Just like an RV?

Otranto, Italy

As we were preparing to leave Siracusa, we were exchanging some emails with friends about our upcoming plan: a two-day/overnight passage across the Straight of Messina to the heel of Italy. One friend wrote back and said, “Have fun tomorrow.” We could only chuckle at that, as overnight passages are seldom fun. Sailing at night has such a romantic image. A bright moon glistening on the calm sea, with a light breeze at your back, the sails full, no one else in sight and no sounds but the gentle swish of the boat gliding through the water. We have actually experienced those conditions at night and it is mesmerizing. But it isn’t the norm. Perhaps it is for people who can always pick the perfect conditions. We have to settle for doable wind and seas.

Another friend, upon hearing of our passage said, “Wow, it’s just like an RV, you can take it anywhere.” This made us laugh out loud. While there are some similarities between a cruising yacht and an RV, they are few. Both are self-contained, portable accommodations that do allow you to visits some remote places. Both are somewhat challenging to drive. But we have never seen an RV that heels on its side, pounds fore and aft while moving forward, or needs an anchor to stay in place. We have yet to see a boat that has brakes. And while we can go a lot of places, we cannot pull Berkeley East into a Walmart parking lot when we get tired.

As passages go, the trip to mainland Italy was ok. There was absolutely no wind so we motored for 32 hours, about 250 nautical miles. We fished, but caught nothing, and enriched our minds with Sudoko, working the puzzles in Italian to learn our numbers.

We were joined by several pods of dolphin jumping, no flying through the air next to the boat, but by the time we could retrieve the camera, they would be gone, the perfect dolphin photo eluding us yet again.

There was also a lot of heavy traffic during the day, with tankers and freighters all around us, passing far too close for our comfort level. At times we felt like sitting ducks. We passed a freighter, broken on the rocks that ran aground during bad weather, or maybe they got too close to land while trying to wave to friends.

During the night, there were fishing trawlers that were too busy with their nets to pay attention to passing boats, flashing buoys that appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the ocean directly in BE’s path, and the ultimate scare of a boat sneaking up at 2 am without lights. It could only be pirates, or the military. When they shined their bright lights on BE’s stern, we quickly decided that it was military. But their official status didn’t relieve the pressure of having a boat within twenty feet of Berkeley East, in the dark, blinding us with their lights, making no attempt to communicate. They finally called on the radio identifying them as an Italian War Ship. This did little to calm our nerves, knowing guns were most likely pointed at us in the night. They requested some basic information, fell back and followed us for several miles, until we heard them on the radio after another boat.

Late in the afternoon of our second day, we rounded the heel, entered the Adriatic Sea, pulled into Otranto and dropped the hook.

Back to civilization, it was Sunday evening and the Italians were all out for their evening parade. We had covered a lot of ground in a fairly short time. We were tired and thought how nice it would be to combine the freedom of cruising with the convenience of an RV. Sailing one minute, pulling onto land whenever the seas get too rough, the best of both worlds.