Tue 2 Oct – Fouled prop

Today was probably one of the strangest days we’ve had since we’ve left our home in Barcelona. I woke up early and stuck my head out of the main hatch, just to be reminded where we are: the bizarre city of “Reggio di Calabria”. A seemingly big city at the toe of Italy’s boot, with endless concrete walls and very questionable looking people. I decided to use the early morning hours to read about this place a little, and boy … I had no idea. Reggio di Calabria has one hell of a history, from being occupied by pretty much any conquering force in the world to being destroyed by earthquakes multiple times. The most interesting and at the same time most frightening part of its history is this cities’ ties with the mafia. Even as I’m typing this I’m looking over my shoulder, just making sure … as you never know. Apparently the city is a stronghold of the ’Ndrangheta, a local mafia operating in Calabria. So much so that the complete city government was sacked in recent years due to ties with the Mafia. That would explain the strange vibe we were getting from the city as we were walking around yesterday.

We spent the rest of the morning playing around on our newly acquired phones. It’s funny how we decided to go for cheaper Android phones in the hopes to spend less time glued to the screen, and then spend a whole morning setting things up and faffing about … they are a blessing and a curse these things! Anyway, we managed to slip the lines and cast off for our 30 mile trip across to an anchorage called Taormina.

It started off rather uneventfully. We had no wind and prepared ourselves for a day of running the engine. An hour or so into our journey the local weather forecast came on, and a very robotic sounding lady announced fair weather, only disturbed by the occasional thunderstorm. And sure enough, a big black cloud was moving in and the wind was picking up. It was the strangest experience, as we went in no time from being bored with no wind to struggling to reef the sails. Once we’d reefed – basically making the sails smaller so the boat can be sailed in stronger winds – the wind dropped, and we were back to motoring again. So annoying!

The sea state turned out to be even more annoying than the flaky wind. There was a current running against us, and with a bit of wind blowing against the current we found ourselves being slapped around by the waves. It was not only uncomfortable, it was also really tiring and annoying to motor at just 3knts into such a confused sea.

What was even more worrisome was all the crap floating in the water. This area had seen some of the strong winds brought in by the “Medicane” a few days ago, and as a result there was a plethora of small and slightly bigger things floating in the water, waiting to hit and sink our ship. As we were pointing out the various things bobbing in the water around us, the radio came on and we overheard a conversation between the coast guard and another boat, who’s captain was announcing that they were heading towards a sinking ship. Sinking ship?!? Holy moly! No idea what’d happened, but overhearing conversations like this always make my spider senses tingle.

Just as I was thinking about how horrible it must be to lose your boat, we sailed past a big wooden structure in the water, which turned out to be a fridge plus an accompanying part of kitchen cabinetry. Scary! With our spidery senses on full alert we kept looking out for other debris floating in the water, and soon enough saw something poking out that looked like a little pyramid. We jokingly said “Looks like the pointy end of a boat sticking out of the water, haha” … only to find that this was exactly what it was – the pointy end of a completely submerged skiff. Luckily we couldn’t see any people in the water around us, so we thought it best to call it in with the coast guard. Well – easier said then done. Hailing the coast guard on channel 16 brought nothing but absolute silence. What followed was a rather confused conversation with Messina Radio and the Messina Harbour Master, who all thought that we were calling them to report a problem with our boat. Somehow we were unable to explain that it wasn’t us they needed to worry about, but the wreckage of a skiff drifting towards the Messina Straits. Unable to do anything about this situation we decided to continue on our bumpy journey. The sea state continued to deteriorate as we were dodging more and more floating debris.

At some point we had both wind and waves against us, which meant Bini was creeping along at 2.5 knots towards our destination, which we were becoming more uncertain would actually be protected from the swell. After what felt like beating through the waves forever we finally arrived at our anchorage.

In preparation to drop the anchor Camilla went to the bow to untie Bob and move him out of the way. Just as she was busy at the bow I heard a loud bang, and then felt the boat starting to massively vibrate. My first thought was that we’d hit something, and I quickly turned the engine to neutral. Losing your engine close to a beach is a sailors worst nightmare – without the ability to manoeuvre the boat you might just get washed up on shore. Running through a number of nasty scenarios in my head I shouted to Camilla that we’d lost our engine. She could still hear it running however so that turned out not to be the problem. The vibrations were at their worst when we had the prop in gear, so we figured it (unsurprisingly) must be fowled. She stayed very calm and suggested we drop anchor to stop the boat from drifting and go in the water to sort things out. We dropped the hook in 20 meters of water and Camilla got into her snorkelling gear. A short dive later she emerged with a massive piece of plastic in her hand. Apparently we had driven through a massive piece of Tarpaulin which was floating just below the surface waiting to wrap itself around our propeller. What a bitch! Luckily it was no match to a determined Camilla diving down there with a rigging knife in one hand and the GoPro camera in the other, and after about 10 minutes we’d freed the propeller and were making our way towards the anchorage. The anchorage turned out to be somewhat rolly, but hey – you can’t have everything. It does also have a fantastic view of Mt Etna. We were just happy that we’d made it to our destination and could finally call it a day – and what a weird one it was!