Nothing to see here. Entering the Messina Straits

12th September
Having sailed around the UK we've been through some of the worst tidal gates in the world on our travels. Up the sound of Jura past Corryvreckan and up through Luing doing nearly 12kts. The entrance to Stromness can get pretty exciting too, I've seen standing waves there though luckily it wasn't so bad when we went through. Going north up the Irish Sea to Rathlin took some calculations, as did leaving Weymouth to pass Portland Bill. Even the entrance to Culatra in the Algarve gave us some tidal swirls and that barely gets a mention in the pilot book.

So we were a little nervous about the Messina Straits given the writeup in the pilot book and that we were passing through only a day after spring tides, but when we got there it was all a bit of an anti climax. Perhaps Charybdis was sleeping today in the hot, still weather. That is the name of the whirlpool through which we had to pass on the Sicilian side of the straits. We even had nearly a knot of tide against us for most of the way south which we didn't understand at all. It has been a while since our last tide calculation so we both worked out when the tide turned south separately and our working out agreed: 4 hours and 30 minutes after HW Gibraltar the south going tide is supposed to start. We'd even slowed down during the night to make sure we arrived after the tide had supposedly turned south so we were pretty grumpy at having wasted more diesel than necessary. Oh yes, the wind had died in the early morning too and then picked up from the south so we only managed a few hours of sailing. Double grump.


Swordfish boat with the lookout tower and the long platform sticking out front from which to capture the fish. They look for the fish napping on the surface in the sunshine


Up on the lookout of the swordfish boat

On down the straits, enjoying the anctics of the swordfish boats as they darted about. We didn't have to worry about any ferries either as there was plenty of time between their crossings for us to pass. The biggest annoyance was from a pilot boat that chose to pass right in front of us then do a big loop up our side.

The Sicilian scenery once past Messina was lovely; hills rising straight out of the sea with villages perched on their tops. It seemed like hours before we arrived at Taormina to find only a couple of other boats here. Hmmm where was everyone? A few more boats arrived but by then we'd realised why there weren't so many anchored here - the swell. We reckon it must be from the wake of the big ships going up and down the straits as it would be calm then a minute or so of vigorous rolling from side to side. A few minutes calm, vigorous rolly rolly. And so on. Oh well I was so tired after our overnighter I slept like a log, though poor Colin didn't get such a good night.