Messina, Sicily

Wednesday, August 20, 1998

Hello again so soon, We hope all is well with you. We are here in Messina Sicily. I expected Scisily to be a poor cousin of Italy, but it seems more prosperous and at least here in the port, the people are friendly and very helpful. The young guys thaat operate this new marina, asked me right off if I wanted to send E-mail or to get on their internet. The copied the complete weather report from their internet and gave us a copy. Incidently, the weather has been fine for quite some time now. I can look out onto the Messiana straights toward Italy where it is only 1 &1/2 mile wide and see ships and ferries going every which way. Thousands of ferries, when coming in we had to wait in line between ferries going both ways. We saw two of the Swordfish boats this morining early. The swordfish migrate north and south thru the straights, when they are tired they sleep on the surface. These strange boats have a guy up the mast, maybe 30-40 ft. and another up front in a 20 ft bowsprit. The whole boat without bowsprit is only 20-25 ft . long, when the guy up the mast sees a sleeping swordfish on the surface, they sneak up on it and the guy foreward harpoons it. Really!

We were off for Greece, but Bob and Judy cannot get a connection for their flight out of Rome, os we will stay here a day or two and they will have to ride an 8 hr train from Reggio Calabria back to Rome. This is one of the many times that i am happy to be ritired and not have to hussle back to work. Not that this life is all peaches and cream. We have, for example, not been able to buy charts, any charts! and have been navigating with a road map and GPS. Not a great way to navigate, but we do not have any choice. I have used up a lot of shoe leather looking for charts in the last several ports. We have a cruising guide that shows the layout and coordinates of the ports and anchorages so we rely on it and our GPS. This all means we have to stay well clear of any obstructions and sail in daylight only.

We now plan to sail up the foot of Italy to Crotone and Santa Maria de Luca, then across to Corfu and down the Greek Islands to the Corinthinian channel.

Wednesday August 26, 1998

Hello again hope all is well with you. Well here we are rocking and rolling along at 8-10 knots. We really got some good wind and are moving. We are off the coast of Italy headed for the heel. Our friends Bob and Judy left yesterday, so there is just the two of us, and I am typing this as we roll along with the autopilot steering. Bob and Judy caught a train for Rome so they could continue their trip to Canada and then back to Arabia. We loaded their huge hard suitcases with wheels, into the inflatable, unloaded the luggage on the beach, pulled the dinghy up on the beach, chained it to a post and walked to the train station in Taorimina Scicily. They took a train that goes across on the ferry, The whole train goes on the ferry!!

We left Sicily this morning about 6 am. It was a very very interesting place. The last two nights Mount Etna spewed red hot lava into the sky. It was still smoking when we left this morning. It is over 10,000 ft. high and we could see it for most of the day.

I didn’t get to send this so I’ll just add a little. It is now 8/28/98 we stopped in a very nice marina last night getting in about 7PM after a very full day. We sailed 13 hours, and had all kinds of wind and seas. After I wrote the first part of this letter yesterday, the wind quit ocmpletely, then later changed directions and we had a real blow complete with big seas. We were lucky, a bunch of big clouds moved in over the mountains and blew, but only for about 2 hours, then it shut down just as we reached a port. If it had continued, we may have had to stay out, and we were tired. Slept like logs. There are times when we get really tired. I haven’t felt my age a until a couple of times this this trip. Feel great today! The marina did not have any water or fuel so we left again at 7 this morning. This boat is great, we carry over 100 gallons each of water and diesel. Everywhere we go, we end up with people stopping to look at the boat.

We saw a very big swordfish this morning. They sleep on the surface, and we just came right by him. He must have been 6-7 ft. long. Last night some Italians from another boat came by asking if we had any jerry cans, since they were out of diesel and had to take a taxi into town for more. I loaned them our cans and they gave me their charts for Greece, they were coming back from a month in Greece. We were desperate for charts, since ours only covered parts of Italy. We have been sailing for a week with no charts, only a road map, and that is dangerous! We could not find any anywhere to buy, and have been trying at every marina. Anyway, it pays to be nice, you get nice in return. With very few exceptions the people we have met have been very nice and helpful, especially the Sicilians. This section of the coast looks exactly like California, it is dry rolling hills, with oak trees and a road following along the beach for miles. It is not so crouded in this part and most of the houses seem new.Well I better go now. love Marvin and Ruth

Next day again - 8/25/98

Well it was bound to happen - we were sailing along with 13 knots of wind from behind, so I put the spinnaker up to get a little more speed. The wind kept building and soon we were rocketing along, with no charts I didn’t know about the shoal area off the coast until we say the yellow markers direct ahead. We successfully doused the spinnaker in 20 knots of wind, with no spinnaker sock. So far good! The wind and seas kept building and we were going into Coton Marina. This has to be the lousiest marina I have ever seen, the wind was blowing rght into the place. I should have turned around and left, but there was no other good places to hide, and others were going in. Well we finally got our front anchor out backed into the verh high concrete wall and put a couple of ropes to the old rusty attachemnts on the wall. We were broadside to the wind and it kept building to 27 knots, about dinner time, our anchor drug and we were hard onto the concrete wall. Panic ! We launched the dinghy, dumped the second 65 lb anchor and chain into the dingy and we reset another anchor and pulled ourselves away from the wall. We sat there all night, about 10 feet from the concrete wall at a wierd angle. No water or power at this marina anyway. No damage to the boat, we had plenty of fenders out. At 5:30 AM, that’s early and dark, we untied the stern ropes and attempted to retrieve our two anchors and depart this wonderful place. What a mess, we pulled up two old rusty anchors, big ones, that we had to untangle and dump, plus one other cruiser had laid his anchor chain on top of ours. He was a German, and I told him the night before he was too close to our anchor. Anyway he took it all in good stride and we got away at 6:30, headed 72 miles to our last stop in Italy. Hope it is better than this one. Gotta go now.