Friday 15 May 2015 - Porto dell' Etna, Riposto, Sicily

I did not sleep well.  I was attacked all night by mosquitoes.  I could hear them buzz and dive bomb at me continuously.  I am covered in bites.  That is after putting on repellent.  I shall have to buy something different.  Despite the bad night, we get up really early as planned and have a meagre breakfast.  The weather is very nice.  Just a bit of light cloud.  Richard says the forecast is for 30C!  So we manage to slip our mooring by 8:00am and we are off, but not very fast.  The water is like glass and there is virtually no wind.  We put the mainsail up, but there is no purpose trying to sail especially as we have over 40 miles to go.  So the engine is on and we assume will be for the whole day.  After about 3 hours I suddenly notice that the wind is building.  Again within minutes is goes from nothing to a force 4.  So we hurriedly put up the genoa and off we go.  It does not take long for the wind to built to a force 5, gusting 6.  But it is on the beam and we are going a bomb.  Richard is really pleased.  The only problem is, I am cold!  The wind is giving me goose bumps and I have to put a long sleeved tee shirt on.  So much for a scorching hot day!

We continue to sail doing 6-7 knots for several hours until we are about 4 or 5 miles from our destination when the strangest thing happens.  First the wind just dies away.  Then the sea flattens out to glass and then the wind goes on the nose!  All within about 10 minutes.  So we have to finish the trip on engine.  But it was a good sail.

So at about 3:30pm we start in to Porto dell’ Etna in Riposto.  We are directed to a berth as usual.  All seems fine, except we cannot fit the passarelle properly.  You may remember my near catastrophe with the passerelle last year in Amalfi, when it flipped up leaving me hanging over the water by the lines which hold it up.  Well, when we try the thing here it begins to do the same thing.  After much fiddling about we decide that it is a case of the pontoon being too low for the way it is rigged.  So instead of securing the boat end into the hole in the deck, we have to leave is loose on the deck secured by ropes to the binnacle.  That way it can’t flip out of the hole and go vertical as it did before.  Anyway we have been up and down on it a few times and it is OK.

Richard books us in to the marina.  All seems fine except that the weather is definitely turning for the worse.  The sky is now almost completely overcast and the barometer has fallen 12 points in the last 24 hours.  We get a weather report from the office and it shows rain coming in.  The marina staff say that the rain will be local and we should be able to avoid it by sailing east.  It is not due to come in here until Sunday evening.  So the plan is to set off from Sicily at the crack of dawn on Sunday and hopefully make it to Calabria in daylight and without rain.  But we will have to keep an eye on the weather and that might make us change our plans.

We use the very good facilities here and after our shower we have a walk into town.  It is a nice old town, and not at all touristy.  There is an old market hall where we hope to be able to buy fruit and veg tomorrow.  But I have been cooking on board for days, so I am due a dinner out tomorrow.  We find a pharmacy in town and buy some different mosquito repellent.  We are unwilling to use deet.  It is terrible stuff and we really save that for malarial areas, but nothing else seems to have been effective.  We will see if the new stuff works.

As you might have guessed from the name of the marina, Riposto sits right under Mt Etna.  We are told that the mountain is particularly active at the moment and gives a great show after dark.  So with the night falling we watch the mountain.  Yes, it is spectacular.  There is a huge red lava flow zig-zagging across the whole mountain, perhaps a mile long.  Richard has tried to get a photo, but as with Stromboli last year, it is poor because you really need a tripod and a long exposure.  

The view would be idyllic if it weren’t for the fact that some boat across the harbour is playing disco music so loud that we cannot hear ourselves think!  We hope they will stop soon.  We both need the sleep!