The Catamaran Adventures of Noel and Ceu

Adventures in Reggio di Calabria

Current Location: Reggio di Calabria, Italy
Current Position: 38 8.19 N 015 39.27 E Click to view map.
Distance sailed since last post: 26 nautical miles. View the map of our voyage track here

Taormina is beautiful. Perched up on the mountain, it is all quaint narrow streets, beautiful venetian balconies and, of course, dozens of churches. We spent a lovely day climbing up the mountain to the castle and to Castelmola, the town above Taormina. We will get photos up as soon as we can.

Ok, so today we left lovely Taormina and headed in a flat calm to Reggio di Calabria, to stage for the Messina Strait on Thursday.

We get there about 1500 hours, and hold back to let the two ferries go in first. Then we turn into the little yacht harbour.

A young man comes out on his bike to help us. Well, the usual story. 14kts of cross wind and we are supposed to do that Med Moor thing again. We go in forwards and toss him the windward bowline. He ties it up. But now we are drifting to leeward, and the port bow is threatening the concrete. We put on some reverse port engine while Ceu walks the lazy line to the starboard (windward) quarter. We tie it up nice and tight. But what use is that? The boat still sags off downwind. We tie up the port quarter, but still we sag. We tie up the port bow, but that doesn’t help, as it is slack anyway. So here we are, starboard bow line tight. Stern lines tight. Boat at about 30 deg off perpendicular, with the port bow still threatening the concrete.

Bright idea! Another line from starboard stern diagonally across to the dock. It uses up the whole slot next to us, but how else do we keep the boat straight? Beats me.

Finally we jump ashore by means of a nice plank that the marinero passes us. We go to the office to settle up.

Now, it is LOW season. But still they want 100 euros a night!?  And the place is a dump. Don’t be thinking about classy marinas surrounded by cute cafes, bistros and designer stores. Here it is just some concrete and cheap apartment blocks backed against a railway line. 2km walk to town. Very different from beautiful Taormina yesterday!

And they want 100 euros? In their dreams. They drop down to 80 but that is still way too much. And this is supposed to be charge band 3, as opposed to band 5 in Messina across the water.

So we leave. Motor around the corner and drop anchor in 23m on sand, just off the beach. Not too bouncy and not much wind expected. Should do for the night. At least we have some privacy here 🙂

But it seems our internet has expired. At present we are connected through someone’s free wifi somewhere. So the morning calls for a paddle ashore in the kayak, laptop in dry bag, to do some desperately needed shopping (as we were too busy  being tourists yestserday) and to get the internet working again.

The aim is to transit the Strait on Thursday when the west wind settles down. Will keep you informed!

 

 

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