Santa Maria de Leuca and on to Porto Paolo (Terry)

Leaving Brindisi

 

 

We went to Santa Maria de Leuca after Brindisi and stayed for a few days in the marina there.  Not very nice:-  it rolls all the visiting boats terribly and it was hard to sleep.  Was hard to get on and off, too, and that was when there was very little swell outside!  For the first time ever, I was pitched getting off the passareille and ended up on the pontoon.  No damage, I rolled to my shoulder on the way down but it was a shock nonetheless.  The problem is that the visiting boats are all lined up along the entrance way, which gets the first of the swell that comes in.  It seems a little better further in and to the side away from the floating pontoons.

 

 

 

It is a Municipal Marina, owned by the town/city.  Very pleasant staff.  We arrived around 6:00am on the Monday morning and motored around outside a bit until I could see where to go.  At 6:45, we called the Ormeggiotore and he came out and helped us in.  In a first, and pleasant surprise, once the manager worked out we were staying longer than overnight, he got the Ormeggiotore to go out to the car and bring back a gift box of local wines (red and white), artisan pasta and artisan spaghetti sauce and also a very large jar of local olive paste.  All boxed up and laid out with cellophane etc.







We were going to stay until Saturday, as it's a nice town to be in, even if half-closed as all the tourists have gone home.  The town is famous for its many mansions, as the holiday makers in this part of the world were not dissimilar to the inhabitants of the Hamptons etc.  They competed for the best architects and the best designs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This one's on the beachfront

With its own Cabana (there are a couple more with these as well, plus many not on the beach with their own guardhouses)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Maria_di_Leuca

The link is worth a look.

It is also famous for its lighthouse, and almost on the same block, a Basilica.  From these heights runs a water cascade that is turned on only a couple of times a year but is quite a sight when it is.  Work is under way to install LED lighting, probably to give the illusion of a cascade while saving water.

 The walk to the Basilica and the Cascade

It really is a very nice place to be, except for the rolling in the marina.

We say what was forecast as a good weather window beginning Friday, with north wind on Saturday and Sunday, so we decided not to stay on and left on Friday morning.

Forecast was bullshit as usual.  Friday night turned into the voyage from hell.  Instead of 4-8 knot winds drifting lazily from all parts of the compass, we had 28-40 knot Westerly winds for hour after hour, side on.  The seas built and we got hammered and hammered.  Carol was still sick for two days from it.   That’s what you get for producing weather forecasts with computers and sidelining the people who used to do it.

The next day was better, but we got invaded by thousands upon thousands of some kind of fly.  Not normal ones.  Didn't respond to fly spray or surface spray, so I connected up the hose that washes the anchor to another hose and we washed them off.  They were on everything.  I think they got blown offshore in a swarm and just happened to find a boat to land on.  Luckily, they weren't bitey ones.

Things quietened down a little after that and we motorsailed lazily along recovering from the beating of the night before.

Then, early a.m. Sunday, just when I wanted to get some sleep around 1am, we ran into the annual Rolex Middle Sea Race off Syracusa.  Some of the contestants had called in to Leuca on their way to Valetta, Malta,  for the start.  We didn't know then that was where they were going, but there they were, coming back towards us.  One called "Oz" actually came down from Brindisi with us.  They were really moving and unfortunately they were moving straight towards us, about 30 or 40 of them.  With all the masts, their AIS wasn’t transmitting correctly – one minute you’d see a boat on the screen, next minute it was gone, then back again!  There was only a sliver of a moon and it was near impossible to see them unless they were skylighted agains the lights of Syracusa.  Those to seaward of us we couldn’t see until they were broadside to us. Took almost two hours of threading my way through them in the dark (they had right-of-way because they were under sail and we had the engine on).  No real danger in it, because as well as we could see them on our screen, they could see us.  AIS must be a race directive as we didn't pass any unaccounted for boats. 

 There may be no wind, there may be too much wind, but there is rarely nothing going on out here.

 http://www.rolexmiddlesearace.com/index.cfm

Finally we were clear of them and I tried to sleep.  No luck, as the radio piped up with "Common Sense, Common Sense, Common Sense, this is Italian Warship “Mars something”.   Perhaps it was the Maestrale?.  Not big enough for a Destroyer, too big for a PB, too dark to get a good look. 

Something registered that they were talking to me and I answered on the second call.  All they wanted to do was set up a passing routine and we agreed on "Green to Green", which means both our starboard sides, instead of the more usual port-to-port.  They were a mile away so I suspect they were just going through a radio training routine for newbie bridge officers, and also practising their English.  No problem, except that Navies here take a very dim view of people not responding to Channel 16 calls.  They think that perhaps you are maybe sleeping a little bit and not paying attention J

Maestrale Class Frigate

Finally we arrived in Porto Paolo, where we anchored last year (Porto Paolo with a Koala Bar!)  As usual, the Admiral’s straight over the side for a swim and I was straight into the bunk for a catch up on sleep. 

After a good rest and a hot dinner, we left at around 21:30 for the last 13-hour trip on up to Licata and a full stop to 2014's cruising.