We had a great downwind sail across Salerno Bay and pulled into the Agropoli Marina at 1630 that afternoon. We spent three days in Agropoli recharging our batteries after several months of “turbo touring” with our daughters, future son-in-law and wonderful friends, catching up on boat chores and bringing our neglected blog up to date.Agropoli is a charming port town set in a pastoral setting. Steep roads from the marina lead up to the town square with several blocks of pedestrian only streets perfect for strolling. From Agropoli we left Italy’s mainland and sailed overnight to Messina, Sicily departing on September 8 and arriving the next morning. We now could tell summer was ending and fall was in the air as the constant days of cloudless skies and high temps were departing. The weather was definitely becoming more unsettled and unpredictable and the temperatures had dropped just a bit. While the marina and marina staff was nice we found the town of Messina not so nice. No nearby cafes and not very well kept. We spent two days in Messina, one due to a weather delay and were glad to get underway on Friday, September 11. Our destination was Riposto, 32 nautical miles further down the Straits of Messina.
During the trip to Riposto we spotted Royal Caribbean’s Brilliance of the Seas, a cruise ship we were on for a family reunion cruise in 2006. Even more of a coincidence was the fact that at that very moment a friend of ours, Judie Tidwell and her daughter Amy, were on board. Jan hailed the ship on the VHF and was soon talking to the Captain asking him to send our greetings to Judie.
The Captain asked if he could trade places with us and we were definitely in agreement with the idea. The thought of room service, massages, and umbrella drinks by the pool seemed very tempting! Alas, the switch didn’t happen and we watched Brilliance motor past on her way to Greece. That afternoon we got an email from Judie saying she received our greetings.We pulled into the marina at 1330 and were treated with a beautiful view of Mount Etna from Lone Star’s bow. We spent our three days in Riposto tracking down an updated card for our chart plotter which included Greece and Turkey (since we were headed there we thought that might be a good idea) and getting the boat ready for a two night offshore crossing. Of course it couldn’t be all work and no play. On the day of our anniversary we took the train to Taormina, a picture postcard town high in the mountains overlooking the sea.
We toured the Greek amphitheatre, enjoyed a typical Sicilian lunch and capped it off with our last Italian Gelato. On Monday, September 14 after six weeks in Italy, we turned the boat due east and headed for Greece. We loved our time in Italy but it was 650nm to Turkey and we were anxious to get underway.The winds were very light so needless to say the iron genoa did the majority of the work. We saw no wind but thousands of stars at night and bits of trash floating by during the day.
The second day out we put time to good use and set up the downwind ballooner system. While the winds were so light it didn’t really help much we did accomplish our goal of retraining ourselves on how it worked. Thursday morning we motored in to the Zakinthos town harbor glad that we had made it uneventfully to Greece. It wasn’t long before Lone Star was rinsed off, we were officially cleared into Greece, we were showered and headed into town to explore our first Greek port.
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