Italy Voyage 2021 – From Poros to Reggio

From Poros to Reggio

We left early in the morning to sail against the south wind blowing, during the next day on our southern course along the east coast of the Peloponnese. Starting from the marina, we decided not to swim there but half a mile past the strait on anchor, close to the fortified island. After a nice swim, we had a good breakfast to load on energy for a very long day ahead. We didn’t know how far we would go, as this depended on the local wind conditions ahead, not predicted in detail. We sailed the Hydra strait and north of Soils island, protected from the big waves coming from the south. The weather was so rough between Hydra and Dokos that I thought we would finish the day early in the port of Troizinia. But as we emerged on the west side of Dokos, the conditions were much better and we decided to continue. With little wind, we managed to reach Kyparissi bay, which gave us very good shelter for the night on anchor.

Wednesday morning we started early, after inspecting the little dock close to the isolated church on the coast, because we saw an old sailboat docked there for the night, and we wanted to verify the depth for us to anchor there in the future. Then we started south again with very little wind, which increased gradually during the day, turning to 4-5 Beaufort. Just ideal to turn around the scary Kavo (cape) Maleas, notorious for its ferocity in traditional island music. It was dark when we finally turned west, north of the island of Kythira towards our anchor destination, Gerolimena, at the tip of Mani.

We sailed all night with gentle wind and we arrived at 7 am, ready for our Zoom conference at 11.00. This gave enough time to install the (until then packaged) wind turbine that would serve our electricity needs during the long sailing nights we were anticipating. All went very well and by 12.30 we were sailing again westward towards Pylos where we would be able to have the COVID-19 tests needed before entry to Italy. The tailwind was exactly what we needed and the “difficult” passage around the Peloponnese that we expected, turned into the “ideal cruise” we experienced. However, we were badly received at the entrance of the bay of Navarino by the powerful katabatic winds, coming from the mountain guarding the south side of the entrance and shooting the winds at us. At a certain point, the winds managed to immobilise our boat, hitting it from the side, and a 30 second use of the engine was the only thing that liberated us to continue towards the port. We anchored at 3 am just outside the port to be ready to dock at the crack of dawn for food provisions, water, LED bulbs for the navigation lights and COVID tests. We had found out that our batteries were drained too fast at night, and we were systematically eliminating all the excess energy consumers, of which the navigation bulbs were the first suspect. Being the old filament type and powerful to be visible from many miles away you can cook an egg on each of them. All preparations finished by 12.30, and we went through the narrow north passage, out to the Ionian sea at 13.30 and started counting miles and time on our way to Reggio.

Friday proved to be a very fast sailing day. Pushed by southern winds that slowly turned east we covered the first 75 miles in the first 12 hours. We thought, if this continued, we would finish the passage to the Sicily Strait, the mythological “Schyla and Charybdis”, in only two days. Unfortunately, the tail winds we had later were too weak, and we ended up consuming three days as we had conservatively budgeted originally. We arrived in the port of Reggio on Monday at 13.00, refueled to dock for free. We made a long walk to the (not so close) supermarket, to stock up on provisions for our long passage to La Spezia, predicted non-stop with favorable winds for four days.

Stromboli and Capri

The “Corrente dello Strato” was against us in the afternoon, changing at 19.00. Thus we left the port just before dusk, and we maneuvered the “Strato”, alias “Schyla and Charybdis”, mostly in the dark, with tailwinds varying between 6 and 3 Beaufort. For any one who has not seen this channel, you have to organise travelling through it at least once in day time and once in the night. Kay and Ernst were transfixed by the beauty of the night view of the Calabria and Sicily coasts, while I was steering carefully between the channel navigation lines of the ferries crossing the speed passenger boats, and the other boats moving north south. Fantastic experience. I regret I did not have the time nor the high quality camera needed to photograph the light pattern show.

We left the (still named) Schyla village to our right, and started on the open Tyrenian sea towards Stromboli and the Aeolian Islands. As usual, the sea just north of Sicily was impossible to sail, the wind always in the tail but continuously changing directions and speed. After an hour and a half trying to sail, I decided to put the engine on and the autopilot in charge and set the good example by going into my sleeping bag in the cockpit.  After an hour the wind became stable, and the sails took over continuously for the whole day, so far. We expect not to use the engine for the next three days i.e. 420 miles. Are you listening, Aeolos? Again, I was missing a good camera to film at night the hot reg gases that Stromboli was charmingly ejecting for us, when we were close. This is another show not to miss in one’s life.

From captain Loucas notes // Italy Voyage, November 2021