Gail and Frank's travels west from Turkey: June 18th

Yesterday we completed our longest offshore passage since we crossed the Atlantic in 2004, going almost 300 miles from the east side of Sicily (Isola Vulcano) to a beautiful bay (Cala Coda Cavallo) on the northeast side of Sardinia near Olbia.
The weather "window" was good so we crossed even though there were a few more things we would have liked to have seen before we left Sicily. We really enjoyed seeing the town of Messina, Sicily even though the marina was a dangerous place to be in strong northwest winds. The waves hitting the concrete "wave breaker" pontoon dock to which we were tied were huge and even though it weighed thousand of pounds moved around like it was styrofoam! We ripped off our port amidships chock where we had our spring line tied so we have yet another repair to make when we get back to Maine! Messina is a HUGE ferry port connecting Sicily to mainland Italy about ten mile away and has ferries entering every hour - they really don't make waves, but the sound of their propellers echoes through the water and keeps you up in the night. The wave that broke our chock was mostly generated by a big black Italian "Gardia Finanza" boat roaring into the harbor at high speed - so much for officials obeying the speed limits that everyone else must....
We left Messina and raced through the Straits with the current, watching several swordfish boats around us. They are amazing looking with a harpoon station hanging out the front about 45 feet and a lookout tower rising from the center of the boat about 45' high - all this on a boat about 50' long. I don't know how they can go out in anything but very calm weather! We went on to Lipari, a volcanic island about 40 miles from Messina, where we got fuel for our upcoming crossing, and then went south a few miles to Isola Vulcano, which as you might guess is a volcano cone island which hisses steam from its crater. The harbor there is snug and has a wonderful view of the volcano. In the harbor we spied our friends Debbie & Terry on "Wings", who are doing a circumnavigation - it just so happened that it was Terry's birthday so we had a fun and delicious meal ashore to celebrate.
The next morning, Gail and I set out early to climb the volcano while it was not too hot. We made it to the edge of the crater by 9:30 AM and looked down on "ALCID" in the harbor several thousand feet below. What a sight! I stood in the sulfurous steam coming out of several vents (trying not to choke to death!) and carefully retrieved a very hot sulfur coated rock for my lovely geologist wife. We met a Frenchman at the crater's rim who took our picture and told me (in Frenglish) that he had just climbed up from the bottom of the crater (WHOA!) and that his feet had gotten very HOT (tres chaud!) The trip down was a lot easier than the climb up - we were really glad we had taken the time to do the climb as we were in too much of a hurry when we were at Vulcano in 2005. After a short rest, some lunch and cleanup, we left about 3:00 PM hoping to arrive in Sardinia about 9:00AM two days later - it turned out we were only about 15 minutes off!
The northeast coast of Sardinia is a cruising paradise with many little harbors and beautiful turquoise water, unfortunately most of them open to the north, which is the direction that the "bad" mistral type winds come from. We are enjoying this bay while the south winds predominate - in two days we will move to a snug harbor just a few miles away while the predicted "blast" from the north goes through - then we will explore some more as we move north. Porto Cervo, a harbor in the Costa Smeralda founded by the Aga Kahn is a resort for the fabulously wealthy and is about ten miles north of here - we may poke our head in, but it is way too expensive to spend the night. We will find a nice anchorage instead!