"And all this time, in travail, sobbing, gaining on the current, we rowed into the strait - Skylla to port and on our starboard beam Kharibdis, dire forge of the salt sea tide. By heaven! when she vomited, all the sea was like a cauldron seething over intense fire, when the mixture suddenly heaves and rises" The Odyssey - Book 12.
We have made it through the Straits of Messina. Having checked the weather (again) we were up and off early, motoring all the way. We dodged a tanker and a couple of ferries as we left Milazzo, and then had only a few fishing boats to worry about before we reached the entrance to the Staits. They have had a bad reputation for centuries, but we had been assured by friends that if you could sail in The Solent, then you would be fine here. Two opposing flows of water meet in the Straits and the difference in salinity means that at the surface the current flows one way and 30 metres down it flows the other. At times you see large whirlpools or areas of flat smooth water, where the deeper water is forced to the surface. This must have been very frightening to the ancients who did not have the range of analysis tools and weather forecasts that we take for granted today.
 |
| The view back to the Straits, with on of the train carrying ferries passing |
The current was pushing us along, we had chosen to pass through when it would help us, and we found that our speed over the ground was 4 knots faster than our speed through the water. There is also a Traffic Separation Scheme (TSS) to keep ships apart as they pass through the Straits, 1.5 miles at the narrowest point. We had to keep out of the shipping lanes and stay well to the island side, which was fine with us.
The marina in Messina is unusual as it has finger pontoons to go between the boats, and is the first place we have seen these since the Atlantic coast. We assume that it must be because of the currents and winds that are experienced here, but we have ended up with a very strange mooring setup, a mixture of lines to the pontoon at the rear and sides and 3 lazy lines projecting out ahead of the boat. 3 seems like overkill, but the lines were in a real mess when we were given them, and it seems easier to leave them and just drop them when we leave than to try to do anything else.
The town seems unexciting from what we have seen. It has been rebuilt twice in the last 120 years, once because of an earthquake and tidal wave in 1908 and once after it was largely destroyed by bombing during the Second World War. They have carefully reconstructed the old buildings but clearly these were not quite as they once were.
When we took the train in Termini Imerese a week or so ago, we were intrigued to see that you could get a train to various places here from Milan or Rome. This prompted the question, is there a tunnel? After a bit of online research we found that the answer is no. There has been talk of building a bridge across the Straits on and off for years, but has not happened yet. Instead, they put the whole train on a ferry and bring it across, and then put it back on the tracks to continue. The process apparently takes about an hour at each end, and as a passenger, you are advised to get off the train, take the passenger ferry and then catch another train in the other side.
Miles Today - 24
Miles 2022 - 226
Comments
Post a Comment