not bad considering he spoke no English. While Sara and Phoebe stayed on board, Nick and I went off exploring. The first thing we came across was the old Roman harbour, carved out of the Tufa, which is still in use today, mainly by small fishing and day trip boats, but is had its fill of Motor Boats. Although the water level has risen, so that the base of some of the stores are now covered in water, you can feel the history and imagine what is would have been like as a busy port. Further round we found a passage under the headland leading to a beach consisting of lots of broken black Tufa, small stones and sun bathing Romans. We went back to fetch Phoebe and Sara, and all went back to the beach to go swimming. This was the first time Phoebe tried swimming without her armbands. Nick not to be out done spent his time diving off a rock, without his armbands on. We arrived back at the harbour to find it had filled up in our absence, and the scruffy boat boy, was now walking round with his colleges in smart matching Chinos, polo shirts with badges and deck shoes. The empty harbour was now full of large crewed motor yachts, you could spot the clients they were the ones walking round arrogantly, getting in the way, with cigars in their mouths, the owners were the same except they kept constantly fiddling and telling the crew how to do things. The crews professionalism shown threw in the way they efficiently did their jobs and didn’t get annoyed with the owners interfering. While on Ventotena we discovered another phenomenon Italians all leave the harbour during the day, when they take their boats out to an anchorage, sometimes only 600 meters from the harbour, then at about 17:00, they all come charging back, in order to be seen and to go to restaurants, even the big MOBO’s with cook on board, in their case it seems they need to be seen on their boats by as many people as possible, and the only way to do this is in harbour. One of our neighbours had slipped off during the day, but had tried to reserve their spot by leaving their lines on the dock, they got a surprise when they came back, not only had their spot been filled, but they now had no lines, as the boat in their spot had used them for tying up with. The ensuing discussion was wonderful to behold, and conducted at high volume with a lot of arm waving. Just after the boats started arriving for the night a Guarda Costeria, rib turned up, who was going up and down the harbour stopping boats entering and turning them around, this seemed to be in order to keep the hydrofoil berth spot free, and to stop boats getting in the way of the hydrofoil as it arrived and departed, the arrogance of some of the skippers was a joy to behold, it seemed that they had booked a space so they were coming in no matter what, eventually the man at the helm lost it, and he started jumping up and down waving his arms about, I did at one stage think, he was going to draw his firearm and shoot the skipper of one boat, and I do not think anyone would have blamed him, it was all vastly entertaining as seen from our cockpit, one of the best shows ever, and it got repeated each night we were their.
There seemed to be another tradition on the island, as the late afternoon Hydrofoil was preparing to leave a vast quantity of teenagers some with parents strolled down to the end of the breakwater, then as the hydrofoil containing their friends left, they all jumped off the sea wall down 10/12 feet into the sea, then swam back into the harbour to get out. This looked fun the first day, but on the second day, there were strong winds and big swells, it changed from fun to rather dangerous as they negotiated the gap between the harbour wall and wildly swinging boats.
Ventotena derives its name from the Italian word for wind, and during the period we were there we found out why, we had strong winds on two days. Apparently the Italian government made it into a penal colony, where the prisoners were allowed a certain amount of freedom, while the real bad boys were imprisoned on the nearby island of San Stefano where the huge former prison still stands. It appears a little ironic that the Italians are now escaping from Naples and Rome to the form penal colony. It had the feel of a happy friendly island, and certainly all the people in the main piazza in the evening all seemed to know each other, there was an open air cinema, and a town museum, that did opened at nine o’clock at night. Ventotena is an island I would recommend visiting, although how long it will remain a free harbour is doubtful, as while we were there a group of boats doing some sort of rally would pass across E50-00 each to the Ormigigotti every day.

16/07/06 the morning started off with strong winds and lumpy seas, so we went off to the beach for the morning, during the day the winds died down, so at 15:00 we slipped our lines and headed off towards Ischia. It was another uneventful sail, and at 20:30 we dropped anchor in the little bay behind Castello Di Ischia. Time to swim and watch the world go by. That night we were treated to a roving firework and band display, as a procession seemed to be making its way round the town stopping in places to let off fireworks. During the night the wind picked up and the anchorage was subject to a bit of swell, went round checking all ok at 02:00 then finally fell asleep, the next morning everyone was tired, so we took ‘Bob’ for a spin. There is a causeway linking the monastery to the town, with a small bridge, the kids loved going under the bridge. We then took ‘Bob’ into town, the slipway was covered in slime, requiring careful placement of our feet as we lifted ‘Bob’ out. Ponte Ischia was used as a location during the filming of ‘The Fabulous Mr Ripley’, and there is an olive press with a plaque on to inform passers-by. We did not get to fully explore Ischia, as Sara was complaining about the bouncy anchorage, plus she was getting anxious about getting to Salina, so we elected to push on the following day.

18/07/06 An early start saw us raising the anchor at 09:30, and heading off towards Salerno, on the way we were going to pass Capri, which we had been warned was an expensive place to stop, and we were not aware of any anchorages on the island, although there was meant to be one in a cove on the mainland, which we would look at and decide if we stay. The day was a mix of wind strengths and directions, making it necessary to constantly keep trimming sails. The history and legend surrounding Capri, would make it an interesting island to visit, however as we got closer the view of cruise ships and large boats crowding round the harbour, did not inspire us to stop, instead we contented our selves passing under the cliffs of Mont Tiberio, telling the children grizzly tales about the alleged evil emperor having his enemies thrown off the cliffs on their way home after visiting him. Aren’t children gruesome creatures? The seas got very lumpy and confused in vicinity of the harbour, which seemed to be caused by the wash from ferries and MOBO’s moving at speed, and we had to alter course as a sailing boat coming up from behind seemed intent on ramming us. As they went past, we could just see a head in the cockpit, they probably hadn’t seen us.
We spent a pleasant afternoon running down the rugged Mali coast, looking at the famous coast road, and imagining what it would be like to drive down it on a motorbike, or in an open topped car. The entered the harbour and had tied up in the marina, when we were informed we could only stay one night, and what the charge should be, I had been lead to believe that this was a free harbour. Apparently the free harbour was on the other side of the breakwater, if they had any spaces available, we untied and motor round. The free berths were right up at the top, and were full. We tied up on the end of the pontoon at 19:00 and reluctantly parted with E50-00 for the night. That night we watched helicopters dumping water on a forest fire that had been burning for two days. The wind picked up a bit during the night, but the mooring was largely free of swell.

19/07/06 Sara woke up full of energy after her night of peaceful sleep, so the E50-00 had not been wasted. After breakfast we set off to go see Pompei, we were so close it seemed silly not to go, even though we knew we have to pay for another night. Pompei seems to be a victim of its own success, full of tourist, expensive eateries on the outside, areas fenced off, Perspex over walls, security cameras, and a lack of drinking water once within the site, unless you go to the onsite Cafeteria. We emerged later that afternoon, hot tired, thirsty and somewhat disappointed, it had not lived up to the hype, but please that we had been and seen, otherwise we would have been left wondering if we had missed something spectacular.
However Salerno itself was a lovely town, it is separated from the sea by a large promenade lined with palm trees, and the town seems to be a mix of old and new, with lovely winding streets, turning and twisting to reveal new aspects. I really liked the ambiance of the town, we had stopped at a boat yard in the morning to enquire about the possibility of over wintering and repairing the engine. Various chaps had gone off to find someone who could speak English to help me. While I was standing around waiting for this man to arrive, a man from another part of the yard wonder past, and insisted on me joining them for a cup of coffee, its was the strongest sweetest cup of coffee I have ever had, Sara did comment on meeting me later that I seemed to be a bit bouncy. This appeared to epitomise the general impression we got of the people of Salerno, a town well worth a visit, I felt comfortable and at home in its streets.

20/07/07 We planned on sailing straight across to Salina, a distance of 130 miles, approximately 30 hours sailing, so we slipped our lines at 06:40 and headed South. This was going to be our longest passage by ourselves to date. The first part of the route was more or less parallel to the coast, so we had options to abort if things got too much. The day passed hot and uneventful, and as twilight approached at 20:25, we turned the nav lights on prepared for a night sail, with lifejackets, lifelines, hats, gloves and waterproof coats to fend off the cold. Phoebe went below to bed as Sara snuggled down in the cockpit, and Nick kept me company, while I waited for my first sight of an active volcano. 21:45 now 40 miles from land, still no sign of Stromboli, Nick still in the cockpit, helping to keep watch.
22:40 the anticipation is building but still no sign.
23:04 Top up the engine oil as Sara joins me on watch, I am determined to stay awake until Stromboli is sighted, Nick has by now gone to sleep, but he is still in the cockpit, on watch.
23:55 An orange glow spotted, bearing 160M, down to the chart plotter, checked the bearing, yes it is, Stromboli Sighted! My first active volcano, it is low down on the horizon, and it will not get any bigger on this heading. We are so close, and change of heading directly towards Stromboli, I went to overawed, overwhelmed by this massive natural phenomenon.
00:30 This is taking to long, down below to get the binoculars, I want to see more. Until this point in my life I had not realised that Volcanoes needed to carry Port and Starboard Navigation lights! We later course back to our original heading and carry on trying to spot volcanoes, as we move away from the motor yacht.
01:15 We seem to be at a Maritime cross roads, as we thread a circuitous route through the passing ships, we have a modification to the Col Regs for vessels that are bigger than us, We have seen them, we can not be sure if they have seen us, and if things do go wrong, we will definitely come off worse, therefore just stay out of their way.
01:30 Stromboli Sighted, there is no doubt this time, as the sky lights up with bursts of deep red colour, which dies down, only to be repeated again. Sometimes they seem to follow seemingly one straight after another after another, and at others there are long pauses, when you begin to wonder if you are looking in the right direction, when suddenly you see the lava bursting into the sky. Was it worth waiting for? Oh yes. I wanted to wake Phoebe and Nick up to see a volcano, but Sara pointed out it would still be there in the morning.
I finally went off watch still buzzing about seeing my first active volcano, and feeling slightly insignificant knowing that this force has been blowing bits of molten earth up into the sky for thousands of years. Nick remained in the cockpit cuddled up in his duvet, fast asleep, but on watch.
Up just after sunrise still excited to get another view of Stromboli, Sara had been joined by Phoebe in the cockpit, and they had the company of dolphins in the early light of morning. We were closer, much closer, and I now had to tip my head up to see the summit. During Sara’s watch some low cloud had moved over and she had lost sight of Stromboli, by the time the cloud had cleared Sara could no longer see the eruptions, and thought we had sailed past it. It was only when she stuck her head out from under the cockpit cover roof, that she realised that she had been looking at the wrong spot, Stromboli instead of being low on the horizon, was now above mast height as we passed 9 miles off.
10:20 We found a clear looking piece of bottom, dropped and set the hook in 5m of water in a little cove in front of the harbour at Santa Marina on Salina, got the cockpit, aft deck and fore deck tents rigged, and all went swimming. We spent the rest of the day, lazing at anchor, reading, sleeping and swimming.