Intrepid Travels

There is not much shelter along the mainland coast south of Messina so we chose a tiny marina at Reggio di Calabria. There were two old Italian gents at the dockside waiting for us with mooring lines. We reversed in with the help of a nice French couple Philippe and Catherine in the boat next door. Unfortunately, due to some very inept line handling, our port engine propeller caught on one of the lazy lines stopping the engine. What followed was something I dreaded. We hit the rough concrete wharf and damaged the gelcoat. I was devastated. One of them asked me for a knife so that he could cut the line. When we eventually got tied up, he said that he would organise a diver in the morning to cut the rope free of our propeller. We decided that we didn’t want to stay any longer than was absolutely necessary so I donned my old wetsuit, snorkel and goggles. It took about 10 dives with a knife to cut away about a dozen turns of the thick mooring line around our port propeller shaft. Although I am normally reluctant to even touch the water in a marina, I only realised afterwards that I was swimming in an open sewer. After that we couldn’t wait to get out of the place, especially after the old marina gentleman Giuseppe, ex-taxi driver, fixer, and general scoundrel, arrived some hours later to sell cheese and wine at inflated prices. The good thing about an otherwise horrible day was that I found my spare glasses, thought to be lost since arriving in France – inside a flipper for safe keeping!
Philippe and Catherine were friendly and we found we were both heading for the Ionian Sea so we decided to set off early in convoy. They moved out of their berth just ahead of us and immediately snagged their propeller on one of their lazy lines, and, due to the cross wind, lost control of their boat. So they leaned against us while Philippe donned his wetsuit and freed his own propeller as I had done the night before. We set off on a southerly route with the winds being funnelled down the Messina Straits, giving us a fast run for a while. Then the wind died and we motored for many hours until hitting another squall up to about 40 kn just before arriving at Roccella Ionica on the south-east coast of Italy. A difficult harbour entrance due to silting up of the approaches.