Yesterday’s sail to Fiumicino was quite emotional. I knew it was the last big sail I’m going to do for a while. I am going to a marina in the Fiumicino canal later today where Lady Cindy will stay for up to three years while I complete a work contract in the UK. This is a pause in the journey not an end. That Atlantic ocean will still be there in three years waiting to be crossed.
The weather is definitely starting to turn, its been windier and cloudy the last two days. Its still warm though.
I will spend the next two weeks working on Lady Cindy. There are a few jobs i have put off needing parts or a non moving boat. On the 27th I start an epic journey to Southampton across Europe by train. More on that in a future post.
Patty is still in Argentina with family, the boat is quiet without her, and not as clean🤭 She returns to Italy at the beginning of November and after a brief visit to her apartment in Barletta, she will fly to the UK to join me in Wales.
Dotty and I have been slowly heading North back up to Fiumicino to dock the boat from the 15th. Most of my free time, and there has been a lot, has been spent working on an Android app. More on that later..
I was woken this morning with a call of ‘hello there’ bleary eyed, i popped my head out the open hatch above my bed to find a swimmer next to the boat. He asked to rest against the boat, he had swum well over 300m from a hotel complex ashore. I invited him aboard while i made coffee. His dry bag, which was full of water, contained his now wet cigarettes and a bottle of wine 🤣, did i mention he’s from Dublin? 🤣 he is on holiday with his girlfriend and went for a morning swim. We had a good chat and i took him back by dinghy.
In case you are wondering how Patty is getting on in Argentina..
She never dressed like that on the boat 🤣
I have now booked my journey back to the UK. It involves a £500, 33 hour journey using a taxi, 7 trains, a sleepover at Geneva station, crossing Paris by metro, a pet transport minibus through the channel tunnel and two more trains to Southampton. Well the alternative, was a 6 hour journey with two flights from Rome to Southampton via Amsterdam. That cost half as much, but dotty would have to travel as cargo 🤔 imagine her howling in the hold 😳.
At Southampton i will visit family and stay in a pet friendly hotel. I also pick up a car my uncle is kindly donating before driving back to wales. Friends have kindly arranged temporary accomodation while i look for something more permanent.
I have been developing an app called ShipsLog, the clue is in the name as to what it does. I am at the stage where i am using it myself snd ironing out bugs/making improvements. Watch this space for more information
We have reached Salerno where Patty needs to leave for a few days to go back to Barletta. I will probably stay here and work on a phone app I am developing but may move South toward Scicily. The weather forecast is all over the place with some models predicting more storms. One unforecasted storm blew through last night forcing us to leave the anchorage to seek shelter in Salerno harbour.
Salerno
This coast would be beautiful and well worth visiting if it were not for the Italian boaters. I would strongly advise any cruisers to avoid this coast in July and August. The marinas are stupidly expensive, €100-€160 per night, some places even charging €50 or more to just stop and fill with water. Luckily we have a secret weapon for that and have got free water (we did tip the marineros). We have an Italian speaking woman to soften up the invariably male marineros 😉. The other major problem is the sheer number of power boats going past between 10am and 8pm causing wash. It is very uncomfortable rolling on an anchor and as the waves come from all directions, a stern kedge anchor doesnt help. The Italians have no sence of courtesy on the water, they speed through anchorages, anchor too close to other boat and pass far too close.
On the plus side, the scenery is stunning, water is beautiful South of Naples, at night the anchorages are like mill ponds and we sleep with the hatch open and star gazing.
Terme di Baia Fig tree growing upside downPompeii Vesuvius crater
While the ankle is not 100% back to normal and I’m wearing a brace, we have been able to start exploring.
While we were anchored off of Baia we were able to visit the site of the baths. They’re well preserved, but there wasn’t too much information, and what there was lacked organization. We also loved that there weren’t too many people visiting. We were able to stroll around at leisure.
We then moved Lady Cindy and are currently anchored near Torre Annunziata. First order of business was to visit Pompeii. It was great. Google Maps failed us on finding our way there with public transport, so we took a taxi (I wasn’t sure how my ankle would hold up, so we were being cautious), but after a full day of exploration we did find our way back with the train. We rested for a day (John had a productive day on his app project) and went to Vesuvius yesterday.
We made our way to Vesuvius without hitches but the challenge came in trying to get the tickets online. Let’s just say that a British ex computer consultant and an American have difficulty dealing with the inefficiency of the websites (among other things 😁). Kudos to a member of the security team present there that helped us through all the steps of acquiring the tickets (and there were many…, including getting a text code in an area with extremely poor mobile signal)
We’d planned an early visit to avoid the heat, ended up starting out at 10:30 but there is a micro climate in that area that’s much cooler than at sea level. We were a bit worried that the fog would not dissipate (I could not see the crater when I visited in March), but as you can see from the pictures it was totally clear when we got there.
We may try to get to Herculaneum tomorrow, before we start heading toward the Amalfi coast.
Venus Temple and baths, BaiaView of BaiaThe Pontine Islands Bacoli
As John said, we chose to detour to the islands seeking some solitude after Fiumicino. Well, in addition to arriving on the weekend (honestly, with this lifestyle we generally don’t know what day of the week it is), it appears to be a popular vacation destination for Italians. The pluses: pristine waters, caves, the town was pretty (the little we saw, it was hilly and my ankle was still mending), and there was an ice cream boat!! 😋 The minuses: when we showed up there were several hundred boats anchored off one of the smallest islands (many left in the late afternoon, but quite a few stayed anchored overnight), the marine traffic made for a lots of movement on the boat, and of course grocery shopping was expensive.
We played in the water a lot. As a result of that John had to do maintenance to the dinghy. One day, as we’re in the water he thought he’d see if he could board the dinghy from the water (emergency preparedness), but… he tried it from the back of the boat, which promptly lifted and fell back upside down in the water dunking the engine (ouch). Lots of cleaning and taking apart and the engine was as good as new 😁
We left the island heading to the Naples area to seek shelter for upcoming strong winds. We anchored near Bacoli. Refilled water and did some shopping and had another adventure. We’d been anchored two or three days without any issues when a squall hit. The anchor alarm went off, and we’re very close to another boat. In total the anchors of 5 boats loosened, it’s rainy, windy and everyone is trying to stay away from each other while anchoring again.
The anchor stayed in place following that night, even though the winds kept coming back for another two days. Now, here the town was good, we had lunch one day there while exploring seeking where to bathe because the water, to my eyes, was polluted. John thought it was OK, at least until the day we left, when he saw bubbles of something (???) rising from the bottom. So far John hasn’t grown any extra appendages (😂) from swimming there.
Another thing that happened, we think the dinghy was flipped by the wind because 1) everything inside it was done 2) the engine would not start. Fixing it was not easy this time, John spent almost a full day working on it, but it would not start. We needed a spark plug, but could not find it in town (where John would have to row the dinghy). We found it in Baia, so we stayed overnight at a marina and did laundry and shopping while there. That’s when I first tried out my ankle, did fairly well walking about 3 km each day to reach the laundromat and grocery store.
We are back at anchor just outside Baia. Dealing with the “hooligans” Italians on boats aren’t any better than behind the wheel of cars, so we get a lot of movement during the day as boats speed around us.
We’re leaving shortly for the archeological site of Terme di Baia. We’ll tell you all about it in the next few days. Patty signing off.
The seas between Rome and Naples are busy, very busy. The Italians love their motorboats, July and August are probably the not the best times to enjoy remote anchorages. At between 90 and 160 euros per night, marinas are to be avoided too.
We have made the most of it though by slowly travelling South. Patty’s ankle is still not strong enough to do some serious hiking but we have done some longer walks ashore in the last two days. We hope when we reach Pompei in the next week that she will be strong enough to enjoy it. In the mean time, a strict physio regime is being followed..
I have been doing a bit of boat maintenance recently. Lady Cindy has two new solar panels so we no longer have to be careful over consumption. I have replaced the rear water tank bladder, serviced the dinghy outboard, I have also been working on a ships log app I hope to sell commercially.
Last week we hired a car, drove from Fiumicino, through Rome, across Italy to Barletta around Barletta and Trani and eventually back to Fiumicino.
As an ex driving instructor, I feel I am qualified to have an opinion, not just on Italian drivers but also the road system. For those who want a summary… it’s madness 😳… here’s why.
First of all let’s point fingers at the beaurocrats. Apart from the motorways, most roads are in dire need of maintenance being full of pot holes, raised by tree roots and no or worn out road markings and signs. The last one explains a lot of the Italian driver’s behaviour.
It’s difficult to keep to a speed limit if you don’t know what it is, giving way at a junction is optional when there are no stop or give way lines and pedestrian crossings? Good luck with that one. On that topic, Patty and I were harassed by a driver scowling at us and reving his engine. He was stopped on the crossing held up by traffic ahead. We started to cross in front of him and the traffic ahead of him started to move, he was angry we were holding him up more. Bear in mind Patty was limping with an ankle injury 😳.
On one section of road there was a speed limit that kept changing between 50kph and 80kph. This was a very straight, wide road in a rural area. The safe speed could easily be 100kph along the whole stretch. There were half a dozen speed cameras on that road.
Hi, everyone. This is Patty. There was some doubt (mostly on FB) as to whether I’d return to John and Lady Cindy (and Dotty 😁); but I made it back, as planned, and very happy to have done so.
As John mentioned on a previous post, we hired a car to drive to Barletta. On the way out of Rome we thought we would explore some of the famous sites. First stop was the Coliseum.
Right after refilling Dotty’s water bottle I turned around and slipped on the marble floor.
Ouch!! It’s not the first time I hurt an ankle, as sprains go, this was a bad one. So, we spent the week in Barletta hiding from the 40+ weather in the air-conditioned apartment (not so conveniently located on the 3rd floor, no elevator 😬) . John has been an absolute treasure😍, taking care of me and keeping busy working on his app.
Thankfully, the ankle has been improving daily. I can hobble around quite well. Sunday we returned to Rome and Lady Cindy. Last night we left the marina, and boy it was eventful. We had to wait for two bridges to be raised to go out onto the open water. The second bridge was a challenge as it only opened partially and we were already having difficulty with the river current and navigating at such low speeds. Once we got to open water we got hit with 20 knots winds, so we spent the 20 minutes trip to the anchorage in an intricate and forceful dance with the sea. The reward was that we slept with a cool breeze and zero mosquitoes!!
We are now waiting for another set of strong winds to pass by before we start heading toward Sicily. Today we got some swimming done and we are slowly making progress on turning Lady Cindy from a bachelor’s pad to a love nest🥰.
John will be writing about his driving experience in Italy. 😜 Initially we planned on sharing driving duties, but that’s one more thing I couldn’t do with my damaged ankle. I’m really looking forward to reading that post!!
