It took more than a couple of glasses of wine to plan our return trip of about 1000 nautical miles back to Malta, the more so as the thunderstorms that had plagued us for the past 10 days persisted in hanging about.
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| Buying veggies from boat boy. |
Having forsaken the northern part of Italy and unfortunately our visit to Ravenna to catch up with a dear friend there, we signed up for another month of Croatia. We took the first opportunity to cross the notorious Gulf of Kvarner to one of our favourite stops at the delightful isle of Mali Losinj where we ended up staying two days in order to replace the starter battery.
The weather was immediately better, with the thunderstorms striking the mainland and mostly missing the islands. With August upon us, we found ourselves sailing south in company with hordes of Italian power-boaters some of whom can be the scourge of the seas.
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| Moonscape at Dugi Otok |
We opted for different anchorages on islands we had bypassed on our trip north and also decided to visit the magnificent Dugi Otok national park, which was another highlight on this leg of the journey. We anchored at the top of Luka Telascica, surrounded by the strikingly different landscape which is more like a moonscape at times.
After a couple of days there, we left the island group of Dugi Otok and sailed to a nearby island group around Murter. It is amazing how one can go from a totally barren landscape to such lush greenery in the few nautical miles that separate them. With a Bora (the notorious north easterly wind which often blows at gale force and more) forecast, we decided to ‘hide’ in the large bay outside Murter town and passed a pleasant week there, catching up again with old friends on KOZA and meeting new Ozzie friends Helve and Rick on TANGAROA.
We braved it in strong northerlies all the way down to Rogoznica, on the mainland and then crossed to Vela Luka on the island of Korcula. We checked out of Croatia from the picturesque island of Lastovo and, for once, enjoyed a magnificent sail across to Italy.
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| Approach to Vieste. |
The contrast between Croatia and Italy could not have been greater. To begin with, the weather and water temperature were immediately a few degrees warmer, but instead of lovely turquoise waters, we were now confined to harbours, as there are hardly any anchorages on the Italian east coast. We checked into Italy at Vieste, in the Puglia region which is formerly run by the Normans and full of medieval towns. Here we where introduced to what the French may have lent the name to but the Italians absolutely have perfected: bureaucracy. Apparently, as a non EU registered yacht, we were expected to sign-in-and-out of every port, with one of the four different police forces they have.
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| Panneria in Monte Sant' Angelo. |
Yet even this worked out in our favour. We used the Guardia Costiera, with whom we were meant to check in at every port of call, to ‘book’ us a spot on the next port’s harbour wall, so as to satisfy their requirement that we stop where we said we were heading. In fact this arrangement worked out so well, that we stopped at every harbour on the way south and had a ball running around on the local buses and trains. In this way we visited Monte Sant’ Angelo outside Manfredonia, and the famous cities of Lecce, Trani and Ostuni, also known as the white city, among others.
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| Amazing welcome at Molfetta. |
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| Ostuni. |
We had an amazing stop at Molfetta, little realising that this was a sister city to Fremantle. It became obvious when Molfettese kept coming up to our boat on the harbour wall relating stories of their days in Fremantle. From them we learnt that the traditional blessing of the fleet in Freo is based on the Molfetta tradition of this annual feast day. We found ourselves taken over by friendly locals who provided fresh fish, prawns, vegetables, home made high quality olive oil and many other local produce, and wanted us to stay and celebrate the upcoming traditional feast with them – the friendliness and warmth of the people there is something we will not forget.
Our absolute favourite port going south was undoubtedly Monopoli, a most charming old town with just enough history and ruins to keep us happy between feasting on really good Italian food. The Romans where wrong, there is fish in the Mediterranean, at least the Adriatic part of it.
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| On the 'Wall' in Monopoli. |
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| Monopoli. |
A month on this coast of Italy flew by, with the telltale signs of good living now starting to show up in waistlines. So with reluctance we headed out of Brindisi and straight across to Syracuse to head down to Malta for a month’s stay before we headed back to Ragusa, in Sicily, where we were to leave MISCHIEF for the winter.
