Fish market at Gallipoli
The tail end of the storm that clobbered us
LIGHTNING SIGNALLED THE ONSET OF SPRING
BY ROD MCCALLUM
Brooke and Nicky on Mussolini's Steps W
e are now getting close to leaving Italy. We sailed on a cracking beat today 20 miles to the north of Crotone to Ciro, Tomorrow we sail the 57 miles across to the bottom of the heel of Italy to Gallipoli
(not the one in Turkey) as we hear it is well worth a visit. We left Ciro at 0630 and headed out of the harbour to find we had 15-20 knots of wind out of the nor'west, right on the beam. We were soon doing six to eight knots and just creamed along, eating up the miles, and the land disappeared very quickly astern. We arrived at Gallipoli at around 1530. Earlier in the afternoon, a large container ship appeared out of the haze and we were definitely on a collision course. We were the stand-on vessel as we were sailing, but he was on our starboard side and much bigger, so at about three miles separation I made a bold move and turned 90 degrees to starboard to bring us almost to a halt.
Thirty seconds later we saw her starting to heel to starboard, as she decided we had right of way after all and turned about 30 degrees to port! As the ship passed us we heard a long blast from
26 Professional Skipper September/October 2011
Looking down Mussolini's Steps to Santa Maria di Leuca Harbour
her horn. I called her on channel 16 and thanked the skipper. "You are welcome!" he said.
I did wonder what language had been used in their galley when all the pots and pans went flying as the ship heeled over. About 15 miles out, we were surprised to find a police plane doing several very low passes over us, close enough to see the pilots.
At our arrival in the harbour a guy came out in a dinghy to ask if we wanted to stay, to which we answered "Yes". We were then kept "jilling" about for half an hour while someone decided which of the many berths we would have. Once we were moored we were told to bring our passports and ship's papers to the marina office. We wasted another half hour while a very incompetent girl tried to photocopy everything and write it down on various forms. It's not easy to get it right when you have photocopied the "next of kin" page instead of the main passport page! We thought it was all over, but three armed policemen then raced up in a squad car and we went through the whole process again. Finally, it was all over an hour later and we were free to go. Thank
