Easy Strait

Written by Pieter Jan on Oct 19, 2019 — 2 min read

From: Bova Marina, Italy
To: Archi, Italy

Yesterday we did some swimming and provisioning. Not much to report. The grib(a small file that contains weather predictions) files predicted more wind for today, but that wind did not really materialize. We left anyway on a glassy sea. Our diesel tanks had only one-fifth left, so we couldn’t spend a lot of time motoring. With the gennaker(a large light sail that is used when the wind comes _from the side_ of your boat) up, Vite & Rêves was able to coax 2 knots of boat speed out of 3 knots of wind.

Reading together on the trampolines
Reading together on the trampolines

We passed a factory with a huge chimney. Someone was compensating — possibly for the mountains behind the factory — when they designed this.

A huge chimney
A huge chimney

Cape Riace looked like something out of a Märklin diorama.

Where's that model train?
Where's that model train?

When we entered the strait of Messina, I changed the gennaker for the spinnaker(a large light sail that is used when the wind comes _from behind_ your boat). Very light puffs of air pushed us slowly forward. Around sunset, the wind increased gradually until the perfect 10 knots. Tall ship ‘Sea Cloud’ passed us on engine. Too bad, the wind came from the perfect direction for such a ship.

Sea Cloud at sunset
Sea Cloud at sunset
A plethora of purples
A plethora of purples

After dark, we found diesel in the harbor of Reggio Calabria. We asked how much it would cost to stay a night. € 60. This is something that shocked me about Italy, compared to Greece. In Greece, staying in a harbor is usually cheap (around €10), and most of the time it’s even free. In Italy, I thought the great marina of Santa Maria Di Leuca was expensive (€ 19 per night). But it’s becoming more expensive the more westward we go.

Luckily, anchoring out is free and we both prefer it to docking in a marina. We found a quiet, semi-protected bay that would serve us nicely through the night.