Freya & Us

One of the great things about sailing this early in the season is the wind, often too much and unpredictable, but great sailing. But not this year, we've now done 6 passages of between 4 and 9 hours and have only been able to turn the engine off for 2 hours!

When we arrived in Cetrara, Paul went off to check us in, sometimes this is very quick other times it takes a little longer. When he got to the office a party of school children were being shown around and so he wasn't seen for around 20 minutes. I was obviously beginning to think this was one of the slower check-ins. We needed some new fuel filters and an antibacterial additive to kill the diesel bug, so after the check-in was completed (very quickly) Paul asked where he could get some. Very helpfully, the marina manager rang round a few places and a few minutes later Paul was waiting in the car park for a guy from the local chandlers who "would be there in five minutes". Thirty minutes later he turns up, but it turns out that he can't help. Meanwhile Lorraine has given Cetrara the record for longest check-in time, previously held by Smir in Morocco. While Paul was waiting for the chandler, he got talking to Mimo, who had lived in Cambridge for 25 years and spoke good English. As the chandler couldn't help, Mimo made Paul "an offer he couldn't refuse", bundled him into his car and spent the next hour driving him around the back and beyond to find the bits. Once it became clear that it wasn't going to be quick, Paul borrowed his phone to call me, just before I was about to start searching the water in case he had fallen off the pontoons. Nearly two hours after leaving the boat, Paul returned with the check-in complete and the filters, exhausted and overwhelmed by the kindness of the people in Cetraro.

Cetraro, is again, in a lovely setting surrounded by green hills and cliffs. Unfortunately, we never made it to town! The marina is a few kilometres outside and we set off to the supermarket (Lidl, very exciting - sad but true!) which we thought was 70m away but turned out to be 700m along the road. By the time we did that we couldn't face the same walk again but further.

Yet another wind free day for our 50 mile trip to Tropea. We left with wind but before we could get the sails set we were surrounded by sea mist and spent the rest of the trip motor sailing in our own big bubble. It would've been quite boring if not for the pod of dolphins which were clearly following us and kept coming to entertain. We had breaching quite close by, surfing in our bow wave and lots of teasing at a distance - just love seeing the Dolphins and our first of the year. The only other event on passage was a momentary panic when there was a jolt, followed by a change in the engine revs and then slowing down. We thought we'd managed to collect something around the prop but a quick burst of reverse cleared it - phew, the water is still way to cold for a swim!

Tropea is another lovely old town in a beautiful setting above the marina - 200 steps above! But it was worth it and we had a lovely wander around the winding streets and finding the lovely views followed by dinner before the 200 steps back down.

We left early afternoon the next day (would've been a bit earlier but we had to wait on the fuel pontoon for an hour!) for yet another motor sail to Vulcano via Stromboli. We've used about 20% of the diesel we used for the whole of last year in 2 weeks (!) but we can't afford to wait for the wind and meet our deadline in Greece for a wedding. The plan was to arrive in Stromboli at sunset and watch the show as it exploded and glowed red in the night. It certainly is a very active picture book volcano and we could see the steam from the crater 10 miles before we arrived. But very (very, very) disappointingly no pyroclastic show for us that night. We motored on to Vulcano arriving just after midnight and anchored in the bay - quite scary in the dark. This morning we can see the volcano on Vulcano steaming above us and smell the sulphur.......


Click here for the interactive map of our travels