OUR STAY IN ITALY

We have spent 9 months here in Italy, although most of that time has been spent in Sardinia, we have also seen a good part of Sicily and some of mainland Italy, this mostly in the Ionian. The Italians are some of the friendliest people you would ever come across, but you can also find it very hard to appreciate them. They will scream shout and argue and then turn and murmur an apology, they will point out a beautiful stretch of coastline and then in the same breath tell you how wonderful a new development is that will ruin the same stretch of coastline. They will tell you about the beauty of their country yet whilst telling you this, they will be throwing rubbish into the sea or out of their car window, this we have found this to be one of the most annoying things about them. The men are vain and flashy, the children are spoilt, the women are temperamental, but beautiful, but now we are leaving Italy we leave with regret and very happy memories.

On our trip from Sardinia to Greece there have been many highlights but we would just like to mention a few. Firstly anchorages, there are beautiful anchorages in Sardinia but not so many between Sardinia and Greece. One of the best anchorages that we visited on the trip was is Sicily called Tindari, this was a large sandbank which is now a nature reserve, and it was so safe and peaceful here. The bars, restaurants and supermarkets were very reasonably priced and again we found the locals very friendly we spent 3 great days there. The worst anchorage for us was at Cefalu where again we spent 3 days, but here we got hardly any sleep. We were rolling from side to side 3 nights on the run and the last night Debbie was so afraid that the boat was going to turn over that she actually stood up all night long in the gangway, we were so pleased to pull up anchor and leave at first light the following morning.

Just to mention a few bad experiences that we had on the way. Firstly we were on the quay at Rocella Jonica in mainland Italy and was told about a secluded beach that may be worth visiting. On the way to the beach there was a vast area where the sea had obviously dried up with deep crevices, I was ahead of Debbie when all of a sudden my leg sunk into this quicksand, I called to Debbie for help, she come running towards me and passed me when all of a sudden she was up to her waist in quicksand. It was a very frightening experience and it took quite a while for us to free ourselves from this gooey mess. Another time we were anchored off and decided to go into town in our tender for a few beers, whilst we were there the weather got up a bit and on the way back to the boat a large wave flooded the tender which also flooded our mobile phone and camera, hence no pictures. Another time we were coming past a headland when all of a sudden something had obviously wrapped itself around our prop and we were going nowhere except into the rocks which were very close by. We tried the engine several times in forward and reverse but to no avail, we put out a call on the radio for assistance, hoisted the sails to see if we could sail away, but with very little wind we were going nowhere. After looking at all options it was a case of me having to dive in to quite a choppy sea to see what was tangled in the prop. It appeared that whatever it was that was causing the problem had freed itself from the prop and what could have been a very dangerous situation was resolved by itself and to this day we still don't know what it was.

One of the highlights of our trip from Sardinia was when crossing the Ionian Sea we had a whale come alongside and spend some time with us. It was so graceful to watch, they move so slowly through the water, we did not want it to leave. It was such a shame that we did not have a camera at the time. This really made our trip. Since leaving the UK we have seen hundreds and hundreds of dolphins and we have actually played with the dolphins on the way, we have seen turtles, hundreds of unusual jelly fish swordfish, flying fish and great shoals of fish, but the whale really made the trip that extra bit special.

Since arriving in Greece we can tell that we are really going to enjoy ourselves here. We have already found some beautiful bays and met some great people. We will update when we can to let you know how things are going in Greece.