Our final stop before Taranto was meant to be Sibari, a six hundred berth Marina and apartment complex where we had more Calabrian adventures. We found the entry channel using our GPS and then slowly motored towards the entrance as depths were reported to be shallow. At the mouth of a canal which leads into the marina we were practically aground, so I called the marina on the VHF, to which there was no response. I then called them on the mobile ‘phone and got a reply. “Where are you?”, a charming woman asked in excellent English. “Outside the marina,” I replied. “Ah, you can’t enter I’m afraid, maybe next week”. It turned out that the port authorities had closed the marina, one of the largest in Southern Italy, because the entrance had not been dredged. This was even more baffling because a number of foreign boats had over-wintered here last year and we had already met one boat on our travels planning to stay this coming winter. “Yup, nothing really does work in Calabria”, I...

We spent three days in Rocella, then headed for our next port of call, Le Castella. There are only a few places to get diesel on the Ionian coast of Calabria and as we were running low I dipped the tank every hour. Unfortunately, my dipstick didn’t take account of the fact that the tank is an odd shape and with ten miles to go to our destination I found we had no more than a few minutes of fuel left. I switched the engine off immediately to give us a small reserve and we got the sails up. It was a hot, hot nearly windless afternoon and it took us three hours to cover four miles. With the sun beginning to set the wind picked up and we started coasting along at four knots. At about the same time Sue noticed some splashing in the water around us and then spotted four Riso’s Dolphins swimming under our bow. These are some of the biggest dolphins in the Med, with big snub noses and white scar-like markings. They were joined by a large pod of smaller dolphins which they chased away w...

One we passed through the Straits of Messina we were in new territory in the far south of Calabria.  There is a saying in Italy that “nothing works in Calabria” and we found plenty of evidence to support this claim.  About twenty miles South of the Straits, at the end of Italy’s big toe is the port of Saline Joniche.  It’s a small industrial port with a railway station, built a couple of decades ago for no obvious purpose other than to provide kickbacks to corrupt politicians and Mafia bosses.  We arrived there on a blisteringly hot afternoon and motored cautiously up to the harbour.  None of the industry is working and the harbour mouth is now completely blocked by a sandbank.  Rather than dredge the entrance some enterprising soul has blasted a hole through the harbour wall to allow passage to the few small local fishing boats and cruisers that use it.  Inside, through the rubble of the improvised entrance it looked hot and dead, so we decided to...

After the Aolies we anchored at the mouth of the Straits of Messina at a fishing village called Scilla, named after the legendary monster with many arms which the Greeks said lived in the Straits and dragged ships to their doom.   It is a heart-achingly beautiful spot.   The water in the little harbour is crystal clear and the old stone houses are set on a steep slope down to the waters edge.   Outside every little terrace of houses there is a slipway with small fishing boats pulled up literally at each front door, with weather beaten old men mending their nets.   Going ashore we walked the networks of tiny alleys, which every now and then gave a view down steep stone steps to the clear water of the harbour.   Like much of Calabria the place has a Victorian juxtaposition between wealth and poverty, with expensive harbour side restaurants cheek by jowl with decaying cottages ripe with the smell of damp and mould.   In the harbour we were able to ...

South of the bay of Naples we visited the Aolie Islands, which are a fashionable watering place for rich Italians.   Because the seas were smooth and the weather settled we anchored one night off Stromboli, the most easterly of the Aolies and an active volcano.   Going ashore we were a little disconcerted to find signs everywhere saying “if you hear the warning siren leave the coast immediately and go to the assembly areas.”   Apparently there is a risk of an underwater volcanic eruption which could generate a massive tidal wave or Tsunami. Next morning we motored slowly around the coast of Stromboli watching the lava flows, before going on to Vulcano, another of the Aolies.   If you ever get the chance to visit this island, don’t bother unless you have a strong stomach.   All over the island are volcanically heated pools in which bloated middle aged Italians cover themselves in green and evil smelling mud.   The whole place stinks of ro...

Being a cruiser is like belonging to a tribe, but there are many sub-tribes. My least favourite sub-tribe is the “CV cruisers”. People who in mid-career take off with a boat for a year or so, get as far as they can and then head back to home waters to resume their old lives. Many in this group bring with them the deadline orientation of their working lives and simply seem to race from one place to another. Their objective is to complete an “adventurous episode” to add to their CV – their focus more on the next thing than the now. My favourite sub-tribe might be called the “so what?” brigade. People who when faced with all or any of the following objections from well meaning friends and family say “so what? – I don’t see why that should stop us going cruising”: • You haven’t got any money. • You can’t sail. • You’ve got a secure job. • She’s half your age. • You’ve only got one leg. Allied to this tribe are what might be called the pure eccentrics – like David and Eli. ...

Now we’ve been in the Med for well over a year I think I can say I’m getting truly acclimatised. This has a downside. I can’t cope with cold weather any more. Italy is at this moment in the grip of a cold spell. There is snow from the Alps to Sicily and the TV news has pictures of frozen tailbacks full of juggernauts from one end of the country to the other. I’m writing this in the early morning in my berth watching my breath condense all over the laptop screen. Our fan heater is going full belt, I’m wrapped in a duvet and I’m wearing track suit bottoms, a sweater and thick socks. Here on the coast the temperature is actually at this moment a couple of degrees above freezing, a normal English winter morning which a couple of years ago I would have thought nothing about. The trouble is ... I’m bloody freezing! When I wrote in October there were thirty odd cruising yachts here already and they continued to roll in steadily through October and November, so that there is now a ...

Having been resistant to living in an English-speaking cultural bubble, that is exactly what we have been doing for the past three months. However, our Italian is progressing thanks to our lessons twice a week and to the three Italians in the port who also live on boats. However, Sue is progressing faster than me, especially with the dreaded Italian verbs. We don’t get into Rome as often as we hoped to, but we still manage it about once per week. We still haven’t made it to the Vatican Museum (which includes the Sistine Chapel), preferring just to wander around and soak up the atmosphere. In doing so the sheer scale of the ancient Roman city slowly begins to dawn on one. During the four centuries after the birth of Christ Rome had a population of one to one and half million inhabitants, making it by a multiple the largest city of the ancient world – no other city even came near this size until the industrial revolution. We’ve also been doing more reading about Italian culture...

A couple of weeks ago we hired a car and drove down to Puglia (the heel of the Italian boot) with Claude and Jane, a couple that we have become goods friends with. Jane has worked in Taranto helping to project manage the development of a big new Container Port there and so has good contacts and is interested in buying a house in the area. Puglia is the market garden of Italy, being its largest producer of wine and olive oil, as well as having a big fishing industry. It is also the home of the Trullo – little round stone houses with pointed roofs which are built in clusters and are becoming very fashionable with holidaymakers and foreign investors. They are cute little buildings which often verge on the impossibly quaint – the town of Alberobello has thousands of them and frankly looks like nothing more nor less than Hobbiton. Our time was spent in an exhausting blur of house viewing and sightseeing, followed by leisurely debriefings over dinner in local restaurants. Parts of...

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...