The only specialised marine publication in Oceania that focuses on the maritime industry, from super yachts to small craft to large commercial ships, including coastal shipping, tugs, tow boats, barges, ferries, tourist, sport-fishing craft
Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaleditions.com/i/39567
God this was the only place in Italy where any official showed any interest in us. Gallipoli is a wonderful place. The town has beautiful old buildings on an island joined by a wide bridge about 100m long, and a new town with ugly new buildings. The old town was walled, with many narrow streets and stone buildings about three or four stories high. The old town is famous for seeing off an attack by the British Navy in the early 1800s and sending them packing. The facade on the main church was stunning, but as the buildings nearby were built only 10m away it was impossible to stand back far enough to appreciate it all. Above the marina was a tall lighthouse with a grand set of marble steps leading up to it on either side of an artificial waterfall. These were built by Mussolini and they are called Mussolini's Steps. The waterway began at the top of the hill, so I guess the water had to be pumped up to make it work. We don't think water has flowed down it for a very long time. The rest of the town had some grand, run-down castles and mansions that all appear to date from the 1940s, so my guess is a number of Mussolini's generals set up holiday homes here around that time. During the night there was a long and very violent electrical storm, with huge lightning bolts and pelting rain. Morning dawned as if nothing had happened. I phoned a friend in Auckland and told her of the perfect day we had woken to, little knowing what was in store for us. About an hour out of Gallipoli we heard a clap of thunder and looked around a blue sky, trying to work out where it had come from. The sky gradually grew darker and a huge anvil cloud grew above the town, so we turned the engine on to put some distance between it and us. Next there were flashes of lightning up ahead of us and then all hell broke loose. I have been in a few electrical storms in my life but never one like that. Over the next two hours, hundreds of huge bright lightning forks hit the sea all around us, the thunder was absolutely deafening and it rained as though someone had opened the heavens. How we never got struck is a mystery to me but our wind instruments now no longer work. Either they got a pulse of static and blew up, or the torrential rain got into the connection at the top of the mast, so we will look into that later. We motored the last few miles to Santa Maria di Leuca on a mirror sea, under a hot sun. I couldn't believe it was the same day! We spent an hour looking for the Coast Guard to get stamped out of Italy, but they assured us even though we were from New Zealand we were within the European Community and would only be stamped out when we left the EC. We just hope the Greeks have the same rules. Many years ago Brooke spent 12 days in jail in Corfu for not having the correct paperwork, so we live in hope. As we went to bed the sky once again filled with lightning. We let ourselves off the quay at Santa Maria di Leuca a couple of metres, hardened up the two bow lines and closed all the hatches. The cool nights and rapid heating of the land during the day result in huge updraughts of moist warm air and thunderstorms. It's a sign that summer is approaching. The next morning we left Italy and headed out into the southern Adriatic for the Greek island of Fano, around 47 miles away. We were hit by a 1.5 knot current against us for the first 10 miles and then came into what must have been a giant eddy filled with plastic rubbish before picking up a nice breeze on the beam. So began a very pleasant sail. The wind came and went several times, so we motorsailed for about half the passage, but it was a glorious day and we were headed for Greece, so who cared! VIP.S82 September/October 2011 Professional Skipper 27