A Brescian in Sicily, our first story of 2015 – Part Five

Adriano Gatta, Brescia DOC, class of 1956, free-rider, mountaineer, former judo national team member, photography enthusiast (the photos accompanying the story are his). We have already brought you his article in which he explained his conversion from powerboat racer to sailor: we now publish in installments, as they used to do in old-time newspapers, the (semi-serious) account of his sailing over (and under) the sea of the Egadi Islands, Ustica and the Aeolian Islands, with some points on the northern coast, completed last summer.

READ THE PREVIOUS INSTALLMENT

At 6 a.m. the next morning the daredevils namely me, Beppe, Lucy and Betty are already on the path leading to the crater, we see the sun rise over the Calabrian coast and at 7 a.m. we are already at the fumaroles above the crater. It’s just us, grandiose spectacle and an infernal sulfur stench…..we take fluimucil aerosol among the sulfur flowers and resume the wide path up to the summit cross from which we sweep a 360° gaze over the Aeolian Islands and Etna.

We return on a loop trail having fun jumping down pumice scree, and by breakfast time we arrive in town as the first, sweaty tourists begin the guided ascent to the crater……
9:30 a.m. We wake our companions, who are still sleeping, with the smell of “Volluto, my favorite” ( as George would say…) and hot brioches. We pay for the berth and the nice manager even gives us a discount: 120 € instead of 140, well come on, better than nothing.

Clockwise tour of Vulcano, swim at the pools of Venus and then moor for the night at the Lipari stacks. I know I’m repeating myself but, again, this will be a spectacular sunset with the sun setting between the two columns with Alicudi and Filicudi on the horizon blazing……but most importantly we are finally alone; only four boats in the roadstead, unbelievable !!!

Aug. 19:
I wake up, bathe in a sea of oil with the volcano dominating the scene, and then perform some calaverna work with the skin around the ladder tube while the others are still asleep.
Then we calmly have breakfast, accompanied by Smétana and her Vltava(nothing to do with Schettino and Domnica, that’s a different tune) and the program for the day.
We decide to coast the W side of Lipari, swim at Cugno lungo and then sail, jib only, at 6 knots with 22 air in the channel between Lipari and Salina. We give bottom to Rinella and spend a wonderful evening having dinner aboard the Golly. In the morning we go to get supplies: water, food, diesel and…barber( I looked like Napoorsocapo) in Santa Maria di Salina, where, malgado mooring costs frightening amounts of money, water and fuel are priced normally.

In the afternoon, unfailing granita at Alfredo-bar in Lingua( hamlet of Salina) and in the evening excellent dinner always in Lingua and always at Alfredo-restaurant, with an adventurous transshipment by tender.
Aug. 21: On the way back Salina-Filicudi
short leg, only 13 miles, so wake up comfortably, swim to Pollara and gennaker all the way to Filicudi, just to humiliate Gigi who, alone with three women on board, doesn’t trust to hoist it.
At the pier we board a couple of friends from Brescia, Lidia and Gi( stands for Giacinto, for short) who arrived by hydrofoil from Palermo.

Epic feat !!! the transshipment takes place with the tender because there is strong undertow and, as in the best comedies I end up in the water with an acrobatic backward somersault…… then finally everything calms down and, after having dinner on board, we spend, finally, a quiet night at anchorage( also because given the prices at the buoy…..) In the morning we opt for a sightseeing tour of the island in a 9-seater van accompanied by a very nice and informed Filicudese lady who in addition to the island shows us the houses of some “VIPS” who have homes here: Barbareschi, Dapporto, the Melandri and Rutelli with Mrs. Palombelli who even have two houses( in the case of one of them, Russian….).

In the microcountry I catch a glimpse out of the corner of my eye of the sign of a hardware store run by a nice girl who has displayed a nice and ironic notice on the door….( see photo). Bathing at the Canna, spectacular as always, and then off we sail to Alicudi with the usual grecale that has been our faithful companion throughout this crazy month of August.
Constant 7-10 knots that, in the short stretch ( 8 miles) that separates us from Alicudi, allow us to once again humiliate the …Golly that with mainsail and genoa was detaching us.

As the women and Gi(unaware of sailing) sunbathe, I look into Beppe’s eyes and he understands on the fly and goes down below deck to retrieve the gennaker then, coming up, he shows me his thumb and asks me<< Do we humiliate him ?>> and both of us, at the same time, do thumbs down and cock the sail.
The comeback is very rapid, and now the women have also entered the game.
Marghe is ready with the CD and the triumphal march of Aida;

Gi has already retrieved a bottle of Franciacorta Brut and is ready to uncork it, and in the fateful moment of overtaking, with the music blaring and the formula 1-style uncorking, Beppe puts ashore the ” Jolly Roger,” classic pirate flag with skull and crossed femurs, and the three “ladies” indulge in an inelegant but very meaningful gesture, showing the astonished captain of the …Golly their B-sides.

Then usual buoy from the usual Giuseppe, who brings us the raw material for dinner, while waiting for the 6:30 p.m. hydrofoil that brings aboard the BP3 another guest, Pino from Casteggio(PV), my ski mountaineering partner and a great lover of salami and wine from Oltrepò, which he regularly gives to friends but, due to flight problems, could not take by boat….pity !!!
Then fish dinner…….mittticcco( as Bisteccone-Galeazzi would say)

August 23….the vacations are coming to an end — for some.
Wake up at dawn to watch the sun rise over Filicudi and Stromboli and to climb the mountain overlooking Ericusa, the island’s ancient name, before it gets too hot. Last night everyone had signed up, at six o’clock there are five( Pino, Gi, Lidia, Lucy and me) out of eleven….better that way, little brigade, blissful life. We climb up the boulder-strewn tracks where only mules pass and, after leaving behind the last houses of the village, inhabited by German tourists, we admire a grandiose spectacle;

below us, framed by a cobalt sea, the tiny village of Alicudi, the most solitary and isolated of the Aeolian Islands, and the sun rising between Filicudi and the even more distant Stromboli.
We climb to the top of Mount Harp Wire, an old extinct volcano almost 2200 meters high……1500 of which is submerged. Before 8 o’clock we are at the top( we are mountaineers) and from up here the view is superb, the day is beautiful and the sky is clear. Above us flies a harp, a buzzard in the local dialect, hence, in fact, the toponym of the mountain.

We get off quickly because we want to say goodbye to Beppe and Patti who are leaving on the 11 o’clock ferry. Having reached the outskirts of the village, as always I am drawn to the cemetery..don’t get me wrong, I’m not a necrophiliac; I like these isolated little cemeteries lost in front of the sea, I think in such a place it’s nice to rest — in our second life.

And here, in Alicudi’s small cemetery, I find the thing that, at the end of the vacation, I will describe as the strongest emotion of the whole vacation: in a semi-abandoned and sun-dried August graveyard, a single green spot, well cared for and, with difficulty, well-watered. An empty chair, in front of the grave of a 19-year-old boy…….piano, imagining a mother who comes up here every day to talk to her son and bring him fresh flowers…..

I could end this story here, in fact I could delete everything because when you are faced with certain misfortunes you wonder how it is possible to be lighthearted and tell the trivialities that happen to you on a vacation and I realize that, even now, as I write, I am crying…….
But life is like that, today you are there and tomorrow…..and it is for this very reason, because in recent years I have lost some friends younger than me that I have made this choice.

The choice to experience the sea while I have the strength, because, surely, sooner or later, He will have the upper hand and I don’t want to one day be forced to regret not having done it. We all go together to accompany Beppe and Patti to the ferry and stage a Greek tragedy with handkerchiefs in the wind and tears galore. The third and final part of this long sail that has seen Bravo Papa 3 frolicking throughout the southern Tyrrhenian Sea from the Egadi Islands to Ustica and the Aeolian Islands is about to begin.

At the port we purchased a motella of over three kilograms, which we will cook this evening in Cefalù. We set off on a sea of oil accompanied by a huge pod of Dolphins( bottlenose dolphins ?). That follows us for over an hour. We give bottom in front of the village with a sewer smell that, fortunately, disappears after a while. Ride ashore with the tender for ice cream and then to bed, still on a sea of oil…..too flat to be true; and in fact at 2:40 a.m. tired of dancing to i-pop we move to the roadstead of the new port where there is no undertow but on the other hand disco on the beach until 4 a.m………

At this point the vacation for us in bp3 is a journey backwards and we revisit places we have already visited on the way out. We return to Palermo, again at the Canottieri where Federico, very kind as always, has reserved two places for us. Since, finally, I am not restricted in the use of water, I devote the day to cleaning the boat while the Gollysti with the rest of my crew visit Palermo. In the evening we book the dinner suggested by Trip Advisor at the “Ciccio passami l’olio” restaurant-pizzeria in Gourmet flavor……..well we let it go, as we let Trip Advisor’s advice go, and, given also the “exquisite courtesy” of the owner, we change places on the way.

The next day we expect San Vito lo Capo, 40 miles.
Of course, road, indeed sea making, we don’t miss a dip in Mondello and one at the Zingaro reserve which, it may have been that I was unclogging the guest toilet that someone( Lidia) had clogged, it may have been that it is a nature reserve and not a marine one and therefore seen from the sea….it may have been full of people, did not give us much excitement and so with the usual grecalino at the leeward we sail to San Vito where we arrive for dinner time.
<< What I don’t understand is why all day long you have a medium-light wind that barely allows you to sail, in fact sometimes it forces you to give a little reinforcement with the engine, and then when you get to your destination and you would like to stop for the night the wind strengthens……>>

<< Ah, dear Adri, it is you who wanted to change; blissful lake thermals; you know when and from which direction they come and when they end……>>
Well, the fact of the matter is that the grecalino at 7 p.m.( we are on August 26, in less than a month is the equinox and so it is already almost dark) reached 20 knots and therefore it is unthinkable to stop at anchor in front of the village, which, moreover we would have liked to visit. With a stunning sunset we enter the Gulf of Makari west of the Cape and bottom out in a deserted roadstead. To our left the dolomitic Cape San Vito, to our right Mount Cofano, the lights of Erice and Levanzo and Marettimo on the horizon still blazing from the sun.

Excellent choice, a quiet night and an awakening cheered by the fresh croissants that Pino picked up for us in the village of San Vito.
You read that right; he swam ashore with the dinghy strapped to his foot, walked 4/5 km( he races triathlons) to San Vito, bought fresh bread and hot brioches, walked back and, swimming, the baker, delivered to the two boats.33
But where do you find another one like that ?

Naked bathing in the deserted bay and then departure for the last destination….again Egadi, and again Marettimo.
I told you it’s my favorite island and then I couldn’t let Pino, the Gi’s and my wife miss a dinner at La Scaletta, Giovanni’s.
The two boats will split up in Levanzo because Gigi is going directly to Favignana where his cousin has his home, while we will aim for Marettimo and then rejoin the …Golly in Favignana…CONTINUES