Our first over night passage – two nights actually – and no one died. And, hello Sicily!

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Zakinthos has a very mixed reputation. On the one hand it’s known for its frat boy atmosphere, loud parties until all hours of the night and drunken tourists living their vacation lives out loud. It’s also home to some of the most dramatic and beautiful cliff formations and beaches in Greece, and attracts swarms of motor and sailing yachts, private and chartered. We probably wouldn’t have stopped in Zakinthos, but once we realized we had to give up on Malta because of that extra week in Kalamata, we decided to make Zakinthos our jumping off point to Syracusa, Sicily.

After a night at anchor on the southeast coast with other yachts, day boats, parasail boats, jetskis and dinghies packing the real estate, we moved to the town quay in Zanthe, the largest town on the island. Zanthe was a revelation. Beautiful architecture, a long and varied shopping walkway, and very good restaurants. Not the pit we’d heard it was at all! One evening we were eating at a restaurant on a sidewalk when we realized our table was swaying, the earth shaking underneath us, and though our dining neighbors noticed it and we all laughed nervously, the hordes of people walking by appeared not to feel it at all. Apparently, the scene is that good.

We provisioned, Peter attended to some last-minute maintenance issues, I made mushroom lasagna for our dinners on passage. We checked out of Greece for the last time two mornings later and sailed around the southern coast and through the Zakinthos marine reserve to a gorgeous beach on the west coast. We should have stopped earlier, somewhere – anywhere – on the southern coast, because contrary to most of our experience to date, PredictWind was actually right: strong westerly wind and big swell. So we spent the night rolling in our bed and not sleeping much, but our anchor held well and there was no drama.

Sailing overnight is ok, especially when there are no other ships coming or going along our path, and the wind remains consistent for the first 36 of the 48 hours of the passage. We sailed with about 15 knots of the beam and made good time until the wind shifted too far in front of us, and we had to add the engines and take down the main. We did three-hour watches, and after dark whoever was off watch slept in the cockpit to be available if needed by whoever was on.  My night watches, from 22:00-01:00 and 04:00-07:00, were actually lovely. The night sky was glorious with stars, the Milky Way stretching overhead like a halo on the earth. I love my SkyView app and used it a LOT those nights – I tend not to remember too many constellations, but I added Sagittarius to my short list. The early morning watch was that magic time when the sky lightens so gradually that you’re surprised by sunrise even though you’ve been watching it come for an hour or more. In the early morning before first light of the second day, when we were about 20 NM out of Syracusa, I suddenly realized I was seeing fire in the far distance: black night and bursts of fire… Etna!

Above: Etna from the helm, and Etna, I swear!

And then just a few hours later we dropped anchor in the harbor at Syracusa. First overnight passage: check.

First, we slept. Then we tried to check in to Italy at the Guardia Costiera. No luck: come back after lunch. We were definitely in Italy! Lunch was pasta, lovely fresh pasta. Then we did a tour of the city in a little electric tuktuk, enjoying the sites without having to walk in the 90-degree heat to see them. We checked in after that, then went back to the boat and… slept.

After a couple of days in Syracusa we made our way north to Taormina, a justly famous old city perched on the sides of a cliff above the large harbor town of Naxos (not the Cyclades Naxos, but the Sicilian Naxos. Also a very popular place with the tourists!) Taormina is both a dense town of restaurants, shops, and tourist attractions and, another bus ride above, a mountaintop castle known as Castelmola, which is much smaller but also dense with restaurants, shops and tourist attractions. And tourists. They’re both beautiful. We walked through Taormina the first evening and chose a restaurant that had an open table (first and only criterion when hungry), then spent the rest of the evening sitting in the sultry air drinking wine and eating delicious food. Ahhhhhh, Italy. Our hike through Castelmola the next morning was as enjoyable but for the wonderful views and thrilling/terrifying bus ride instead of the food. We did end up back in Taormina for lunch at The Pasta Museum – though not technically a museum, its food was worthy of one.

I particularly like things painted or tiled onto walls – Taormina had some beauties!

Eventually we’d had enough of the crowds on the mountain and in the anchorage, and we decided it was time to go north through the Messina Strait. This is the strait that separates the toe of Italy’s boot from the island of Sicily, and the Ionian Sea from the Tyrrhenian Sea north of the island. Being relatively narrow already gives it chaotic currents but add the fact that the Tyrrhenian Sea is higher than the Ionian, and you’ve got some powerful forces at work. For part of our journey, we were fighting current, but as we got closer the tide literally turned, and we were zipping along like an overpowered day boat. Most people wait for a slack tide or some other positive juju for the traverse, but we just kept clear of the shipping lanes and dropped our anchor just above the narrowest part once we were through.

There was a lot of ship traffic, tankers and ferries mostly, but in addition to the commuters there were at least half a dozen swordfish boats out plying the waters at any given time. They seem to have individual territories, and zigzag through them, two spotters in the crow’s nest above and one harpoon man out on the end of the extended bowsprit off the front of the boat. I stopped eating swordfish years ago when the Monterey Bay aquarium’s list of endangered fish first came to my attention and swordfish were on the top. But 90% of the restaurants we’d eaten in since we’d arrived in Sicily offered swordfish on their menus and many, many people eat it. It was distressing to learn that swordfish pairs come to the Strait to spawn, and the female, which is larger, is usually spotted and harpooned first. But since the male stays with her, he is usually the next victim. It’s barbaric. But that’s just me. I can’t abide eating octopus either, and am having an increasingly hard time with pigs. Breaks my heart and the latter robs my taste buds, but it just feels wrong.

Since our next destination was the Aeolian Islands, we continued west along the northern coast of Sicily to Milazza, and spent an evening walking the picturesque streets, eating good food and even better gelato, and reading up on the Aeolians. Vulcano is the southernmost of the main cluster of islands, then Lipari and Salina. Panarea and Stromboli are a little further east, and there are two smaller, less habited ones to the west of Lipari and Salina. We knew we wanted to hike to the crater on Vulcano and headed there first.

The Aeolians are a very popular tourist and boating destination. Very, very popular. Vulcano’s main east anchorage is a gorgeous thing, and in addition to the usual turquoise water there was a large section of the surf off the black beach where hot sulfuric waters pump out of the heart of the earth and mix with the sea slapping in. Having heard it could be challenging to anchor there we had emailed one of the two mooring fields in the anchorage earlier in the day to request a mooring ball. When we arrived around noon and saw all the empty balls, we first assumed mooring wasn’t going to be an issue. We called to follow up on our request and were told that if we didn’t already have a reservation we were very much out of luck. That person called the other field for us and confirmed they didn’t have room either. Looking around more closely we thought we spotted a space across the anchorage that could work and headed over. As we were positioning to drop the hook, another man, from his perch on a nearby dock, called out that the space we were coveting was being held for a 60’ motor yacht arriving later. We must have expressed some frustration, because he then pointed to two boats over in front of the hot springs section of the beach and explained that we could actually sneak between and in front of them and anchor in what he described as the best spot in the whole place. So we did. And it was. I have to point out though that by the next morning there were two more boats in front of us, and several more tucked in around our other sides. Very Lakka-esque, particularly the German boat on our port whose crew might as well have had their dinner in our cockpit instead of their own.

After all the settling in we swam to the beach and walked across the isthmus to the west beach for a huge lunch at a small, very highly rated restaurant there. It lived up to expectations, but next time I’ll be clearer that when the owner recommends the parmigiana, I will try it as the main course alone, and not as a primi. We definitely didn’t need the secondi after that! We waddled down the beach and around into town again, noting the supermarket and coffee shops and scoped the trailhead and the one potential spot for tying up the dinghy when we came in early the next morning to hike the Gran Cratere.

It took about two hours to reach the tippy top of the crater edge. The first hour plus is slogging through an ashy sand mix which then transforms into pitted, badly eroded, volcanic boulders for the last real ascent. From there it’s a quick climb to the rim of the crater, and leisurely walk around the rim to the highest point. We’d left early and hadn’t had much sun until we’d gotten to the rim, so we were feeling good. We spent a while wandering around the summit, taking photos, cheerfully flipping off the (illegal) drone controlled by a gaggle of giggling adolescent boys, and marveling at the views of Vulcano below us and the other Aeolians scattered like dice out in the sea around us. As the sun rose higher and the heat really kicked in, we started down the mountain, now marveling at the number of people who were just making their way up. It’s cliché by now to point out the instagrammers who set out on adventures like these in flip flops with a tiny bottle of water, and who arrive at the trailhead within minutes of its daily 10 am closing due to extreme heat. But the 92-year-old crabby granny in me can’t help thinking, “they are just ASKING for trouble.” Actually, what she really thinks is, “Morons.”

Vulcano was also where we saw our first examples of the Sicilian Moors head vases with nopales forming the tips of their crowns and not just festooning their shoulders and necks. (Prickly pear cactus is a botanical mascot of Sicily – it’s everywhere. And yes, Peter now owns swimming trunks with a gorgeous prickly pear pattern, and our cockpit table is decked with a prickly pear tablecloth. The resonance with the US desert southwest is just too tempting.)

Above: not the ones in Vulcano, these have plain crown tips. We liked them though.

Before arriving in Sicily we’d been unaware of the Shakespeare-esque legends of the Moors head vases, which are variously depicted as a man with a turban and woman with a crown, or both a man and woman with crowns. I learned of a couple of them, but there are certainly more. Both are set in Palermo in the time of Moorish rule (about the 11^th century).

1. Noble girl and Moorish boy fall in love, Noble girl’s parents discover them and behead them for their disgrace. Righteous parents turn their heads into vases and hang them outside their house as a warning to other girls and boys. Downright JD Vance stuff right there.

The other is a little less – nope, actually, it’s just as gruesome, but at least one of the actors has a little bit more agency:

2. Visiting Moor and plant loving noble girl fall in love. When Moor finally has to leave Palermo and go home to his wife and children, noble girl, in a fit of jealousy, kills him in his sleep and cuts off his head. She turns it into a basil planter and waters the basil with her tears. The basil grows so lushly that her neighbors become jealous and [rather than cut off her head and use it as a planter] make their own ceramic planters that look like the Moor’s head. So the tradition of ceramic “king and queen’s” head vases began.

These “testa de Moro” vases are in doorways, restaurants, gates, and every single souvenir or ceramic shop we’ve seen or been into on this island. They are always made, decorated, and sold in pairs, there are huge ones and ones you could plant a single soft-boiled egg in. There are fridge magnets (so of course we have them). There are multicolored, traditional majolica ones, and monochrome ones. And they all have crowns (or less often the king wears a turban) and almost all are depicted with flowers, vegetables, and/or fruits draping from their crowns. We were completely charmed by the ones in Vulcano with prickly pear fruit making up each of the crown points. WHY didn’t we take a picture of them??

It was in the Aeolians that we started to see more of the testa de Moro glazed in greens and blues with seaweed and marine creatures draped around them and across their faces, and the effect is very, very creepy. Definitely cool. But creepy to someone who lives on a boat that anchors by necessity in water deeper than I am tall.

And when we got to Palermo and put The Fish up on the hard for its August beauty appointment, we took a couple of days before leaving for cooler climes to spend some time in the old city. A ceramics shop on one of the main streets had a trio of vases high up in the window that drew our attention: the king, the queen, and a one-eyed face on the third. Because every pair is made to match each other, it was clear that this monster was part of the king and queen set. Who WAS this beast? Who were the king and queen? A dour looking woman opened the door and asked us in, and when she realized we weren’t going to simply buy the set and go away, she called out to an older man who was leaving the shop. The owner, it turns out. With some very ragged English and worse Italian, we learned, I think, that the king and queen in this instance were Odysseus and Penelope, and the one-eyed character was the cyclops. Of course! Love this stuff. Not sure what the story is with the owl, but he’s cute, isn’t he?

We saw another one-eyed head after we got back in September, this time as we were waiting in San Vito lo Capo for a weather window to cross to Sardinia. There were no king or queen head vases to match, though “Polifemo” does refer to the Homeric cyclops Polyphemus that trapped Odysseus in his cave. He was reputedly insolent and rude, eating Odysseus’ crew before Odysseus got him drunk on strong wine and poked his eye out with a burning stick. Odysseus and his remaining crew escaped by clinging to the bellies of the monster’s sheep as he let them out of the cave to graze. You can’t make this stuff up, right??

The rest of our time in the Aeolians was a variation on the themes of tourism’s excesses in Italy in July. Crowds of people, crowds of boats. That aside, Lipari was a favorite for us – the city is gorgeous, with its huge castle above the sea and little streets lined with gigantic potted plants, and we met an American woman who’d married a Lipari man 40 years ago and made and sold charming paintings of whimsical mermaids and marine creatures (see photo top left, below, and her Aeolians table top, middle. Not sure who’s responsible for the creepy chalk painting of the woman…). She was also very interested in discussing American politics and better understanding the unimaginable appeal to some of Mr. Trump. We were game.

Salina was equally lovely, and we ate well, and walked a lot. Apparently we saw a lot of cats, too. And a dog. And a hilarious tile depicting a nude couple with an octopus trying to attack the woman. Serve you right for eating those brilliant creatures.

Panarea was our last stop in the Aeolians, and where my patience with the hordes ran out. Because of the density of mega yachts, super yachts, huge yachts, big yachts, small yachts, small boats, day boats, dinghies, and sailboats of every size and description we had to anchor well down the coast from the one town, and even then we needed to monitor the constant comings and goings of vessels to anchor to see that we weren’t in imminent danger of being rammed or simply “bumped” by one of them.

Above: best picture of the anchorage at Panarea was at sunset. So. Many. Boats!

When we dinghied into town later to see the sights, we were immediately struck by how Greek it all looked – a stab of homesickness pierced mah heart! Seriously, it was all whitewashed, rounded corners and narrow streets with beautiful views of the sea – just very Greek. The only things missing were the blue domed churches. It was also teeming with people. Ferries were taking turns dropping off and picking up the crowds at the pier, and as one swarming mass would leave another would arrive. Then the crowd would troop off the pier and fan out into the small town’s streets, shops, and restaurants, some trundling their roller bags behind them, all looking for and presumably getting a true Aeolians-in-July experience. We were certainly getting it, even if it wasn’t exactly what we were looking for!

By this point we were looking for a big, quiet, empty anchorage, with crystalline blue water and a huge stretch of sandy bottom where we could put out a ton of chain and swing around to our heart’s content and enjoy not seeing neighboring crews’ ass scratching or nose picking, and skinny dip in the early morning and take a deck shower under the stars at night.

Apparently, that was not too much to ask. Tindari. Directly south of Panarea and west along the coast from Milazza, Tindari is a hook of beach that runs out into the sea from a wall of cliffs, effectively a breakwater for the town further behind it, but our oasis of sandy bliss for anchoring in front. Sure, there were day boats, especially along the cliffs, and people peppered the outer beach during the day, but about 5:00 they all started to melt away. We had a couple of other yachts come in and out in the three days we were there, but thanks to the lure of the Aeolians just north of us, we were as alone as we’d been since leaving Greece, and we loved it.

The rest of our journey west to Palermo was highlighted by a night in the old city of Cefalú. Also very lovely, crowded with tourists, and beautifully situated on the sea, we found a walled patio restaurant for a quiet dinner. We knew the coming days would be busy – we’d already begun our preparations for putting the boat up and leaving her for a few weeks – and it was a joy to sit under the trees with good wine, some of the best food we’d had in Sicily to date, and a brief sense that time had stopped. It certainly wouldn’t stop for long.

Next up, August 2024: escaping the heat in the Arctic Circle.