The night in front of Roccela Ionica marina was not the best, especially towards morning wind turned to E and grew stronger and of course it brought with it bigger waves. The boat was rolling more and more. Captain got up first and decided to sail off without waking me up. Well, the sound of anchor chain and then winches surely didn't let me sleep any longer. After a coffee we were considering what our day target should be and where we should sleep, and we decided to try to get through Messina strait and sleep in Scilla. I wanted to see Scilla, because the first time we were here some 8 years ago, we just took a look at it from the boat and sailed on. This time I wanted to see it up close.
Wind got stronger and we had a good speed and good chances of making our plan happen. We were sailing by on wild Calabrian hills.
After many hours, already in the late afternoon, we turned into Messina strait.
Wind was with us and we were able to sail most of the time, even wing on wing. To the right there is Calabria...
... and we could only see outlines of Sicily through clouds on the left.
This was our third time sailing through Messina strait and although we know it is nothing scary, one gets a bit nervous. Not so much because of big vortices or strong counter current, which are both there, the scariest are the ferries that drive between Calabria and Sicily, and as someone said "take no prisoners". It helps if there are two people watching the traffic and even under sails just get out of the way of so much faster and bigger beasts.
It was already getting dark when we reached Scilla. I was looking forward to go into the town in the morning.
We anchored on N side of the town, in hope to get out of the SE wind and waves. But the wind was quite strong and the gusts were coming down the hills directly into anchorage. We checked anchor several times, it was holding well, and after closing all the hatches - it started to rain - went to bed after the long day. In radar picture I saw that majority of rain is still coming to us in the night and was hoping that the wind will get weaker by then.
After couple of hours of sleep we both got up - wind was howling, rain was pounding on the boat and there were lightnings all around. One gets nervous even if one has confidence that anchor will hold. After a little while we noticed that some of the hatches were not water tight, so we placed bowls and towels under them. Between the rain also the frozen rain started to fall, and it made the sound of the thunderstorm even scarier. We were constantly checking the anchor, the hatches and so it went on for some two hours. We both tried to go back to sleep after the worse was over, I even succeed in getting some more sleep, but Captain didn't.
In the morning there was no signs of big excitement in the night, Scilla looked pretty and calm.
These are or used to be fishermen's cottages, some are very narrow and small, but most have some kind of place to pull the boat out of the sea.
We put the dinghy into the water and rowed into the harbour. There is a castle watching over the harbour.
Our anchorage
Town is very pretty, with narrow streets, old stone houses, caper bushes growing everywhere.
People do make an effort to make it look pretty.
I liked these pots that were tied together with the rope because the shelf on which they were was slanted.
Between a lots of renovated and nice building there were also some old and crumbly ones.
This is the view towards S, where the town beach is. A good anchorage for the wind from N or E.
The castle
In the narrow streets the cars are small.
There is a way how to make leveled surface to place couple of tables and chairs in steep streets.
And some more pretty views...
A place for the boat
Blue boats in the harbour
In the middle of the day we sailed off, after a nice ice cream of course. One more look at the pretty houses...
... and we lift the anchor. We couldn't believe it - it's tip is bent. So there must have been a lot of wind in the night. Oh, and as a reminder that we truly were in Calabria - when Captain cleaned the mud from the anchor, he found a pistol bullet in it.
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