Quietly avoiding the storm

15 october

Today has been a quiet day riding out a storm inside the sailboat, moored at Marina Pignataro in Lipari Porto. (NOTE for mariners reading this blog: The marina itself is a bit out of town and fairly crowded with local boats, but they have ormegiattori (marina helpers) who come and meet you outside the port and show you the way, helping you to moor which you will do on a deadline, going aft to pier. The night stay cost us 25 euros per night including water and electricity but the showers were no longer in service for the season. A small minibus runs on the road up from the marina to take you into town for 1.5 euros.) We took shelter yesterday afternoon as they were announcing a storm … 50+ millimeters of rain, and winds reaching 32 knots (about 40 miles per hour) which would have been quite a bit to be holding on your anchor in some desolate bay. Turns out that after 24 hours holed up in the boat, battling major condensation and humidity (everything’s soooo wet L ), reading, sleeping and playing Scrabble, we find out that 122 millimeters of rain fell on the island and whole sides of cliffs slid down in a village nearby. We are SO GLAD we came to this marina and even though the night was rocky, we really felt protected.

As I’m writing this, we are listening to the Ave Maria, fisherman-style, on the onboard radio (it seems like the only channel we get)… “Ave Maria, Santa Madre del Dio, Madre sempre virgina, Regina dei martiri, Regina della pace, prega per noi, pescatori, Amen …”

The couple of days before that had been amazing. Tuesday we took a night sail to the island of Stromboli, essentially consisting of the volcano by the same name, the most easterly of the Aeolian Islands we are cruising. Stromboli is well known for its massive and recent eruptions, but to tourists, it is the island that spurts molten lava every night to those getting close enough to view it. An amazing sight: a perfect cone-island rising out of the Mediterranean, dark and ominous against the even darker sky, with a grey puff of smoke drifting out of it during the day, a subtle print against the blue sky, as if drawn with a crayon by a child. Once the sun sets, its north crater lets out eruptions of incandescent lava that glow in the night as they rise like rockets. At about 20h30 we are idling around a mile away, watching with amazement these natural “fireworks” feeling so blessed that Nature has allowed us to watch It in full display. A quiet night sail back will bring us back to Panarea Island, where we will pick up a mooring in Cala dei Zimmari close to midnight to spend a delightful and quiet night sleep.

The next day took us to Vulcano Island, where we anchored in a quiet yet very pittoresque little bay, surrounded by dramatic black volcanic cliffs, at the end of which there is a beach of black sand. Once the anchor was set in about 7 meters of water, successfully avoiding the other 6 or 7 boats already anchored, we hopped in the dinghy to explore and found ourselves on a funny island, very different from the rest – it has a Caribbean feel to it, almost. We decided to partake in Vulcano’s main attraction,

its sulphur mud baths, supposed to cure anything from respiratory ailments to rheumatism. How fun to wallow in lukewarm bubbly water and splatter yourself with hot grey mud gathered at the bottom of the pool! I do have to say that my skin felt ever so soft after though…. The ride back to the boat in the dinghy was beautiful, as we watched the gently lapping waves and the sun set glistening off the black sand of spiaggia nera.

After a fairly quiet night holding strong on our anchor, we were pleasantly surprised this morning when, while we were having coffee in the cockpit, a fisherman boat approached us to sell us some fish caught in the morning. A great amberjack ended up in our fridge for 15 euros, quite a good deal for 1 kilo of freshly caught fish I would think! So as we made our way to Pignataro after that to take cover, I will turn off this computer to go grill our fish.