Sicily Again
02 May 2018 | Risan, Montenegro
Joni
In Risan, we went to see old Roman mosaics from the second century AD. It was a museum, and the mosaics used to be floors in a Roman house. One was checkered, and others were patterns and pictures. The most elaborate was a portrait of Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep. We went shopping, then sailed to Kotor. By the time we got there it was evening and a nice temperature. There was an old walled town that we walked around, surrounded by a moat. The next day, Mom and I went to a vegetable market. It was big, and everything there looked good. We even found cherries, which I was really excited about. The Montenegrins are very nice. They kept making us sample everything and were giving us samples faster than I could eat them. Then we walked up an old stone wall to the top of a hill. Two huge cruise ships had docked that morning, so it was quite crowded. We were planning to start heading out of the Mediterranean the next day, so we rented a car and drove to the top of the mountain that Montenegro (black mountain) is named after. It was 1,600 m high, and we parked the car near the top and walked the rest of the way. At the very top was a mausoleum for a Montenegrin hero. He was a poet and was buried there under a large marble statue of himself and an eagle. The ceiling of that room was made of gold. The view from the top was amazing. We couldn't even tell how high we were because there were smaller mountains all around and we couldn't see the ocean. There was a small patch of snow at the top that we were excited about. Jonas had a snowball fight with Dad and hit him in the stomach and head with a snowball.
The next morning, we sailed to Tivat and stocked up on fuel, then headed for Italy. We did a three day passage, although we could have stopped earlier. We wanted to get as far as we could towards Gibraltar before the weather turned. The first and second days were calm, and I spent most of them on the foredeck. It was really, really, really hot. That night it was rougher, and we were going upwind through thirty knots. When we go upwind, the bow comes down with a big crash on the waves and it is very jerky. It's not so bad in the aft or middle part of the boat, but me and Jonas's cabin is at the bow. I was up most of the night because Blue Hour was slamming into the waves. On the big ones I actually got lifted out of bed. The next day it calmed down, but that was the hottest day yet. Jonas and I got so hot that we took out the hose and sprayed each other on the foredeck. That night, we sailed through the Straits of Messina, which is a narrow passage between mainland Italy and Sicily. Odysseus sailed there in Greek Mythology. In the story, two monsters lived on either side of the Straits. One was Charybdis, a giant whirlpool that sucked in everything nearby, then spat it out. Charybdis pushed sailors towards the other monster, Scylla. Scylla lived in a cave and snatched sailors off the decks of their ships and ate them. Luckily, we didn't see either. After we had passed through the Straights, we decided that the better place to be in the upcoming wind was in the middle of the Straights, Messina. We sailed back to Messina and docked there. It was late but Mom, Jonas, and I took Sirius for a walk. He was really hyper and needed to run around, but Messina is a city and there's nowhere that he can do that.
Today, the Sirocco is blowing, which is a strong wind that blows from the south and brings the African sand. In a squall this morning, it blew forty knots. Today is Dad's birthday, so Dad, Jonas, Sirius, and I went and bought breakfast at a bakery. Sirius was hyper and he still is. The Greeks have nice small towns and the Italians have nice big ones. There's a large square and a statue, and nice buildings. I gave Dad two poems that Sirius wrote and I dictated. Jonas gave Dad a book of charts that he made. After school, we'll explore Messina some more.
Mosaic of Hypnos, Greek god of sleep