Category Archives: Cruising Guide

Information for other cruising boats. Our experiences finding places to anchor, dealing with officials, provisions, etc.

Volcanoes, Boats in Danger, and Emergency Rescues – Part 1 of 3

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Preface: This blog story is of the scariest night of Christi and Eric’s lives. Tai leads a far more adventurous life than us, but it was still high on his list of scary events. This is one of those truth is stranger than fiction stories, but we swear every word of it is true. This is by far the longest story we have ever written on the blog. As we usually do for exceptionally long stories, we have broken it up into multiple parts. Normally, we like to keep each post 2 pages or less, and we have never had a post longer than 3 pages. Until now. This story is so long that we have broken it into three 4 1/2 page posts. If you didn’t read the last two posts, you probably should before reading this one since there is some useful background info in them. And we know, weather reports are not always accurate, and just because a bunch of other boats stay someplace does not make it safe. Also this is a good time to remind people the blog is not in real time. This event has happened in the past. See About this Blog.

So, yesterday we wake up to rocky seas. We were rolling like crazy, worse than being at sea. The water was a bit too shallow to deploy the paravanes. The rough seas were weird because it wasn’t windy and it looked like a pretty nice day. We were also bummed when we realized that the entire boat was covered in a fine black sand. We were afraid that it wouldn’t come off very easily, just as the sand from Tunisia hadn’t. Oh well, we’ll worry about it when we get to Rome.

We were desperate to get off the boat and get to dry land. As we were getting ready to go, Tai said “Hey, do you know what the name of the town here is? Scari! Oooo, scary! Ha! Ha! Ha!” As we were almost ready to walk out the door, a speed boat pulls up alongside us and Continue reading →

Exploring Stromboli

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The pier at Scari is a good 6 feet above the water line. It has a lot of traffic from small passenger ferries coming and going with loads of tourists. We pulled up to a staircase, hopped out, then tied Kosmopolitan up so that she was floating under the pier, out of the way of all the ferries. The weather had cleared up nicely. The sun was out and it had turned into a beautiful afternoon.

Our first goal of the day was to find lunch. We walked along the main drag and only found one open restaurant that served real food (as opposed to snack foods). We went inside and found out that in between lunch and dinner, they only serve snack food, as well. We resigned ourselves to snack food and ordered something called arancini that Tai told us was a sticky rice ball with meat in the middle that are pretty good. What came out was a sticky rice ball with a sort of stew meat and veggies in the center, but it had been deep fried hours earlier and reheated in the microwave. It was greasy as all get out and pretty darn gross. Tai assured us that this is not how they normally are.

Once we had a little food in our tummies, the next goal was to find a tour company to take us to the volcano. We were hoping to do a sunset hike. All the tourist information places in the tiny downtown were closed for the afternoon break. We decided to take a stroll along the waterfront to look for banks and tour companies. The shoreline along the waterfront is all black sand. It looks more like an asphalt parking lot waiting for the lines to be painted than a beach. We noticed there were no cars on the road, just golf carts and tuk tuks (tiny three wheeled vehicles). Even the taxis are golf carts. The road is barely wide enough for one car. Almost all the buildings are white, and most have blue trim. It actually reminds us a lot of a small Santorini, except without churches with domed blue roofs. It looks to be mostly hotels and a few private residences. There are a lot of flowering plants in people’s gardens, which adds to the loveliness of the setting

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After walking for a while, the road narrowed. We assumed it was a pedestrian only path because there was no way a car could possibly fit on this little narrow lane. But we were wrong. The little golf carts buzzed up and down the tiny lane, with only inches of clearance on each side. There wasn’t enough room for Continue reading →

Welcome to Stromboli Island, Aeolian Islands, Sicily, Italy

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We found out that while we were in Palermo, we had missed a festival in Trapani. There were apparently fire eaters, which impressed Bill. Oh well.

Yesterday we did the usual get ready to go routine, including a trip to the grocery store. The day before, when we were in the first market in Palermo, Christi had said at least 5 times that we should stock up on fruit here, where there were zillion of produce vendors selling every type of produce imaginable. Most of it looked lovely. But we didn’t. So, we stood in a grocery store, staring at a small selection of nasty looking fruit. The apples and bananas looked edible, so we got some of those. Every grocery store we have been to outside of the US there is a person whose job it is to weigh the produce and print a little sticker with the total before you get in line to check out. This grocery store has a self use scale and sticker printer machine. The directions are, of course, in Italian. Tai and Christi couldn’t figure out how to use it. Mind you, Tai is involved in producing cutting edge software, and the scale baffled him. So, we gave up on the grocery store and drove around town in search of a street fruit vendor. This was a blessing in disguise. The street vendor’s fruit was beautiful and a fraction of the price of the shriveled up fruit in the grocery store.

Anyway, once we had taken out the trash, stocked up on food, stowed away the things that like to go flying at sea, and checked the weather one last time to make sure conditions still looked good, and we were ready to go. We said our goodbyes to Bill and Ellen and pulled out. At first, the sea conditions were rocky and rough, which was odd given that the wind speed was low. We figured the waves are leftovers from yesterday’s storm. At one point, Tai was standing outside the pilot house with the pilot house door open. Eric shut the pilot house door, telling Tai he didn’t want to chance a wave coming over the side and getting the pilot house wet. No more than three minutes later, a big wave came over the side and drenched Tai. Tai looked rather surprised and said “I guess I should have clued in when you shut the door”.

As the day wore on, the seas got Continue reading →

Passage to Trapani, Sicily, Italy

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By yesterday the storm had passed. Skies were clear and brilliantly blue, and while it was warmer than the previous two days, it was by no means hot. We languidly got ready to go to sea and headed out around 2:00 pm.

The passage was pretty uneventful. Winds varied from 11 -17 knots apparent, always on the nose (which makes real wind speed more like 5 11 knots). The seas were the typical Mediterranean small, sharp swells at rapid intervals. Not the smoothest ride of all time, but certainly not a bad ride, either.

We arrived in Trapani around noon today. From the distance, it looks like a series of blocky mid-rise apartment buildings on a flat of land. A large hill rises in the distance, and the hill is mostly barren, both in terms of construction and foliage. The hill is basically a big mass of brown, much like the hills of southern California at the end of the summer. From the distance, the harbor area looked to be primarily industrial, and the farther into the harbor we ventured, the more industrial it became.

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We called in and were told they had space in the marina. The marina is Continue reading →