I’m writing this from Lipari after quite a passage. After the guests had enjoyed a night hike up Stromboli the day before to get closer to the action I had heard a bad weather forecast for the area due in the next day at midday. As the anchorage offered no real protection and the pilot-guide said leave immediately in bad weather I was a little worried and I didn’t want to arrive in a busy anchorage on one of the more sheltered islands at night and not be able to find a place so I decided to sleep with one eye open. At 0430 I heard a boat’s horn so shot up on deck to see the wind was blowing only about 12kn but a 40foot charter boat had slipped its mooring and was heading rather quickly our way while its crew were down below. Fortunately for us (and especially the 35 footer he would have hit just before us) the crew was awakened just in time to start the engine and move it away.
At 0530 the wind had built to 15knots and it looked like the weather was coming in early so I decided to wake Clare up and get out of there. The anchor was holding fine and no other boats had left but I had a feeling something wasn’t right. We found out just how not right things were about an hour later as we were motoring into 40kn head winds and one of the most massive seas I’ve ever seen in the med. I was getting very very wet in the cockpit! Thankfully the engine and systems worked really well with the oil pressure, water temperature and exhaust temperature not any different from what they are in mill pond flat water.
It was reasonably hairy for the 3 hours it took us to cover just 14nm to Lipari and we saw two coast guard boats heading for Stomboli. I wouldn’t have wanted to have been there any longer than we were especially if I were in an ill-equipped “bare boat”. In Lipari we docked up without any fuss and relaxed. Thankfully our guests were pretty game and found it all quite exciting although they did admit that they probably didn’t want to do that again tomorrow! The boat behaved impeccably and I now have a lot of confidence in the new changes.
It was a big storm that took a lot of people by surprise. Over the next few hours and the next day quite a few boats came in with a lot of damage including ripped sails, broken booms and lost tenders. Just 100nm north of us 2 people were killed in a harbour in Capri in the same storm. A sobering thought….
Gordon