Over a million visitors crowd into this pretty holiday town, where the population is 14,000. Although the season is not started in April, the streets were full of Italian families on holiday. The narrow medieval streets have shiny stone pavings in diamond patterns. They all seem to lead to the clean sweeping beach which is […]

Sarah did her high energy walk up to the temple and fort ruins overlooking the town on a rocky crag. In the older walls, newer baroque doorway details have been cut. The passageata ritual at the end of the afternoon swept me down amongst the families with mums in their holiday dresses. Dads in Italy […]

Soon after sunrise we weighed anchor and motored eastwards in the remainder of the swell left over from the squalls.  We had some anxiety about such high windsappearing yesterday when they were not forecast. The moderate swell continued from the north west, pushing us round Capo Calava. As usual at capes, the wind picked up and […]

From Riposto we motored for half a day with the main up southwards with a light following wind. The swell had died and we skirted the yellow buoys of the nature marine reserve outside. Lost in translation , as we say, was the following note in the pilot. We had read that it is possible […]

  Our reason for staying here was to catch the train to Taormina. From a bit of a dump we were transported to a station so spick and span that it could have been a hotel.  Pastel decorations were painted over the ceilings. Polished hardwood doors and travertine floors set the scene for what came […]

We kept to the west side of the straits, out of the   shipping lanes. They are controlled by radio as if they were a harbour. We had read about some yachts being harassed for papers, and yet for European registered boats there was no need for paperwork. Yachts are required to make a   radio call. […]

The sailing pilot warns us of unpredictable high winds going south from the Aoleans. After all , they are named after the God of the Winds who gave Ulysses a bag with the instructions not to open it. When the crew did so, believing the bag to contain money, the ferocious winds blew him off […]

  Catania is a dark city. Dark rocks of  basalt form the road paving. The walls above the black basalt base courses are of dark render, made from the same aggregates. It is laid out in very long straight streets, as if some alien imprinted straight lines on the devastation after the earthquake of 1693. In […]

To the west, as we approached Catania, the silhouette of the active volcano Etna was shrouded in clouds at first, and then became clearer in the sun. After an afternoon’s motor sailing to the south in light easterly breezes we entered the busy harbour of Catania where ferries compete with everyone for the entrance zone. […]