Nick Stark continues his boozey and cruise(y) travels along Italy’s Mediterranean coast
After two delicious days in Palermo I taxied out to the small town of Cefalu where my friend Franz was waiting aboard his sailboat See Dream. Although Franz hails from Utah, he’s had the boat in the Med for 25 years and takes two months off to sail every summer because he’s a firm believer in a healthy work/life balance…
We weighed anchor about 3am Saturday, July 31st for a long journey to the small island of Ustica, the only habitable spot en route to Sardinia, which lay another 200 miles over the horizon. It was an uneventful motor sail to Ustica, which has just one small marina and one main town, a collection of restaurants, trinket shops and B&Bs clustered onto the small hillside overlooking the port. The place was charming enough in Italian/Mediterrean way, and we stayed for a couple of days, enjoying the local seafood but sweltering in the 95-degree heat, from which there seemed no escape. The complete lack of wind meant there was no point in continuing to sail, and our boat’s fuel supply was too low to motor all the way to Sardinia. There is a fuel dock in Ustica, but it was too shallow and narrow for our boat to maneuver alongside. So, like all good sailors, we waited out the weather.
To escape the heat we took plenty of dips in the sea and chatted to other sailors, including a charming couple from the Isle of Wight who were docked alongside us. But the highlight was renting scooters to travel round the island, which is the remnant of a volcano. The most interesting aspect of this was seeing the half dozen chintzy ‘lidos’ where concrete had been poured into the lava rock bay and chairs and sunshades laid out, to entice visitors to swim. There were no beaches to be seen anywhere, just a couple of very pebbly but sheltered coves set into the rock where we could lounge for an hour or two to beat the heat.
Come Monday we set off for Sardinia, a 200 mile, two-day journey with no land in sight. The first day was uneventful with decent wind, but overnight the weather turned stormy and we were treated to a lightning show (every sailor’s nightmare, in fact, because of the danger of the mast getting struck and the electrics getting fried), followed by sharp squalls, hard rain and large swells. The wind really turned up shortly after 4am, when I was on watch alone, but none of us got much sleep before conditions eased. Dawn came dreary, wet and lumpy, before giving way to tentative sunshine and soft breezes come lunchtime. We took the opportunity to make a tasty onboard lunch of salad and white wine and take a dip overboard in the middle of the ocean. Having nothing but miles of sea in every direction and countless hundreds of feet below was a novel and thrilling experience for me.
By the time we reached Butoni Bay on Sardinia’s east coast about 10.30pm, were were all ready for a very long snooze. Fortunately there was not a breath of wind and we enjoyed a comfortable night in a deserted anchorage with nothing but the distant lap of water on ivory colored sand and the view of pine dotted hillsides to keep us company.
On Wednesday we made the short hop up to the Gulf of Aranci, where we needed to stay another two nights due to too much wind! This is very much the story of sailing in the Med, either not enough or far too much. Motoring into 30 knot winds on the nose is nobody’s idea of fun, especially when you are anchored in a sheltered, emerald-watered bay with a charming Italian resort within a two minute dinghy ride. At time of writing I’m holed up in the Hotel Castello, a modest little family hotel right on the having spent the previous evening exploring the local town and enjoying a divine Pizza Sardo (marinara, mozzarella, basil and salsicche, since you ask) and some of the local beer. A word about the food here….it’s news to nobody just how good you can eat in Italy at a reasonable price, but one treat I’ve never seen before which has become part of my daily diet is the breakfast croissant with warm pistachio crème…..that with a bracing cappuccino has started every day in the most divine way possible.
Two excellent local spots also helped me dispense with my holiday funds: I had a superb lunch of risotto con gambero rosso carpaccio (the famous local red shrimp) at Lo Scorfano Allegro, located right on the beach, where not even the abundance of budgie smugglers in plain view could spoil my appetite. I later decamped to the Gintoneria cocktail bar (very famous in yachtie circles, apparently) for one of the biggest selection of gin I’ve ever seen. And the cocktails matched the selection.
As I write this the day is sunny and bright but the Mediterranean wind is absolutely howling down mountain’s that fringe the bay’s north and ease side. But if the forecast is right this will ease overnight, allowing us tomorrow to set sail for the northern tip of Sardinia, and from there across to Minorca, another two-day passage with no land in sight. Let’s hope the weather and wind gods will smile upon us.
