It’s around midnight and I’m typing this lying in bed in “La Fulica’s” forward cabin.   There is no natural light in this cabin which is effectively a “V” shaped metal box.   Most days it is very quiet here, but sometimes if the sea is very rough the swell makes its way the mile or so up the river Magra and sways the boat from side to side making her jerk up and down on her mooring lines and rub fenders with the neighbouring boats.   It’s just such a night and from inside my metal box I can hear the mooring lines creaking and straining and feel the boat rolling from side to side like a baby’s cradle. Although it’s a month since I last wrote, La Fulica has moved precisely nowhere and for much of the time Sue and I have been hibernating.   It’s hibernating weather.   Down here the days are even shorter than in the UK – by four o’clock in the afternoon the Sun drops below the spine of wooded hills which rise high above us on the other side of ...

We stayed in La Spezia for another few days until Thursday 30 th October, mainly to stock up with provisions and to see “Don Giovanni” at La Spezia’s theatre.   This was a regional touring production, professional and clearly very heavily sponsored by the Region of Liguria, Savona District Council etc, etc.   The theatre is a well-restored little gem, I would guess from the late 1920s or early thirties, very Art Deco with plush seats and ochre paintwork.   The sort of place I could imagine the local fascist luminaries attending for big set piece performances.   In fact in my imagination we could have been back in Mussolini’s Italy as we sat through the worthy four-hour marathon.   The auditorium was only half-full, mainly of smartly dressed folks, many of whom were clearly bored by the proceedings, a combination, I suspect, of the local literati and local government officials issued with complimentary tickets to make up the numbers.   ...

After a night in Porto Venere we had planned to head off to Viareggio, but again a bad weather forecast interrupted our plans and we decided instead to nose further into the sheltered waters of the Gulf and visit La Spezia itself.   We found a berth at the marina in the middle of town in front of a wide palm fringed boulevard.   The town is nothing special, it’s the home of the Italian Navy and as a consequence was bombed flat during the Second World War, but Sue and I both really fell for the place.   The Gulf itself is very wooded and attractive with small hillside villages and pretty little ports and there are good views of it from parts of the town.   It’s also good for day sailing as the Gulf is wide but very sheltered with lots of interesting places to visit.   The town has excellent shops and a market and is a very relaxing place to simply stroll or sit at a cafe table and watch the world go by.   There was only one disappointment – the Italian Nav...

Indifferent weather and fatigue kept us at Lavagna for four days.   We finally got an OK weather forecast on Sunday 20 th October and headed off in the general direction of La Spezia, about twenty five miles away.   The wind was on the nose yet again but we had bright sunny weather and moderate seas.   The coast to La Spezia is very rocky and much of it is the land of the Cinque Terre, a group of isolated coastal villages, some perched spectacularly around small natural harbours.   La Spezia itself lies at the bottom of a large gulf, a bit like two outstretched arms.   The last four or five miles of the rocky coastline we travelled that day is actually the outside of one of the arms.   About where the wrist would be our charts and pilot book showed a narrow channel about one hundred metres wide and less than three metres deep in places, by a small village called Porto Venere, which leads directly into the Gulf of La Spezia, thus avoidin...