I wear my harness at night...

Sailing at night is a lot like sailing during the day… you have to watch out not to run into anything and you just keep moving.  The differences are – it’s dark, we are required to wear a harness/lifejacket and remain in the cockpit unless we are both on deck and can watch the other person fix the sails or whatever is caught, and there is a terrific view of a million stars. 

It is also a lot like driving at night.  For those of you who know our family, you know we drive everywhere.  Wisconsin, Maryland, around Alaska, we have always been a family that will load up the car and just drive to wherever it is we are going.  With that comes driving at night.  We have found through our extensive experience that a good book on tape with a good reader helps fight the urge to sleep and makes the time pass a lot faster.

Well I have a couple books on my iPod thanks to my Aunt Karen, and I thought starting my first 4 hour shift which was 8pm – 12am with “The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown would make it a cake walk… it would’ve worked except that the man reading it has a somewhat monotone voice that just lulls you to sleep.  I switched to music and that four hours was easy.  It was the 4am – 8am shift that was more difficult to stay awake on, but with the amount of ship traffic, it was a good thing I did.

Night time is best for big ships to transport things because there are fewer boats on the water to get in the way.  Except for those pesky Americans who are crazy enough to share the water with these guys.  Around 5am I saw 3 different big ships, checked the radar and had to wake Dad up twice because they were too close for comfort.  The first one Dad actually had to get on the radio and make sure they even saw us, they were getting so close.  These ships are going 20 knots and would crush us like a bug if we got in the way.  It wouldn’t make a whole lot of difference to the person driving because it’s not his or her ship and we would only leave a small red paint smudge on the front of the ship.  So we have to watch out for our own tails and make sure we are seen and get out of their way.  This was the only real close call and Dad was able to get a couple of hours of sleep after that. 

We passed Stromboli on the second day, which is basically an island made out of an active volcano.  We got close enough to see the smoke billowing out of the top and Dad had planned on getting there at night so I could see the lava spitting out too, but we were making great time and left Agropoli earlier than anticipated.  It was still a cool sight on what has become our “Italian Volcano Tour 2010”.  Because we were headed towards the Messina straight, which Dad had never passed through before, we didn’t wanted to get there during the night.  So we heaved-to which meant we essentially stopped the boat and arranged everything so we were a floating duck in the water until around 1am when we would time it just right to get to the straight at sunrise.  This watch was about 2.5 hours each, and we were able to make a really good dinner on board while enjoying the sunset.  There was some wind and we ended up spinning around like a top throughout the night.  Not enough to make a person dizzy by any means, but enough to move us about 2-3 miles away from where we started and give us a good view of every surrounding island.  I didn’t see a single boat during my watch. Dad got to see a cruise boat head towards the straight but that was about it.  The trip to the straight was a tough watch for me.  I woke up at around 4:30am and was on til 6am when the sun came up.  It was really hard staying awake but really important because the closer we got, the bigger the ships got. 

This is the view of our approach to Stromboli.  We were supposed to be approaching from night because you can apparently see lava spitting out of the top too… the smoke was pretty awesome to see though.  

This was the other side of the volcano.  You can see where the lava flow goes down, because nothing is growing there.  You can also see, on the right hand side, a town.  There is a small town located on the volcano.

The first night we grazed for dinner, not really thinking about eating an actual meal.  The second night we decided to break out the big guns and Dad made breaded chicken, fresh green beans, and I made mashed potatoes.  It was so good.

The second night we got to sit still and watch the sun set.  The photos of course don’t it justice.

The timing was right on and we went through exhausted, but alert as we saw the main ferry route between mainland Italy and Sicily.  The ferries have the right away in Italian waters and we were just trying to get through without getting in the way.  As one would leave one side, another would leave the other and it reminded me very much of the ferry to the Magic Kingdom, but much faster and not as friendly. 

I crashed after that and woke up close to our assent to Reposto with a great view of Mt. Etna.  Some fun facts about Etna, it is one of the world’s major active volcanoes and is the largest and highest in Europe. The volcano has erupted 11 times in the past 30 years and while lava flows, destroying cable cars that take tourists up, the literature says it almost never threatens human life. 

The second night we got to sit still and watch the sun set.  The photos of course don’t it justice.

The Italian Waters Pilot book stated to watch out for the winds and currents around the base of the volcano.  We started to feel the ever changing gusts of wind and the swells began to mount as we got closer.  What was crazy was right when we were at the point of lowering the main sail, huge swells started to hit us straight on.  Every other boat decided to go into port when we did, and we were feeling swells of I thought 4 or 5 feet (I may be exaggerating a tiny bit, but not by much) that rocked the boat every way possible and threw anything that was loose down below to a completely different area of the boat.  Everything on the deck went flying into the cockpit and thank God Dad had already lowered the halyard (which requires him to climb up about 2 feet on the mast) otherwise he would’ve been in the water with those waves and I would’ve had to figure out how to get him out!  He’s shown me all of the rescue equipment and we have gone over what to do in a man overboard situation, but if I could barely stand up and avoid falling overboard myself, it would make those procedures a lot more difficult.