8th April 2006 - Messina (Italy) towards Patras (Greece)

Posted at 11:44 AM, Saturday, April 8, 2006

We departed Marina Porto Rosa at 1030 after topping up all tanks.  As you can see from Gerry's directions below - Mt Etna can be seen in the mountains behind the marina.  It's still smoking from an eruption that deposited all that snow-like ash some weeks back.

Weather is again fine, winds N'ly at 10 - 15 knots.  Almost ideal for the first part of this leg over to Messina Straights and down into the Ionian Sea.  I'll keep the blog updated all the time we are in internet range but will lose that connection 30 miles out from Italy and not get it back until we approach Greece.  We expect to arrive below the island of Cephlonia (anyone else love Captain Corelli's?) by Tuesday and clear into Greece at Patras on the mainland.  Despite EU Commission protests, Greek govt still requires all cruisers to secure a Cruising Permit on entry.  Not sure how long that may take, but suspect Greek official time is an extended version of Spanish official time - so we won't be holding our breaths. 

Its now 1630 and we're about half way down the straights.  Not a whirlpool in sight. Suns still warm but the wind now at our backs has gone a bit chilly.  The transit is truly an experience and compared with the lack of traffic we've seen before today - its a really busy piece of water.  The south going tide is adding a knot to our boatspeed as we glide southward and dodge the large ferries shuttling the few miles back and forth (usually a minimum of 5 on the move at any one time), plus large numbers of small row boats fishing, plus merchant vessels either coming up to the Tyrrhenian or going down to the Ionian sea at a great rate of knots.

JOHN