The Aeolians to Calabria

On the summit of The Antechamber of Hell

Di and John at the summit of La Rocca, Cefalu overlooking our anchorage.

The Aeolian Islands are North of Sicily and we arrived at Vulcano on Thurs 26/4 for a delightful couple of days at anchor in a sheltered bay with the still active summit in the background, the last eruption occurring in 1890. Had a few swims, explored the immediate area in the dinghy and of course walked to the 391m high summit. Vulcano is quite new geologically rising from the seabed in 183 BC. The Ancients believed the crater was the entrance to the Underworld while in the Middle Ages, Christians regarded it as “The Antechamber of Hell”, a description which the Lonely Planet says is very apt on a hot summer weekend with thousands of tourists ! We were lucky though as its still the quiet season and there were only a few yachts at anchor here.

From there we moved about 5 miles to the Island of Lipari where we stayed in a marina as there are no suitable anchorages. Lipari has a long history being originally settled 6,000 years ago and was famous for obsidian & pumice, the latter being still mined. The township was regularly sacked by pirates including Barborossa or “Redbeard” who rampaged the town in 1544. The town was subsequently fortified and the impressive Citadel remains along with the Cathedral. We didn’t do too much rampaging but had a good explore around.
During our stay there we made a day trip to Stromboli, some 35 miles away. We decided to take the Hydrofoil as Stromboli is not on our way anywhere and there are no safe anchorages. Stromboli is an active volcano and a constant stream of lava “The Trail of Fire” flows down the Northern side into the sea. The last eruption was in 2003 when the town of Ginostra was showered with rocks. Our friend Frank Curulli’s father was born here and we made a “pilgrimage” to see his old family home and then had a great lunch of pasta and Stromboli wine.
We left this area on 2 May in very good conditions to leave the Tyrrhenian Sea (which we’ve been in since leaving Ostia) and head through the Straits of Messina, a journey of about 8 hours. The Straits are really interesting and is one of the very few places in the Med where there is much current. This current causes whirlpools and the cruising guide shows the position of four whirlpools which can be dangerous to small vessels. Needless to say we kept well clear of these !
We stayed that night at a very average marina called Reggio di Calabria and the next morning set off on a lengthy 30 hour cruise to Ciro in NE Calabria (area of mainland Southern Italy). After leaving the Straits of Messina you enter the Ionian Sea and we had to do an overnight cruise as there are no suitable marinas or places to anchor along this stretch of coast.

So we spent another night watching the radar screen and avoiding several ships.
Ciro where we are now is a very basic marina but its quite pleasant and best of all free !

It opens to the North which is good as we currently have a SE gale of Force 7 on the outside. This is forecast to continue another day so we’ll just sit here and wait it out before doing a 10 hour cruise NE to our last Italian stop – Santa Maria di Leuci from where we will head E to Corfu.

Technical. Everything mostly OK. The gearbox has leaked a quarter pint of oil in 55 running hours so its not of concern but I'm not sure how to fix it. The stabilizer water cooling pump needed its 2 fan belts replacing, the first fan belt I have replaced since I was about 18 years old on my Ford 10 !