Roccella Ionica to Tropea via Reggio Calabria

Bling from Crotone  ca. 800BC.

After we left Crotone, I was minded to pen a short retraction since I maligned it somewhat. This is in part because we made the effort to trek up the hill to the amazing museum housing artefacts from the Magna Graecia period, 8th Century B.C., and explore the prettier bits of the old town and also because our Ormeggiatore, Carmine, was super-helpful and friendly and has blue eyes - apparently.
I would like to say that our departure was perfectly timed to coincide with some favourable winds to take us further south, but the reality is that we took what we could get and that was not much, meaning we motor-sailed most of the way to Roccella Ionica some 12 hours away. A feature of the coast here is that very shallow waters abruptly shelve off to over 1500 Meters in depth. This produces a busy and sometimes uncomfortable sea near the shore causing a lot of silting of harbours, some of which are now unusable. This all means that the distances between stops along the southern part of Calabria are mostly quite long.

Cloud watching

Boris Bikes

Again the coastline presents a very dramatic picture, although today mostly dwarfed by huge cumulonimbus castles. Thankfully the thunderstorms kept to themselves and we moved along quietly minding our own business. Roccella is a sleepy stopover for yachties sailing between the Ionian and Sicily. We met familiar faces when we arrived and derived some comfort from knowing others were also engaged in a similar folly. The marina is, as one Brit put it, very fifties. If that means it has a great mini-market serving artisanal ice cream, a co-operative bike hire shop, super fast WiFi, etc. he is spot on. We made use of the bike hire place, which is a no fuss version of the Boris Bike concept, i.e. no paperwork, no fee, just a small donation. The town is a couple of kilometres away along a modern cycle path that follows the beachfront. A pristine, white sand, one person per 500 meter, beach. If this place had an airport it would likely be overrun and spoiled in no time, please no one tell Ryanair.

Carafa Fortress in Roccella

Roccella Beach

Our next leg to Reggio Calabria was also a long one and, as we both woke up at 1 am, we decided to do the first part during the night. We caught a great wind and made our way very swiftly down the last stretch of the southern Italian coast before we rounded the corner at dawn and headed north to Reggio Calabria which is opposite Sicily and just about in the Straits of Messina. I read that the people of Reggio have lost pride in their city after it had been demolished in an earthquake in 1908, bombed terribly in both world wars and impoverished by the economic crisis; it shows unfortunately.

The good,

the bad

and the ugly..

Saverio's wine

It does have two redeeming features however (aside from some glorious Grecian Bronze statues from 500BC). The one is Cesare, an ice-cream place (hut actually), which won best Gelato establishment of Italy  - somewhat of a big deal, given that there is a Gelateria every 21 meters in Italy - and the other, Saverio. Saverio is well-known in yachtie circles as outside of his day job as a taxi driver he is an allround goto man for anything to do with supplying sailors with essentials, whether it be croissants, motor oil, his homemade cheese, gas, home-made wine, etc. Our encounter with him started somewhat reluctantly, but as he honed in and lured us with his unlikely assortment of delicacies we walked away with the sound knowledge that we didn't dilute his average earnings one iota.

Dawn with 5 hours sailing behind us already

The next morning we set off early for three reasons, 1). to escape Saverio's clutches, 2). to time the tidal flow at the Straits of Messina correctly and 3). because bad weather was on the way. Despite making the convoluted calculation involving the high water mark at Gibraltar and a 90 minute shift for the northbound flow, it didn't help much. The straits are steeped in mythology for having swallowed whole ships in the turbulent eddies. These are formed by the cooler water from the south rising up from thousands of meters passing over a shallow and narrow shelf a mile and half wide and 72 meters deep before plunging down a thousand meters and more in the north. It all sounds rather too dramatic when you read about it beforehand, but when you are sailing along merrily, with a fairly strong following wind and your speed suddenly drops from 7 knots through the water to 2 over ground and the water around you looks more like a jacuzzi than the Med you realise that on a bad weather day this could all get rather messy.

Scilla

Above Bagnara Calabra

After dodging criss crossing ferries doing 40 knots, we made it out in one piece and, with some time in hand sailed to Scilla to have a look if we could moor up there. It is very charming but unfortunately not a suitable stopover unless the weather is totally settled, which it was not. So we continued a bit further along the coast to Bagnara Calabra, which is nowhere near as sophisticated as the name might suggest.  Nestled below the lush green mountainside it reminds you of the Ticino, until you get into the harbour and see all the floating plastic debris from the fishing boats. Somebody needs to have a word with these chaps - seriously. There being no fishermen about to talk to, the harbourmaster was treated to a class in Swiss-style negotiation. He obviously thought he was going to get away with it by saying; "The price is €65 for the night, but for you I will make a deal by giving you the 12 Meter yacht price instead of 13 Meters". The answer was not what he expected; "That is fine as a starting point but the electricity doesn't work, so I will give you €40 and when you fix the electricity and you will get another fiver". In fairness to him, he did sort out the electricity and as we left Catherine proffered the promised fiver, which he graciously declined. Somehow I don't think he is likely to forget us any time soon.

Tropea 

The reason we were headed in this direction in the first place was because we wanted to visit the iconic Tropea just a few hours further up the coast.  It is a remarkable sight even though our first glimpse of it was on a rather dull cloudy day. This and the prospect of visiting the Aeolian Islands the next 10 days or so has lifted the mood somewhat after a few days in grimy commercial harbours.