On the 19th after an easy passage from the beautiful medieval town of Cefalu (pronounced Chefaloo) on the Sicilian mainland we found ourselves anchored in probably the most amazing anchorage I’d been in since the South Pacific. 100 meters behind the other yachts in the anchorage my chart was saying it was over 1000m deep then as the bow got to around half a boat length away from the first boat, the depth sounder suddenly came back from “over depth” to 90 meters. By the time we had drawn level with the boat there was 25 meters under the keel. We eventually anchored in 12 meters in volcanic sand on a very small plateau on the north east of the island with about 12 other boats. The island doesn’t just have a volcano on it, the island is the volcano. If you were to ask a child to draw a volcano, the shape he/she would draw would be the shape of Stromboli. It’s just an incredible sight. Every 20mins or so a black cloud of smoke and ash would escape out the summit, I’m not sure I’d like to own a house here!
Later that night after dinner I took the guests in the tender around to the north west side to see the guidebook’s “fireworks”. At first nothing happened apart from quite a strong smell of sulphur but then after about 25mins a big cloud of flames and orange sparks flew about 100meters into the sky with a big rumble. Red hot rocks came crashing down the side of the mountain towards the sea, then nothing. 15mins later it did it again, then 10 minutes later an even bigger one. Quite awesome in the true sense of the word. Eventually it died down and we headed back to the boat and bed.
Gordon