The Straits of Messina and Taormina

Sue and Rosemary both found the Straits of Messina a bit of a let down, I think, although I was fascinated. At their narrowest the straits are maybe only half a mile wide and there are strong currents caused by differences in the times of high and low water in the Tyrrhenian and Ionian seas. The two seas also have different salinity levels which creates small whirlpools and eddies. I think Sue was hoping that we’d skirt the edge of Charybdis, the legendary whirlpool of “the Odyssey” and see Poseidon looking up and beckoning us down the plughole. We did hit a small whirlpool, but it was a flat calm and windless day and all that happened was the autohelm struggled a bit to keep us on a strait course. A greater hazard are the ferries that ply in a constant stream to and from Messina to Villa San Giovanni on the mainland. While in the Straits we were lucky to see three or four of the swordfish boats that hunt there on calm days. They are quite small boats but with a walkway extending from their bow by as much as fifty feet and are steered by the Captain sat atop a twenty or thirty foot tower. The boats move in predatory circles around the Strait looking for swordfish, which apparently take catnaps a little below the surface of the water. The Captain can see the prey from the tower and steers the boat so that a man with a harpoon can zap the unsuspecting fish from the extended gangway.

After the Straits we headed south and anchored under the fashionable resort of Taormina. Having struggled ashore in the dinghy we searched in vain for a bus stop or a taxi and decided to take the footpath up to the town. Five hundred feet later we emerged on the edge of Taormina exhausted, sweaty and fit only for a lie down. After a reviving beer we struggled on into the centre, we walked up a narrow lane as the sun began to set and wham, we were hit by a solid wall of tourists bustling up and down the town’s main shopping street. Despite the effort and the crowds Taormina was worth it, a beautiful jumble of elegant palazzos, villas and churches sat on the northern slopes of Etna with wonderful views over the coast from its main square.

The House of the Dead

Before we left Palermo we spent a further day sightseeing with Rosemary, including a visit to the Convento dei Capucinni, a large catacombs where about 8,000 of the great and the good of Palermo have literally been hung out to dry. Most of the bodies date from the 18th and 19th centuries and have been embalmed, put into their Sunday best and then hung up in niches around the catacombs. Some of the bodies still have flesh on them, like dried parchment, while others are just skeletons. The result is a bizarre social history of the dress of middle class Sicilians over two centuries. Far from being creepy or horrifying the catacombs seemed curiously tame, maybe we’ve become so used to super-real Hollywood special effects that reality is becoming increasingly anti-climactic.

Palermo

It’s evening and I’m sat aboard La Fulica in my underpants typing this at arms length to keep the heat of the laptop as far away from my body as possible.  I’m covered in sweat and every now and then a trickle rolls down my stomach and is caught by the barely perceptible breeze to produce a mild chilling sensation.  Christ it’s hot.  Too hot to move or even to think much, too hot to get up and pour oneself yet another drink.  So hot that at last we’ve started to keep proper Mediterranean hours – up reasonably early to get stuff done, then a siesta from about one until five in the afternoon, when the pitiless Sun begins to let up enough for us to start thinking about doing things again.  So hot that the Sicilian dogs have given up the struggle to do anything but keel over in the shade and pant.  Friendly or aggressive they are all the same now, all raising an apologetic eye as you pass as if to say “sorry mate, I would get out of your way, but that would mean I’d have to stop panting for five seconds” or “look, normally I would bite your fucking arm off, but I can’t bite and pant at the same time, OK?”  The air of parched somnambulance is reinforced by the fact that this is the weekend of Ferragosta, the national holiday to celebrate the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, when anyone in the South of Italy with any sense has gone to the beach, leaving half the shops, bars and restaurants shut and the towns deserted. 

We have been holed up here for three days so far and will stay for at least another three, waiting for a friend to jet into Palermo airport.  Actually, we need a rest and as we have electricity and a water supply we can catch up on cleaning and laundry and other essential jobs, when we can summon up the energy.

So ... what about Sicily?  From our cursory inspection so far of the coastal strip from Marsala to Palermo, I’m beginning to wonder whether we’re on the right island.  Maybe there’s another Sicily just over the horizon that is actually home to all the myths I feel I’ve been fed about the place from “the Godfather” to the “Rough Guide to Italy”, because the Sicily we seem to be in doesn’t fit them at all.  For a start the culture is much less ”macho” than I expected and the respective roles of men and women actually don’t seem to be as strongly demarcated here as in Northern Italy.  We noticed this first in Marettimo, where the old girls seemed to be just as at home jumping in and out of the little fishing boats in the harbour as the old boys.  For another thing, although the Mafia obviously exists people talk about it and complain about its influence on the island, which it seems to me is a major step forward in curbing its power.  From our guidebooks we were expecting Palermo to be an interesting city, but marred by poverty and bombed out slums left over from the Second World War.  It is in fact an almost heart-breakingly beautiful place.  The old city comprises tall sixteenth and seventeenth century tenements, interspersed with cool parkland and an eclectic mix of Norman and Baroque churches.  There are slums and there is poverty, but there is also a lot of urban regeneration and the worst is still a sight better than Hackney or Dalston and less threatening.  Surprisingly the ambience of the city seems quite like London.  The people here are less style conscious than in the North of Italy, there is a big cultural mix and what looks to be quite a large gay community.  I have a feeling that Palermo will one of these days become a highly fashionable “city break” destination, in the way that Barcelona, Amsterdam, Galway City and even Glasgow are.  Ryan Air do cheap flights and I can only suggest that you come and see for yourself.

The Port of God

From Marettimo we hopped to Favignana, the next of the Egadi Islands and thence to Marsala in Sicily proper.  We decided to make this our first port of call on the mainland for no better reason than that it has a wonderfully romantic name.  It derives from the Arabic “Marsah-el-Allah”, literally “the Port of God”.  The fact that it is also the home of Marsala wine was, of course, incidental.  We spent a few days there sightseeing and had the good fortune to make friends with two real Sicilians, Arnaldo and Mathilde who are spending August sailing to Pantelleria and Tunisia.  Arnaldo is a cameraman for RAI, the Italian state TV Company and Mathilde is a freelance, mainly unemployed, architect.  Arnaldo has some vines down in the far South West of the island and the bilges of their boat “Arne and Matt” are stuffed with the strong red wine which is their product.  My memory of the two evenings we spent with them is a little hazy, although I can remember commiserating with Arnaldo because the annual harvest produces a paltry five hundred litres (hic).  After Marsala we headed North to San Vito lo Capo and then East, arriving in Palermo on the 14^th August, where we have been sweating it out since.

Passage to Marettimo

We left Cagliari on 31^st July and headed back to Villasimius on the South Eastern tip of the island and the nearest point to Sicily, our next destination.  I guess it’s a sign of our increasing experience that this 160 odd mile passage held only as many terrors for me as our crossing of the English Channel just over one year ago.  At Villasimius we met up with Chris and Auriel of the yacht “Blue Jade”.  We’d first met them at Calvi in Corsica and a few times since then around the coasts of Sardinia and Corsica, but hadn’t really got to know them.  It turned out that they were also planning to cruise to Sicily and we spent an enjoyable few days in their company waiting for good weather.  We both left at dawn on 3^rd August, with Blue Jade intending to head straight for San Vito Lo Capo on the North West tip of Sicily, while we had decided to head first for the Egadi Islands off the West coast of Sicily, shortening our passage to about 140 miles.  However, early on it became clear that Blue Jades’ VHF radio was on the blink and only had an effective range of one or two hundred metres, so they stayed close to us to keep in VHF contact and so we could relay weather information to them.

We had a great day sailing and motor sailing across a smooth sea with a light swell on the beam giving us a mildly sick making roll.  During the afternoon however, disaster nearly struck as one of the crew narrowly escaped going overboard.  You may remember that when we left the Magra our Italian friends Roberto and Marianne gave us a plant for our prospective Mediterranean garden which has been bungeed to our compass with a thin piece of elastic ever since.  During one particularly violent roll the elastic snapped and the pot hurtled overboard.  As the pot hit the deck before bouncing into the sea it dislodged the little plant, creating the impression that the poor thing had actually made a last desperate jump for safety.  I retrieved the plant from the deck and later Sue repotted it with good Sicilian earth and it is now back in its place lashed more securely to the compass.  I guess it really deserves to survive.

At dusk the wind died so we got the sails down and motored through the night, with Blue Jades’ navigation lights bobbing around a couple of hundred metres off our stern in an increasing swell.  Due to a combination of excitement and slight nausea neither Sue nor I slept well and staying awake through our night watches was hard work.  I did the watch from 2.00am to 6.00am so got to see in the dawn.  The moon set below the horizon early in the night so there was very little to see except the Milky Way and the occasional shooting star, some big enough to produce a palpable pulse of light as they screamed into the atmosphere.  The dim light of our GPS slowly, very slowly, counted down the miles to our destination, fifty miles at 02.00, forty miles at 04.00.  By five in the morning I was practically psychotic with tiredness and impatiently waiting the first glimmers of dawn.  I could already smell the earthy scent of Sicily in the warm and moist atmosphere and having seen no traffic during the night there were now the lights of several fishing boats strung across the horizon.  At one point I picked up a really strong smell of sewers, later Sue said she had smelt the same thing once during her night watch, accompanied by a large cluster of bubbles.  Do whales fart I wonder?

Struggling to stay awake one of the small fishing boat lights slowly transformed itself into what looked like a large block of well lit flats, as a cruise ship thrummed across our stern.  In the end dawn came unexpectedly, not with a rosy glow in the sky, but a rosy glow to the sea, as for the first time since dusk I could actually see the swell again, rolling slowly and insistently on our beam.  At 07.00 Blue Jade called to say that now we were close to the Sicilian coast they were resuming their course for San Vito Lo Capo.  In the end I think both they and us were glad of the company on the passage and I’ve no doubt we will meet again before the year is out.  We pressed on for Marettimo, the most outlying of the Egadi Islands.  Our Italian Waters Pilot says that in Summer there is usually a haze around the Sicilian coast which severely restricts visibility and this has very much proved to be the case.  With our GPS showing just five miles to Marettimo it slowly began to resolve itself through the haze.  Marettimo is an insignificant dot on our chart, but in reality we found a truly monumental piece of green and grey rock seven hundred metres high and four miles long with a wispy toupee of white cloud clinging precariously to its summit like a bald man’s wig in a gale.

Our Pilot was not very positive about getting a berth in the island’s tiny harbour, but having been pretty well without sleep for twenty-seven hours Sue and I were getting desperate.  As it turned out we had found an almost perfect landfall.  As we arrived there was a small procession of cruising and charter yachts leaving and we were immediately waved into a vacant berth on a small pontoon for yachts in a harbour crammed with small fishing boats and medium sized ferries.  After a few hours of much needed sleep we emerged and wandered round the small town of Marettimo, full of middle class Italians enjoying “away from it” all holidays.  The town is a collection of boxy flat roofed whitewashed houses, more North African in style than anywhere we had previously encountered.  The locals seemed open and friendly, milking their probably quite short tourist season for all it was worth.  In the evening a large tanker backed its way onto one of the harbour quays and began pumping fresh water ashore.  Along with the steady stream of ferries from the mainland I guess this is the artery that keeps the island’s small tourist industry alive.

Cagliari

Last time I wrote we were in Cagliari in Sardinia, where we ultimately stayed for nine days, partly I think due to cruising fatigue.  We have been experiencing so much this summer that from time to time we just need to stop and let it all sink in.  Also, this life is quite physically demanding, especially as we have been spending a lot of our time at anchor rather than in marinas and there are times when we need to physically rest up.  Cagliari is an undemanding sort of town and refreshingly multicultural.  Along the harbour front there is a colonnaded walkway with several cafes, a popular spot for the evening passagiata when the locals stroll around their town and sit in the cafes chewing the fat with old friends or flerting.  One hot afternoon sat in one of the cafes we watched three of the local drunks.  They were at the “you’re my best mate you are” stage, but beginning to edge into “just who the fuck do you think you are?”  One of them had an old ladies shopping trolley and a cat on a lead.  The cat lay quietly on the pavement while the drunks screamed at each other like friends who had suddenly bumped into each other after twenty years.  Being the only sober one in the company it tried to maintain a studied “I’m not really with these people” indifference.  Suddenly, as if remembering that the cat had a very important appointment for which it must not be late, the drunk with the trolley picked up the cat and carefully put it inside, made his excuses and walked off.  The cat pushed its head out of the trolley bag and began to regally study the passers by as the ensemble disappeared into the distance.

Much of our time in Cagliari was spent strolling round the old town, a dark and mysterious place crammed onto a rocky promontory and bound by the city walls.  Near the summit of the old town is the Sardinian Archaeological Museum, where we learned a little more about the Nhuragic civilisation peculiar to the island in the bronze and iron ages.  The trademark of the civilisation was tall round towers, distinctive in design and found nowhere else in the Mediterranean.  The museum has a large collection of Nhuragic bronze figures, mainly pocket size, like childrens’ toys.  The figures are extraordinarily modern and life-like, although some are seven thousand years old.  There are archers, beggars, priests and street entertainers, some showing real touches of pathos or humour and providing, for me at least, one of those rare moments when you feel you can reach across the centuries and almost touch the hand of Ancient Man.