Messina, Sicily

We arrived in Italy, at Messina in Sicily, at 8.00 pm last night, having come direct from Lakka on the Greek island of Paxos, a passage of about 240 miles in exactly 36 hours - pretty good going.

Before leaving we spent a lovely fortnight with family - Dag and Wendy and children for the whole two weeks and Turid and Keir and children for one of the weeks. Once they had returned home we spent a few days getting Hygeia ready for sea, and our original plan was to day-sail, coast-hopping along the southern Italian coast to Sicily. However, there are only three refuges along the whole of the foot of Italy, some of them apparently not very hospitable, so we eventually decided to sail overnight all the way to Roccella Ionica, more or less on the ball of the foot of Italy. This had the merit of avoiding Capo St Luca and Crotone, and of by-passing the Golfo di Squillace, which is renowned for extremely strong winds coming out of the blue. There were some doubts about Roccella, especially as far as depths in the approaches were concerned, but several people we had spoken to who had been there were confident we could enter.

So we left Lakka early on in morning the day before yesterday with a cloudless sky and no wind. Lakka is a gorgeous landlocked bay, usually full of boats, with about four metres of crystal-clear tourquoise water overlying a clean white sandy bottom - reminiscent of the Tobago Cays and some of the Pacific lagoons, so the boats look as though they are just hanging in the air, a beautiful sight.

The Ionian sea was unbelievably calm - not a breath of air and hardly even any catspaws of wind to ruffle the surface. But few signs of life: no fish, only the odd sea-bird, but curiously a number of butterflies appeared even when we were 90 miles from any land. We also had a visit from a finch of some sort who landed on the deck, saw a butterfly through the hatch, and just about had a nervous breakdown trying to peck it through the perspex! But our old friends the dolphins didn't let us down and we had four or five visits.

The next day conditions had changed a bit with a 12 knot wind springing up as we approched Roccella. The marina development is one of those white elephants paid for by the EU for which there is no obvious explanation - a marina miles from anywhere with 500 berths and all facilities, but difficult to enter and even now not up and running. The problem is that the designers never really considered the problem of access; the entrance is currently beig re-dredged from 0600 to 1800 every day, during which time there is normally no access, in an attempt to open things up. The pilot book gives precise details on the course to be followed to enter, but there are no markers of any sort to indicate the channel, and in the event it proved to be extremely hazardous, and we think we came within a hairsbreadth of losing Hygeia.

We had been anticipating a depth of about 3.5 metres (we draw 2.2) but as we got into the shallow water, the previously negligible onshore swell suddenly increased to a frightening metre or so and to our horror the echo sounder (which we had calibrated in Lakka and which we knew to be accurate) showed only 0.6 metres under our keel. At the last moment we decided to abandon the approach, and just managed to reverse back into the swell, needing all our 96 horsepower and a lot of black exhaust smoke to do it. There was a sobering reminder of what might have happened to us immediately ahead; a yacht of about 80 ft wrecked and breaking up on the beach dead ahead. So we beat a hasty retreat somewhat chastened and grateful to have got out of a really scary situation with no damage. How incongruous it would have been to have gone almost all the way round the world and then be wrecked on a benign looking beach so close to home. We're still shaking a bit!

So we decided to go on the remaining 70 miles to Messina in Sicily, we reckoned we could just make it before dark. (en route we passed a marina called Saline Ioniche - another elefanto blanco paid for by the EU; the massive marina sea-walls have been built, but nothing else, and the entrance has now silted up to such an extent that there is a bar 2 metres high completely blocking it. ( we have subsequently heard another explanation: the sand bar may not be an entirely natural phenomenon. Apparently the Rocella marina was built by a M*f** backed organisation, and when they didn't get the contract for Saline .........)

So we entered the Straits of Messina round about 6 pm, with the sun glistening on Etna smouldering in the distance, went past Reggio di Calabria (which also has a marina, but everyone describes it as frightful and even the normally reserved and polite pilot says it has the largest rats found anywhere) across the straits avoiding a few whirlpools and eddies (Scylla and charybdis are only 2 miles north of here) and finally made it to Messina Marina just as dusk was falling.

The Marina is in the centre of the city immediately next to the commercial dock. There are palm trees along the main street next to us, there's the endless hooting of the drivers in the city always in the background , and that slightly lavatorial smell that tells you that you are really in Italy. Heaven!

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