Pontine Islands and Overnights

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We found one bar/café that had Wifi, but it was not strong or consistent enough to update my blog, but we did catch up with some email while enjoying a glass of wine. Had leftovers from the prior day’s market and then popcorn for treat.

On Thursday morning, we did our usual dockside showers and a bit of laundry. Alan hauled some fresh water from the town’s public water hose so we could do this. Before leaving for our 2nd overnight, we picked up a case of beer, more water, and slices of pizza for the road.

Naples, Italy to Dubrovnik, Croatia

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Charlie, Ken’s nephew joined Ken & Kristine for his 10 week summer job as the Grateful Red Mediterranean crew. He arrived late to Naples, took the Italian train to the boats harbor. The sail from Naples followed the route of the Odyssey. past the island of the Sirens, where Odysseus was tied to the mast to hear the Sirens and his crew let the counter winds out of the bag. The Grateful Red visited volcanic islands where the six-headed monster Scylla lived and the volcano still spews lava into the sea. Through the Straits of Messina, home of the whirlpool that sucked in Odysseus’s ship, followed by the long, boring sail along the bottom of the Italian boot with only interruptions being a few visits by the Italian coast guard (war in Libya was on going with NATO bombers flying overhead and the coast guard looking for boats full of Libyans fleeing to Italy). After a couple of high wind storms and hours of no wind motoring, the crew of three arrived in Dubrovnik.

Porto Giglio – Last of the Tuscan Islands

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On Wednesday, we arrived at Porto Giglio, last of the beer drunk, needing showers and finding that at 4pm, all stores are closed (what they had of them) and the visitors pontoon was crowded with small motor yachts. Plenty of room on their concrete quay so we tied up. No electric and the water is not drinkable so we hauled several containers full for our drinking water. Alan made a deal with the Ormeggiatori (Italian for Capitanaire) that he would take our 2.5 gal tank of gas we DID NOT NEED, in exchange for our berth fee for the night. We had to leave on Thursday by 2pm because some ferry’s were expected for the quay. No problem. We got the empty tank back and filled it with Diesel as our back up plan for running out of fuel. (later proved useful as we ran out of gas heading into our next marina after our overnight motor)