We are back in the anchorage in Port Levante on Volcano after a great relaxing week in Salina. We decided to go back into holiday mode so spent 6 days in Salina with no sailing and plenty of chilling out - hence the lack of posts. We have decided Salina is a great place and worth stopping at and the marina there is the cheapest place in all of the islands.... and it has toilets and showers.
We did a couple of bus tours round the island on the white knuckle ride bus. There are a lot of steep hills so the roads zig-zag up them with big drops and cars coming the other way don't seem to bothered which side of the road they are on. I am not sure how we managed to miss a woman driver coming the other way doing her hair rollers (I think!) and only looking up at the last minute. Pam's not sitting at the front of the bus any more! We also had a couple of very nice meals (one in the Porto Bello restaurant overlooking the harbour) although they were expensive - well we were in holiday mode!
We also took the tour boat to see Stromboli. This is a 12 hour trip over to Stomboli (30 miles away) for a swim, a look around the town and then stop on the way back as it goes dark to see the volcano in action. We could have done this on our boat but it would have taken 35 Euros worth of diesel and meant motoring back in the dark - anchoring on Stromboli is not to be recommended with any swell around - and the mooring bouys laid there have no better protection and they are 40 Euros a night. It was cheaper instead to do the 40 Euro each tour boat trip. Very worth while doing. The island (and small town) are a delight to walk round and the Volcano is spectacular. You go past the north west face of the island on the way there to see the lava flows that have cut a hugh slice down the side of the island - nothing grows there. In daylight it is facinating. As it goes dark, the tour boat stops off the north west face of the island and you can watch the spurts of lava and sparks firing out of the top of the crater. You get a spurt every 5 minutes or so (the book says 20 minutes so we must have caught it on a good day). If you do this trip - don't bother with the food on the boat. Eat on the island!!
On Saturday we left Salina to head down the Vulcano to meet up with Trevor and Lesley on Kishorn who had finally made it to the Aeolians. We stopped to fill up with diesel in Lipari on the way and then anchored next to Kishorn in Port Levante (on the east side - still a reasonably high level of swell from the west). It was good to hear all their news and had a good evening catching up. Only thing that spoilt it was just after they had left, while I was finishing my beer, a tour boat went past and caused so much swell that the citronella candle on the table fell off and deposited all the hot wax on the teak deak. Pam is cleaning it up as I type!!! .......now the reason Pam is cleaning up the wax is because I got up really early this morning at 8.45am to sort out the heads! It has not been pumping well so 2 days ago I replaced the "O" ring on the piston. I tried a bigger than normal "O" ring and it proved too hard to pump so I had to re-do it and put the right one in. Bit of pain but it is now done.
Today we will sail around to the anchorage on the west side of the island - wind is going easterly. Trevor and Lesley have just gone there so we will follow in an hour or so. Not too sure of our plans for the next few days but likey that we will sail with Kishorn (and Chica who are arriving today) down to Reggio and the first leg of the sail to Greece - sometime in the next 2 weeks. I would like to try and get to Corfu in time to see a couple of the Lions test matches.
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