We all woke up feeling like total zombies. Despite excessive amounts of sleep last night, we were all tired. Probably more emotionally than physically, we suppose. We were also worried about getting sick from the combination of freezing up on the volcano and the long, stressful night. Christi thinks she has found at least a dozen new gray hairs.

Tai went shopping for souvenirs. Eric went to the coast guard station to file an official report. He met the coast guard commander, the English speaker, and had a good chat with him about the events. After he finished with the coast guard, he got to work on the boat. He opened up the generator through hull, checked the generator to make sure all looked OK, then fired her up. Then he started cleaning up in the engine room.

Christi stripped the linens off the mattress, moved the mattress off the base of the bed, then started cleaning out the storage space under the mattress. Everything was sopping wet and it was full of water. Once she got all the water cleaned up from under the mattress, the floor no longer filled up with puddles of water every few seconds. Hopefully, she had found all the standing water. There was a lot of stuff in those storage spaces and we now have wet stuff spread along every space within the boat. Of course, it was raining outside, so the chances of things drying quickly were slim.

She also vacuumed up all the glass and a lot of the moisture from the spilled liquids in the living room. Thank goodness for the wet/dry vacuum. The carpets and upholstery are filthy from the combination of volcano ash all over the place, salt water, and assorted spilled beverages (including dairy products). It is a good thing Christi put so much effort into cleaning the carpet and upholstery a few days ago. And, as soon as we knew the generator was working, she immediately put in a load of laundry. We have laundry up to our eyeballs with all the linens, wet clothes, wet towels, etc. Since it is salt water, you can’t just let it dry. It all has to be washed.

In good news, the sailboat boat on our starboard side left, so we were able to get Kosmopolitan up easily (we prefer to raise/lower from the starboard side since we have a walkway on that side). The clogged sink in the master bathroom has magically fixed itself. Louis’s boat made no marks at all on Kosmos when they collided in Scari. All the rain yesterday and this morning has washed most off the ash off the exterior of Kosmos, so we no longer need to wash the outside, at least. And, the rain stopped for a little while, so we were able to put things, such as the downstairs carpets, outside to dry for a few hours. That helped. See, there are always silver linings. Also in good news, Tai is one of those people that once he starts a book, he always finishes it, even if it is terrible. He was in the midst of a terrible book and was delighted to find the book destroyed. Now he doesn’t have to feel guilty about not finishing it. =) Hey, we’re counting all our blessings here, no matter how small.

In bad news, we realized that the high water bilge pump alarm never went off the other night. Odd. Eric will have to check that out soon.

In the afternoon we met Louis and Elizabeth for lunch. We liked the food so much at the restaurant we had eaten in last night that we wanted to go back there. But, they are only open for dinner and sent us to their sister restaurant in the heart of the old town, on top of that hill that Christi and Tai had climbed up on their way to Marina Corta. The newer town has normal roads meant for car traffic (once again, normal by European standards, not American), but the streets are all one way and the layout is kind of bizarre. We were on scooters, and we drove all over the newer town in circles looking for a way into the old town. The old town area is made up of lanes much too narrow to take a car into. It is steep, and many of the “streets” are actually staircases. When we finally found the one and only vehicle accessible entrance into the old town, we went racing around all the little narrow alleyways, being stopped time and time again by roads that either dead ended or turned into a staircase. After touring the entire old town, we finally found the road that went through to the top of the hill and made it to the restaurant. It was a fun little adventure. Here are a couple random pix we took while driving through the old town.

Lunch was excellent. Eric ordered a fish soup that was absolutely incredible. It had pasta and the broth was rich and smooth, made with fresh herbs, not dried. His main course was a shrimp pasta in tomato sauce. Christi ordered a marinated tuna appetizer that was delicious and for her main got black risotto. It is risotto with calamari, and they actually use the calamari ink for flavoring, which makes the rice black. It was also very good. It is the second best food we have had in Italy. Tai had a cous cous dish with eggplant and bell pepper (capsicum), seasoned with just a little bit of curry and some other unknown seasonings. Cous cous is actually a pretty common dish on the menus in Sicily, a food the North African brought with them along with pasta.

Something that we have neglected to mention was that Louis doesn’t own Sanza Freni. He had chartered it. Louis could have simply let the boat drift away with basically no adverse consequences to him, but instead he decided to risk his life to go and save the boat. He said he is something of a thrill seeker and liked the adventure of it. We are thankful he was so hell bent on rescuing Sanza Freni because in the process, he helped us save Kosmos. And we don’t know how we would have done it without him. Not just in getting on board in the first place, but also because he was driving, doing watch, and communicating with the coast guard while Eric dealt with getting the flooding under control. And, he kept Eric awake on the way to Lipari. It would have been so much harder for Eric had he been alone.

After lunch, Tai had some time to kill before catching his ferry to Naples, so we took a scooter ride around part of the island. We followed the main highway northwest until it was time to turn around and head back. We didn’t make it very far, but what we did see was, for the most part, scenic. At one point we passed a mine and factory, we think for pumice.

We stopped by the boat and picked up Tai’s gear, then all went to the ferry terminal together. The ferry arrived a half hour after it was supposed to have departed, and then left over an hour late. Late was bad. Tai has the tightest schedule of all time. He has only twenty minutes from when his ferry gets in until his train to Rome leaves, and he has no idea how far it is from the ferry terminal to the train station. If the ferry can’t make up the time, he will miss his train. Then, when in Rome, he has only a 5 minute window to switch trains from the main terminal to the airport train. Then he only has a couple hours to get from the train station until his flight leaves, and once again, we have no idea the distance, or for that matter, how long the check in and security lines will be. His chances of making his flight are slim, but he is going to try his best.

After saying our goodbyes to Tai, we headed back to the boat, where we did another load of laundry and watched a movie. We were just too burned out to keep cleaning.

Oh, and someone asked about the marina. We are on a floating dock, and, of course, we backed in. We have two mooring lines securing the front of the boat. The fee is $60 USD per night cheaper than that crappy mooring in Stromboli. The marina is rocky, just like the one in Siracusa, and we are told this is the calmest marina in the area.