If The Shoe Fits.........

From Sicily we had decided to make passage as quickly as possible, weather permitting, to Brindisi our last port of call in Italy before crossing the Adriatic to Dubrovnik. The coast of the toe and heel of Italy is inhospitable at this time of year, particularly the Golfo di Squillace (the bay between the toe and the ball of the foot) and the Golfo di Taranto (the bay forming the instep) and ports of refuge are spaced at least a full day’s sail apart.
As we set sail from Riposto, Sicily bound for Crotone a passage of some 24 hours the sky looked evil over the Messina Straights and even more menacing as we passed Capo Spartivento, the most south westerly point of mainland Italy. Sure enough, crossing the Golfo di Squillace was, to say the least, exciting, with violent thunderstorms and 30 knot gusts. We achieved 9 knots under sail, not surfing, and an average of 8 knots for one particular hour. As we made our landfall in the morning of Neal’s 62nd birthday the wind eased and the sea calmed down, Miggy cooked bacon (from Malta) butties as a treat, and we tied up in Crotone with help from a very willing and pleasant Ormaggiatori. I was delighted to receive cards from Betsy and Beryl and I was very excited to receive from Miggy a shirt and a bottle of good brandy.
Crotone is an interesting place with a significant Greek history. The great mathematician and philosopher, Pythagoras, was the City’s best known son who founded his School of Multidisciplinary Research with its basis in Mathematics here in 530BC. It is the regional centre and has a good array of international brand shops and a busy nightlife along the shore, particularly for the young. The array of fine villas is evidence of the fact that the town was extremely wealthy. Indeed it still appears to be so despite the fact that it is a bit worn at the edges! Crotone affords little shelter from the southerly wind and the swell in the harbour makes things very uncomfortable so we decided o move on to S. Maria di Leuca today a trip of 75 miles across the Golfo di Taranto or in other words from the toe to the heel across the instep. We encountered fog in patches with visibility down to 100m and we were very grateful for the radar. There was no wind so we were under engine for the whole passage. We saw Dolphins in 2000 metres of water, of which Miggy took the best photo yet, and there were turtles large and small. S. Maria di Leuca is also an unprotected, swelly harbour and, considering the forecast of strong winds, we decided to go to Otranto the next day where the shelter was reported to be better. On passage we rounded Capo d’Otranto, the most easterly point in Italy, and crossed latitude 40 degrees N into the Adriatic Sea.
Otranto was one of Republican Rome’s leading ports for trade with the Greeks and Asia. The Normans arrived in the eleventh century but were ousted by the Turks in 1480 when all the inhabitants bar 800 were slaughtered. The survivors were promised their lives if they denounced Christianity but they refused. The bones of the martyrs are housed in the Norman Duomo which has a vast mosaic floor laid in the twelfth century by a solitary monk. The crypt with its columns has the feel of a mosque but there is no information to support this theory. A fifteenth century castle overlooking the port adds to the charm of this quaint place.
As the weather for the following day or two looked unsettled we decided to stay in Otranto for a couple of days and take a train journey inland to Lecce a town that has earned the title of ‘Florence of Baroque Art’ due to the abundance of Baroque architecture.
Characterised by rich sculptural decoration this style was possible in Lecce because of the local building material, pietra di Lecce – a soft, easily carved stone. Baroque the facades of the churches certainly are, so much so as to verge on the grotesque. The ice cream was heavenly and the train journey fun, rattling through olive groves and fields ablaze with poppies.
The approaches to the commercial port of Brindisi are festooned with power stations and oil refineries and the town has little to offer the discerning traveller!
For those planning to follow in our wake, Marina prices around the foot of Italy are extremely reasonable being in the region of £13 to £20 mid season for a 10.5 metre yacht.
We are very soon to cross to Dubrovnik and our summer cruising ground through the Islands of the Dalmatian coast to Venice and then back to winter at Lefkas in the Greek Ionian Islands..
Our Croatian Mobile Number operative from on or about the 16th April will be:
+385958382225