Italy "cruising"

Greece! We miss you!!

This week we logged some long miles.  We arrived in Italy last Monday, and since then have been surprised at the difference between Italy and Greece as far as the "cruising" goes.  What a difference! It’s obvious that the whole idea of cruising is new(er) to Italy, because the coast is not set up at all for cruisers, the landscape is very straight and long, no bays or places to anchor.  They are in the process of building marinas, but are expensive and usually full.  To complicate matters, marine charts show the word ‘marinas’, but are actually towns.  The word marina in Italian is used to mean a village on the sea.  So….there may be an actual marina there or there may not, most often not.  Sound bewildering?  Try it at 3:00 in the morning after you’ve been awake and sailing for over 24 hours.  So we’ve been powering around 'the boot', covering almost 400 miles in less than a week, which is not a fun pace.  Sailing overnight seems to work better, one because the wind calms down a bit, and two, the littles’ can sleep and wake up somewhere new, and don’t spend all day bouncing around inside and watching movies like couch potatoes, although it leaves the rest of us….Emma, Maggie, Levi and Rachel and I, a bit groggy. Then, once we recovered, we do it again!

So we arrived in Sicily yesterday and are as far down as a town called Syracusa, on the Southwest corner. This is an amazing town as well as huge historical significance (what isn’t over here?) 

This city was a rival to Athens for the center of the Greek empire and there was a huge battle here for that status in 715 BC. The brilliant scientist Archimedes was living here and designed a cool, ancient defense system. He developed a contraption of mirrors and lenses and was able to harness the sun’s rays and set fire to the sails of the invading ships. He was ordered to be captured and taken alive to Athens, but a random foot soldier got over-excited and killed him, wanting fame of his own.    

From here, we will go the very South-west point of the island, what looks like a very mellow anchorage (we hope!) and from there, it’s ‘only’ 60 miles to Malta.  Although with our station wagon, that’s still a 14 hour day! So we’ll see you then……

~Hems