With a forecast of gentle northerlies, Diomedea slipped out of the Ionian islands at first light bound for Roccella Ionica near the toe of Italy. We enjoyed some excellent beam reaching but by nightfall the wind was gone and so the diesel topsail was back in action. Initially an outstanding night sky was available, so we found Ursa Major, Ursa Minor and of course Polaris. That is where the expression "taking a bearing" comes from. To find north, one identifies the two "bear" constellations and the pole star is thus revealed. Strangely neither constellation looks like a bear. The larger one is also known as the big dipper, which is more apt. The Milky Way was well seen but still not as fantastic as in the southern hemisphere. The clocks were set back an hour and by 2am a forecast SW front had come in, but only about 10 kts. It went around to the north about an hour later so little delay. The massive gas/oil fields of the Luna complex were brilliantly lit up about 20 miles inshore of us as we sailed through the night. Finally Diomedea arrived outside the marina to be escorted in by a marinero in a dinghy as the entrance was extremely shallow (2.5m) and only about a boat width of that! Then into a topsides-eating berth made of pebble dash concrete. Not nice. But we were in. Clearance was painless and soon we were off to town on rental clunker bikes to get new sim cards, always the first priority in offshore sailing. The forecast was quite worrying with a highly unpredictable low forming over or near Sicily and tracking into the Ionian, producing gale force winds from all directions. We decided to leave Roccella and head south then north via Messina. Getting out of the berth proved exciting but was executed without damage and soon we were wing in wing for the run down to Cape Spartivento. We chose to poodle along to try and time our arrival for the tide gate at the Messina narrows of about midnight. Despite our best efforts at going slow we still got there 2 hours early. Massive thunderstorms and heavy rain chased us up the wide part of the straits, with Mt Etna lurking occasionally in breaks in the heavy cloud. The sun slithered away through letterbox slots. Our navigation lights were on by 5pm. There is a large amount of crossing traffic in the straits consisting of car ferries up to 500 feet long, and they don't take prisoners. Diomedea snuck through the melee with an unexpected two knots of favourable north flowing current, all the way to the sharp right hand turn into the narrows proper. Instantly we met 3 knots of south flowing current, forming whirlpools and overfalls making for extremely challenging steering. We fought and crawled the 4 miles forward until the now disused gigantic cable towers at the northern end were abeam. Built in 1957 these are amongst the highest free standing electric pylons in the world, but proved inadequate for the power demands of Sicily and were decomissioned in 1993 after submarine cables were laid. The northern portal to the straits is still known as Scilla, derived from Homeric verse in which Odysseus faces the twin opposing marine nightmares of the six-headed monster of Scylla and the whirlpool of Charybdis. From this derives our modern expression "caught between a rock and a hard place".
Setting sail once more with a view to a pleasant nocturnal 70 mile reach in flat water, we instead found ourselves surrounded by constant lightning strikes, big seas, and strong winds. The Gulf of Euphimia borders the narrow part of the toe of Italy which must be relatively flat, thus funnelling easterly winds into high speed streams. Sail was shortened and then again and then again. A massive dump of rain came followed by flat calm as the grey predawn light illuminated our soggy condition. The final 30 miles were marked by constantly changing katabatic winds off the Calabrian mountains, before we anchored outside the underwhelming Porto Cetraro marina. Unable to raise the attention of marina staff for berthing we chose this option, only to spend the day in high winds up to 42 knots. Too much fun.