Tropea to Riposto 13-7-2007 to 16-7-2007

Lady Drake
Peter Drake
Mon 16 Jul 2007 12:52

Tropea to Riposto 13-7-2007 to 16-7-2007

 

Destination: 37:43.843N 15:12.550E – Distance Covered: 72nm.

 

Dear Blog,

 

Finally I have made it to Sicily, but not without issues.

 

I departed Tropea on Friday 13/7 and after waiting ages for a large cruiser to fill up while Lady Drake was bobbing around the fuel pontoon I got under way towards Sicily.   The wind was on the nose for the first part and after covering a good few miles tacking I decided to motor into the wind.  After about 30 minutes of motoring there was an alarm to warn me that the engine was overheating, o back to sailing while I was trying to fix the engine. 

After not much luck in fixing the engine I made the decision to continue under sail and head south to Sicily.   The Messina straight was quite interesting with no motor. This is the stretch of water between the mainland and Sicily and leads into the Ionian ocean.  Because the Ionian is more Salty than the Tyrrhenian there are some pretty interesting conditions as the tide flows either way depending on the status of high water at Gibralter.   When I went though the straight the tide was against me, yet there was initially and undertow that carried me in the right direction, this soon changed and at one stage I was sailing at 5 knots and making only 0.8 knots headway.

 

For most of the Messina straight I had good sailing conditions and was eventually on a dead run and now a favourable tide which I helped make good progress until the sun went down.  Unfortunately the wind soon dropped after sunset to nothing and I drifted the last few miles in 4-5 hours.  I arrived in an anchorage at a place called Taormina and had to drifted around in the dark trying to make out where was anchorage and where was rocks,  I suddenly found myself amongst many other sailing boats at anchor so dropped the hook at about 02:00 and was soon sleeping in my bunk.

 

The next day I set sail in the direction of Catania where it seemed to be a good place to get my engine looked at.  I only nade about 8 nm because the wind died so I limped into the next marina called Reposto.  Actually Reposto turned out to be a great little traditional town not yet ruined by the tourist industry, I have had a great meal out and cooked some of the fresh fish readily available at the street side market stands. 

 

Currently I am waiting for the engineer to come and look at my engine and will decide then if to continue to Greece.  If spare parts are required I am told it could take 3 days.

 

That’s all for now folks.