Tropea, Scilla, Siracusa back to Marina di Ragusa

Santa Maria del Isola - Tropea

We arrived at Tropea quite early in the day having left Cetraro just after 2 am having successfully managed to dodge a couple of thunderstorms in the Tyrrhenian sea along the way.  I have a thing about lightning and do whatever I can to avoid it, evidenced by any amount of apps I have that pinpoint strikes. As we bobbed about for a while deciding whether to anchor out or go into the marina we were buzzed by the Guardia di Finanza in a menacing speedboat. They chose the wrong moment and person (not me) as they were told to back off and follow us in if they wanted to see any paperwork. They duly obeyed and hovered around us for ages before they got our documents and then took the best part of an hour to decipher the difference between our surnames and first names. If it were not for the fact that they can cause untold grief one may have made an attempt at more humour.
Tropea held many pleasant memories for us after our last visit almost exactly a year ago and we enjoyed revisiting its picturesque cobbled alleyways at the top of a ridiculous number of steps. I really wanted to go back to the fishing tackle shop and notify the owner that his recommendation of a particular lure, after having ridiculed me for what I had been using, had been useless, as in almost 1800 nautical miles I had caught nothing. Nothing. Ok, so I hadn't put the line out for most of the time, but still, there was no need to poke fun at me. His shop was closed though, probably went out of business,  poetic justice I thought to myself.

Scilla 

Our next stop a few days later was Scilla, which we had tried to visit last year, but were unable to find a spot. We called in advance this time and got just about the last buoy as things were winding down for the end of the season.  We were really glad we were able to stop here as it is a beautiful place. We stayed for a few days avoiding the bad weather that was ahead of us and tried to get the timing right for the Messina Strait this time around. It can go 5.5 knots for or against you if you don't pay attention and last year we had not paid attention.
We then made our way south towards Taormina, but the swell was so huge that we gave up on the idea of anchoring or being on a buoy there and headed on to Riposto which we reached after an eight hour day of rolling seas. The harbour is a combination of derelict pontoons and a quite well organised marina, the former being signs of an ownership dispute and the complexities of local politics about which one tends not to speak too openly in Sicily. This fronting a relatively tourist-free working town with buzzing fish markets, all under Etna's slopes. Etna was quite active last year even causing flights to be cancelled, but it was dormant and barely visible under a table cloth of cloud when we were there. Whereas we turn to the hose to clean our decks after a sandy desert rainfall, the winter liveaboards in Riposto reach for their vacuum cleaners when Etna's ash regularly creates a sooty layer on their boats.

Serious music in Siracusa

The bohemian quarter

Tuna man in Cossack gear

Our luck with the weather persisted and we left for Siracusa, arriving after they had had a week of rain, the very wet kind. The historical centre of Siracusa is on the small island of Ortygia, which is connected to the modern city by two bridges across a narrow canal. It has a very rich history dating back some 2700 years to Greek times and was a powerful city state then as well as the birthplace of Archimedes. It is a beautiful bustling city today with a lively market and lots of tourists. We have visited the market before and made a beeline for our favourite deli to stock up on all sorts of tasty delights. A deli in which you are sure to lose your heart if not your wallet as well. The gradual migration back to winter moorings meant we saw more and more friends along the way and in the Porto Grande in Siracusa. When we arrived Peter from Paikea welcomed us. We were also anchored near Susan and Tom of Sirena as well as Luda and Dave of Bobcat and we met up for a great evening together at a pizzeria under the entrance of the Duomo.

The old and the very old

Our favourite deli

End of season clouds

With only 60 or so nautical miles left to sail back to Marina di Ragusa now, we took our time and stopped off halfway in Portopalo at the south eastern tip of Sicily, and enjoyed a lovely sunset and meal as the sailing season drew to a close.  We had a calm last night at anchor nestled in the small harbour in the company of Dakini who had just sailed a long stretch and What's the Rush who we had been sailing alongside more or less since Amalfi. Next day we tried our best to sail in very light winds and, having time on our side, kept the engine off to enjoy the silence of a gentle, albeit slow sail.  The calm conditions made mooring up a relaxed affair and it was lovely to be greeted by familiar faces on the dock as we came in to our winter mooring on L dock.

Back in time for olive picking

Although the days are shorter now there is still no shortage of sunshine and the beach and outdoors still beckon. We had a relaxed week of preparing the boat for some of the winter tasks ahead interspersed with violin practice (for an upcoming project), olive picking at Giles', as well, of course, catching up with friends and swapping summer stories. I intentionally left our sails on before heading to Menton for two weeks, hoping the weather would be good enough for some extra sailing when we got back, either for a lunch at anchor somewhere along the coast or an excursion to Malta perhaps,  conditions permitting. Someone forgot to warn us that this is addictive.

Next destination, Menton

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.