Stromboli take two
Posted: under News.
Half way through the charter we woke to a fairly reasonable day in comparison to the previous few and grabbed the opportunity to make the long, rolling sail/motor out to Stromboli. Our motor past the crater on Stromboli showed us it was full of activity for which we were rather relieved! It seemed to be fairly hit or miss as to whether you catch anything or not. The best time to view it however is in the dark when you hope to see some of the pyrotechnics erupting from the crater so we anchored off the town for lunch and waited anxiously until sunset when we lifted anchor and slowly made our way round to the crater.
The smoking crater of Stromboli
What an incredible sight we had!! I don’t think words can do justice to such a display. I attempted to get the camera going but after playing with it and missing a lot of the action whilst getting lovely black photos, I gave up! We sat in idle just off the bottom of the hillside and every 10-15 minutes of so, the crater would light up in an orange glow and you knew something was about to happen. A few seconds later and the crater would start spitting out hot lava in a wonderful fireworks display before watching them roll down the hill still glowing. It was then difficult to decide when to leave, not wanting to miss a big one, but eventually after about 5 explosions we made our way back to Lipari Island with dinner on the move.
Clare
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Oct 27 2009
Sailing in the Aeolian Islands
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Our last charter of the season found us back in The Aeolian Islands off the north coast of Sicily. Being the end of October the weather was always going to be a challenge especially as the Aeolian islands are all very exposed to both the waves and wind. In the end the weather could have been a lot worse although we were hit with squalls, thunder storms and even a water spout, but we did get a few hours most days when it did behave.
Sailing past Lipari on the way to Salina
One advantage of chartering a yacht is the flexibility it enjoys enabling us to just go sailing when the weather was nice, which could have been first thing in the morning or for a quick sail in the evening. In fact it was great to be able to play with the boat, leaving the tender behind and to just go out sailing. Concerto is an extremely well mannered yacht even when we got caught in a 25-30knot squall with a bit too much sail up. She very slowly headed up into the wind, nothing too exciting, which is exactly the type of manners you are looking for in a big safe cruising yacht. She is no slouch however and we saw 10 knots + on the log several times.
Approaching Panarea under sail
We had some fantastic sails to the islands of Vulcano, Lipari and Salina and also a “champagne” sailing day with blue skies, a slight sea and 20 knots of wind on the starboard aft quarter enabling us to broad reach at a steady 9.5-10 knots for two and a half hours before arriving at the island of Panarea.
Gordon
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Oct 26 2009
Arrival in Sicily
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We arrived to our old favourite town in Sicily, Riposto, where our agent was as kind and Italian as usual. ‘Mamma Mia’ was his favoured phrase for everything whether good or bad! We awoke on our second night there at 3am after being thrown out of our beds rather ceremoniously and quickly ran up on deck to see the wind speed rapidly increasing up to 55 knots, eek! Concerto has a fairly high windage especially with wind straight on the beam and being moored alongside a concrete wall didn’t help matters. Whilst Gordon ran around with fenders and lines, I acted as a weight on the passarelle to ensure it didn’t go flying. It took us about 1 ½ hours to secure her completely whilst another yacht had promptly unfurled its gib and a large 50m powerboat managed to scrape and dent a 5m section of its hull against the wall so we seemed to be lucky to escape unscathed.
I did my fish buying whilst in Riposto because they have fantastic fishmongers all lined up in their shops and the market along the waterfront. We would quite often walk past and see some of the largest tuna I have ever seen. We’d learnt last time we were here in Sicily that the Sicilian waters are the best fishing waters in the whole Med and even the Japanese own a section of the waters to provide sashimi-grade fish to Japan. I walked into one fishmongers and 10 minutes later had purchased everything I wanted to (something which doesn’t happen very often!) bar the shop giving my purchased goods to the wrong customer prompting a street chase.
We then departed for our charter destination of Milazzo on the north coast of Sicily near the end of the Messina Straits and headed out into a complete downpour and large waves tumbling in from the big winds that had been passing through. Eight hours later, we were safely moored in Milazzo for final charter preparations and with our fingers crossed that the weather would change for the better because we were both looking forward to another trip out to the lovely Aeolian Islands.
Clare
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Oct 15 2009
The Ionian
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The Ionian area of Greece is an old friend of mine as I spent a season here as a flotilla Skipper a few years ago. It is a great area as it is completely enclosed by the islands so the water is always very flat and the winds are generally light, usually enough to sail in but not enough to get the adrenalin going.
After a day spent recovering from the delivery, getting one of fridges re-gassed and catching up with old friends in the flotilla base town of Nidri on Lefkas Island, we sailed towards the Islands of Kalamos and Kastos. It was a gentle sail in only 6-8 knots of breeze but Concerto managed a respectable 5.5knots on a close reach past the private island of Skorpios owned by the Onassis family. After passing through the narrow channel between the high mountains of the main land and Kalamos the wind died and we were left with a 3nm motor in flat calm conditions to an anchorage off a small village that had been abandoned after the 1953 earth quake that devastated most of the Ionian. The anchorage of Port Leone is one of those places that even though I’ve anchored here many times, it still impresses me. It is quite deep, 15-20 metres but the water is crystal clear and, bearing in mind this was October, it was still 24 degrees! It is hemmed in by a rocky cove with some medieval windmill remains and the little village itself is very picturesque against the rocks, blue water and olive groves.
The picture below doesn’t really do the place justice.
Port Leone
After spending a very peaceful night at anchor with only the cicadas for company we lifted anchor to head towards Ithaca where we were signing out of Greece to make our way back towards Sicily.
Approaching Atoko island with Ithaka in the background
The sea was flat calm and although there was no wind it was nice not to be in a rush and motor slowly past the Island of Otoko with its imaginatively named anchorages, “One House Bay” and “Cliff Bay” on towards Ithaca where we had entered Greece just over three months before.
Gordon
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Oct 11 2009
Passage from Athens to Ionian Islands
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Apologies for the lack of posts over the last month and the sudden mass posting but internet access has been scarce.
We spent four days in Athens whilst the both the main engine and the tender engine had their first professional services. We ended up in a marina in the middle of nowhere but made the trek into Athens for a day off and some non-Greek food as we’d found a great looking Japanese Sushi restaurant tucked away in a side street last time we were here and decided to go back and test it out for lunch! We’d been tiring somewhat of Greek fare after three months of it so this was a real treat and well worth the trip. It was then time to pack the boat up before starting to make our way back across the Med via one last charter in Sicily.
We’d decided to cut marina costs and spend a few days in the Ionian Islands so didn’t spend too long in Athens before heading off towards the Corinth Canal in fairly flat waters for the 18 hour passage to Nidri. Due to the timings, we arrived at the Canal at dusk which made for a pretty spectacular transit. We emerged out the western side into the Gulf of Patras, a very long yet fairly narrow gulf, to find ourselves plunging head first into some huge waves with 30 knots coming down the gulf! Having been flat calm up till this point, we were fairly taken aback but it did explain the 2 knots of current against us in the canal…
Heading through the Corinth Canal
I was of course on dinner duty and rather thankful at this point that I’d made the beef stew the night before so it just needed reheating along with mashing some potatoes but even that was a task in itself, trying to keep my feet on the floor as the boat flew over each big wave! I have to admit a fair lack of appetite after all that. Oh the wonderful Mediterranean chop…
It was then my turn for a bit of sleep yet our forward bunk was proving to be a bit of a rollercoaster ride so after much bouncing on the bunk, I retreated aft for a brief shut eye before being called on watch whilst Gordon had beautiful flat calm seas for his three hours’ sleep, sod’s law eh!
We anchored up in Nidri in time for lunch the following day where Gordon promptly disembarked to find us two Pitta Gyros (Greek comfort food at its best!).
Clare
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Oct 06 2009