Well, here we are in our winter home – by the skin of our teeth as it happened.  We’d been told by a number of other cruisers we met in the summer that the recently built marina here was a good over-wintering spot and that there was loads of space.  Consequently we didn’t actually enquire about a berth until late September, to be told by the office “sorry, we have no space”.  Having friends who were already here we got them to make enquiries and then put a bit of a spurt on and arrived ourselves on Sunday 12 th October.  We kept our heads down on Sunday night and decided to check into the marina office on Monday morning.  The place is pretty full and that night we got depressed by stories of other cruisers who were already here and having to hassle for a winter berth and pay more than the marina’s published prices.  Next day we went to the office prepared for a non-committal answer “we are very full ... maybe there will be a cancellation ... perhaps in a f...

Next day, Sue’s hunting instinct overcame her finer feelings and she was back fishing, although I’m not entirely sorry to say without success.   It was another wonderfully mild and sunny day and with all our sails set we glided up to the fleet of Roman yachts sailing off Porto di Roma and the mouths of the Tiber and the Fiumicino canal.   It’s been such a great season that neither of us wanted it to end and we were tempted to just keep on going.   But we have things to do this winter and all good things must come to an end, so we headed on in to the marina. This winter is going to be very different from the last.   Apart from the fact that we have all the facilities we need within a few hundred metres and the joy of slowly exploring Rome, there are at least thirty English-speaking cruising boats in here for the winter and a very active social life developing.   We have a morning VHF radio net mainly used for organising social activities.   T...

Next day we headed for Nettuno harbour, next to Anzio back on the mainland, again in fine weather.   Since leaving Maiori Sue had been trailing a fishing line and experimenting with different methods and lures (imitation fish) and was showing a scary aptitude.   First she hooked a large Tuna, then we think a Dorado, but both these slipped off the hook as we tried to land them.   On the way to Nettuno she got another big brute which I reeled in and managed to flip into the cockpit.   There was this beautiful blue, grey and silver beast, about two feet long.   Sadly, Sue’s fishing expertise does not yet extend to delivering the coup de grace.   With the fish flapping wildly on the cockpit floor with me holding it down we tried pouring gin into its gills, which we had been told was a relatively humane method of killing.   Half a bottle later the poor thing was still very much alive so I started hitting it over the head with an adjustable wre...

As I think I’ve mentioned before, I find the weather in the Med bewilderingly changeable and when we left Ischia it was with a flat clam sea and bright sunshine. During the day the temperature climbed to 35c as we motored past the island of Ventotene and on to Ponza, the most populous of the Pontine Islands. We had expected Ponza harbour to be surrounded with lots of small marinas, but in another sign of the lateness of the season all the pontoons had been removed and stacked on the beach. Ponza is a spectacular island rising sheer out of the Tyrrhenian Sea in a symphony of cliffs, caves and bizarre rock formations. We anchored in the harbour with a couple of other cruising yachts, including one brave elderly Swiss couple who had a skinny dip before rowing ashore. That night I watched the Ponza car ferry arrive with increasing trepidation. From about a mile out I could hear the thrumming of its engines and see its navigation lights heading for us in a straight line. Within a...

Having said goodbye to Sue’s Mum and Dad at Naples Airport we stayed in Maiori for a couple more days before heading out on 7th October. We had stayed twelve days in the end and frankly we were pushing our luck in the little port, which is really suitable only for settled weather. It was a grey and threatening day when we left and we encountered increasingly lumpy seas as we passed by Capri and headed into the bay of Naples. We crossed the bay and called in at Casamicciola, a pleasant little port on the island of Ischia, where we spent three days waiting for a storm to blow out.  We toured this green and almost tropical island on the crowded local buses and paid a visit to the charming villa and gardens created by Sir William Walton the composer and his wife Susana, who still lives there. The storm caused not a little excitement and marked the end of the season for many harbour and beachside cafes, which were pounded by the great white breakers which rolled in along the coast...

Last time I wrote we were in the little port of Maiori on the Amalfi coast waiting for a visit from Sue’s Mum and Dad. On the Saturday they arrived we hired a small car and headed off up the steep hills of Amalfi to Naples airport. Cresting these hills we got our first quite staggering view of Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples. The cone of Vesuvius itself is a National Park, but the plain that spreads below it contains a great urban sprawl interlaced with motorways. Vesuvius has the potential to blow its top big time and the effects on this vast metropolis don’t bear thinking about. Maiori was a perfect spot for us to stay while Sue’s Mum and Dad came to visit and we managed to find them a hotel which overlooked the little port. It was a very sociable time with two other British boats in the harbour, “Chin Chin II” and “Gwen L” who we’d been cruising with on and off since Calabria. One evening we ended up taking a table for ten at one of the local restaurants. During their stay...

We’re now on the Amalfi coast south of Naples. Over the past year we’ve become connoisseurs of the Italian coastline and this is another fine stretch to add to our collection. The coast rises sheer out of the Gulf of Salerno up to, I guess, a couple of thousand feet and is dotted with castles, craggy inlets, seaside towns and hill villages. Everywhere the land is green and terraced with lemon groves and vineyards and right now it is suffused with a golden autumnal light. Maiori is a small, unpretentious seaside town about two miles east of Amalfi itself, with a tiny harbour at one end, tucked underneath a cliff which rises about two hundred feet and on which stands a neo gothic castle. The road to Amalfi climbs above us and loops round the cliff in a sharp hairpin bend, so we have a great view of the regular confrontations between buses, lorries and coaches as they negotiate the turn. It’s like watching a mating ritual between large and cumbersome beasts as they approach one an...

After our stay in Vibo Valentia we headed north towards the Amalfi coast, stopping at a succession of sleepy little ports. It’s was a sociable time, travelling in concert with two other British yachts, “Gwen L” and “Chin Chin”. The high spot for me was Maratea, a collection of small hamlets strung out on the coast and hills of Basilicata. There is a tiny port with a handful of bars and restaurants and the main village up in the hills, all dominated by an enormous statue of Christ, arms outstretched, on the summit of a 2,000 foot high peak and visible for ten or more miles offshore. At night the statue is floodlit and seems to levitate above the little port. We spent a day trekking to the summit, stopping for a drink in the village, which is a laid back “away from it all” resort for the European and American middle classes.  On our way back down from the statue we came across a cycle race in the village. Several hundred lycra clad cyclists shot through the place in a blur,...

Sailing up the Calabrian coast we were hit by our first really bad squall off the fashionable resort of Tropea.   One minute we were motor sailing in a moderate breeze and the next the wind was literally screaming through the rigging with rain stinging our faces.   Instinctively we got the sails down fast and started to motor further offshore.   It lasted about two hours during which we bucked up and down in a very short and uncomfortable sea, continually drenched with cold rainwater and occasionally lashed by warm seawater as the fifty-knot winds whipped the top off a wave and smacked it in our faces.   During the squall and its aftermath we were actually approached by two Italian Coastguard Search and Rescue boats to check that we were OK. That day we stopped at Vibo Valentia where we chilled out for a few days and hired a car to explore the Calabrian hinterland.

Having last been on the Italian mainland in Livorno in May we returned to it at Reggio di Calabria, just south of the Straits of Messina as we began our journey north to Rome. I was expecting to see a dirt poor dump full of tower blocks and rusting cars. In fact the city centre is bustling and sophisticated, with smart seafront cafes overlooking Sicily and the Straits and the continual stream of ferries and container ships plying to and from the Ionian and Tyrrhenian seas. However, in a back street cafe we did get a glimpse of a different Calabria. The place was full of young men with tattoos and at one table three were dressed in black with gold jewellery and shades. They had the uneasy and twitchy demeanour of serious drug users. At another table a smart casually dressed guy sat talking on his mobile phone, but appeared to be getting an unusual amount of “respect” from the waitress and the men in black. As we left the cafe Sue explained to me that the “respect” might have been...

Catania, our furthest point south by boat this season, was weird. It’s the largest conurbation in Sicily and having parked La Fulica in the commercial harbour we took a walk through the dockyard to the centre of town. Maybe I’d had too much sun or alcohol or both, but this fantasy began to grow in my mind that Catania was like the Devil’s attempt to create a “normal” city in hell to make new arrivals feel more at home. At one level it feels like a normal town, but to me it had an uneasy dystopic edge. For one thing the town is predominantly black, built from lava and the streets are covered in what looks like coal dust. For another, there is a subtle but pervasive smell of sulphur emanating from Mount Etna on the northwestern edge of town. It was also hot, aggressive and noisy and on our way back to the boat I was intimidated by large dogs which roamed the dockyards. That night I slept in the cockpit to give Sue and Rosemary some respite from my snoring and was kept awake by ...

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 extendin...

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.

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 you...