Sardinia and Sicily

As you will have seen from our last blog, we are reeling from repair bills, so we made a decision to avoid the millionaires playground of northern Sardinia and try to make our way east as fast as possible where we believe it is easier to anchor and costs are more affordable.  

We were excited about arriving in a new country, trying different foods and getting to know it better, and Carloforte proved to be a pleasant, interesting introduction to Italy just as the weather was getting noticeably warmer. I took a few days to adjust to ordering beer in Italian instead of Spanish but no-one seemed to misunderstand me!

We have realised that although technically we are in the high season when it comes to marina rate cards, it is still very quiet both at sea and in the tourist areas, so the buzz that you often get in the peak times is missing.  That's great if you are looking to get away from it all.... but when we are sailing, we seek that solitude on anchor and then prefer to find places with more energy when stopping in marinas. So, we are realising that our view of places is affected by the timing.  What we might think is a sleepy, dull place in May might well be either great fun or a nightmare in August!

Carloforte is famous for tuna.  We decided to try the local tuna specialities but were surprised that it all seemed to be canned, smoked or stewed.....Jan's favourite, tuna tartare, apparently is not 'typical' and therefore not available! You can buy tuna galore in posh tins (like the sardines on the Atlantic coast) at exotic prices to take home to your friends.  We didn't buy any.....

After a couple of days we moved round to Cagliari, which is one of the biggest cities in Sardinia. It's an old city and has lots of beautiful historic buildings including a Roman amphitheatre. The marina is a bit out of town so our bikes were once again invaluable. We enjoyed browsing in the market and spent a very enjoyable evening at a wine tasting event where you paid for a glass in a pouch then wondered around different stands choosing wines. This proved to be a good introduction to different Sicilian wines.....if only we could find them again!

The Roman Ampitheatre

One of the city gates

Cagliari also has some good marine services so we took advantage of these to have a diver go down and do some maintenance on the boat and clean the hull for us. 

From Cagliari we did the overnight crossing to Sicily. We were fortunate because  we had favourable winds so sailed almost all the way. Although it can be quite stressful to sail at night the fact that we are saving huge amounts of fuel always cheers us up! We are definitely getting better at the long two or three day sails now; planning food prep in advance in case we are healed over and organising a watch system that works with just the two of us.

Our arrival in Trapani was a huge disappointment, it is a very scruffy dirty city. I don't know whether the waste collection and street cleaners are on strike at the moment but there were skips piled high with rubbish and it looked like the streets hadn't been swept for months. 

Are they on strike or is it always like this?

Added to this the marina was expensive and there was no drinking water available so we left there after a brief one night stay and went round to Castellamare which was a much nicer town and where we anchored for two nights. Other people have told us they loved Trapani so we may just have visited on a bad day.

Castellamare from the sea

Our next stop was Palermo which is a big, busy city with a beautiful cathedral and more than its fair share of ancient buildings so again we spent several happy days exploring on our bikes...although the Italian car drivers are very impatient, inconsiderate to cyclists and the use of horns is deafening. The open air food markets were amazing and very inexpensive, with lots of exotic produce which we have been trying.

Palermo Cathedral

One of the city gates

Some amazing things in the Cathedral - including a saint's arm!

Our next stop, Cefalu was well worth visiting. Its another pretty town with a very nice hill-top castle, so we spent a couple of nights on anchor there.

Cefalu Cathedral

Cefalu Castle

The view from the top....

There are  spectacular views over to the Aeolian Islands from the castle and once we realised how close the Aeolian Islands were, we decided that they were worth a detour from our original plan.  

The nearest island was Vulcano which as the name implies is an active volcano! As we anchored we noticed that the seawater in the bay near the beach was bubbling as if it was alive. When we went to investigate in our dinghy we discovered that this was caused by the release of gas from underwater fissures - there was a constant rotten egg smell which was quite oppressive depending on wind direction.

You can climb the path to the top of the crater on Vulcano where we discovered that if a little bit of gas was being released underwater at sea level..... a huge amount of gas was being released at the top of the mountain. There were warnings at the bottom about not going near or breathing the gas.  As you can see we were very obedient.....

Inspired by our experiences of Vulcano we were excited as we sailed across to Stromboli which is a much more active and bigger volcano. On the way across there was very little wind and as a result the sea was like glass for the first part of our passage, so we were delighted to be entertained by a small pod of dolphins.  Don't think we have ever has such an amazingly clear view of them before...we could see every mark on their skins.  

The peak of Stromboli seems to be frequently shrouded in cloud and ash as its several craters periodically display pressure reducing mini-eruptions. We upped anchor at night and went round to the north west face of the island for an hour to watch the eruptions from the boat and they were spectacular, taking place approximately every 15 minutes. You could hear the explosion, see the shooting lava and then see the lava flowing over the brim and down the cone at the top. Sadly the iPhone 6 camera, good as it is, was not up to that level of night photography but we are including a photo found on the internet which shows exactly what we saw, so that those of you interested in visiting will know it was definitely worth doing.

Whilst we were there we looked into opportunities to climb to the peak of the volcano and watch the activity from the eastern edge of the crater.  The information was clear that only people in peak fitness should attempt it, so I did it but Jan wisely declined. The 950 metre climb up was very tough and sadly the visibility at the top was disappointingly poor on that night due to the cloud and the ash.  

Coming down is also very hard on your knees as it involved wading through steeply sloping ash fields.   It was a very interesting climb and adventure, but very weather dependent.

We have really enjoyed the Aeolian islands. We have found it easy to anchor for free and  dock the dinghy ashore on Vulcano,  Stromboli and Paneria, but it is May and not August; in the height of summer it may well be a scramble.  The towns are small with tiny streets and tiny vehicles to match, nestling at the foot of a natural landscape that is absolutely awesome.  Well worth a visit.