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.