Italy - Sicily and Sardinia

The technical end of our circumnavigation

16 May 2008

It is difficult to say when we actually finished our circumnavigation. Most of the yachts we knew belonged to a yacht club in their home town and this could be taken as the official start of their journey. They left from there and then returned, years later, to much fanfare and celebration, as triumphant heroes. But not us, and we felt rather envious of those who had a home port to return to. We had been living in England when we bought Forever in Palma, Spain, and had then spent our first year just bopping around the Med. Palma couldn’t be called our home port, and anyway we didn’t intend to return there, having finally decided that we would try to make a new life in France. Our travels round the Med had taken us to Agropoli, Italy, which represented our most easterly point at E15 and thereafter we sailed only westward – right round the world. In theory, therefore, we could say that we finished the circumnavigation when we passed through E15 again, which we did again at the end of this trip, as we arrived in Sicily. We had been cruising for six years and five months at that point - but we were still cruising, so we decided to hold on the champagne and sparklers.

In Sicily, we anchored off a rather make-shift marina at Giardini Naxos. The anchorage area was a bit dodgy, though once the anchor was dug in we seemed secure enough, and we had good neighbours on Lady de Vie. The marina people were neither friendly nor obliging, but we managed to sneak drinking water from a tap on the dock and I took my buckets to one of their docks and defiantly did my laundry. It was a long walk round into the town, but once there, it was good. Behind Giardini and on top of the hill is the ancient town of Taormina.

Taormina on the hilltop

Taormina’s past is Sicily’s history in a microcosm: Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, Swabians, the French and the Spanish all came, saw, conquered and left, bequeathing architecture that is a sublime mix of Arab, Norman and Gothic. The main attraction is the Teatro Greco, now home to all manner of events, including plays, fashion shows, concerts, and cinema festivals.  Originally quite small, it started its life in the 3rd Century BC and was enlarged by the Romans to accommodate their own particular brand of theatrical extravaganza. The views from the theatre are spectacular, taking in a (usually) smoking Mount Etna and the Bay of Naxos down below. We scorned the cable car, of course, Mike preferring to beat a rugged and steep shortcut up the mountainside.

Giardini and Mount Etna

                                                                   

                                                             

the ancient...and the modern

We took a leisurely rest here for a week and then headed up through the Messina Strait, the tide assisting us part of the way and fighting against us later on, and into the Tyrrhenian Sea.  The wind was a bit on/off but the weather pleasant and sailing was comfortable.  No matter how many years we might have stayed at sea, we never got tired of dolphins and on this trip our companions were a group of what we identified as Bottle-nosed and then a second group of Risso’s dolphins (flat nosed and big).

After five days we rounded the northern tip of Sardinia in a huge thunderstorm (which gave us and Forever a thorough wash) and as night was falling we entered the wide bay on the south of Isola Caprera and anchored in a narrow channel at Porto Palma.  The boat kept shifting as the tide turned so we put our anchor alarm on which buzzed frequently all night though our position remained stable.

Sardinia's rugged coastline

Nearby was a sailing school and the next morning dozens of pretty little yachts manned by inexperienced but enthusiastic youngsters were zigzagging all around us. We were so impressed by all these little yachts practising their tacking manoeuvres around the bay that we tacked all the way out next morning and were doing very well until another short sharp storm hit us on the nose. We moved over to Porto Palau, an excellent quiet anchorage, and hung on a mooring buoy. The town was expensive and not very interesting, but we managed to get water, fuel and a few groceries.

Back when we thought we’d sold our beloved boat and planned to deliver it to Ireland, we’d discussed at length the merits of taking our mast down and coming up the canals through France, as against sailing round Gibraltar, up the Atlantic and across the dreaded Bay of Biscay. My preference (the canals) had prevailed – hooray! - and we had sourced a marina near Port Saint Louis du Rhone, at the mouth of the Rhone River. The delivery plans had changed with the boat sale falling through but we still wanted to go to France.

So, on 31 May 2008 we left and sailed through the Bonifacio Strait for the second time and then, leaving Corsica to starboard, we cut straight across past our old haunts of Isle d’Hyeres, Frioul and Marseille and two and a half days later anchored in Fos Bay. Here’s the map of this last leg.

Since Turkey we had travelled a further 1,594 nautical miles, bringing our grand total to 33,818 nautical miles and we add one more country, Greece, to bring the grand total to 39 countries visited.