Day 3: Ischia to Ventotene

In the morning we wake to brilliant blue skies after yesterdays rains.  Bill and I decide to start the day with a refreshing swim in the bay.  

Jimmy uses his drone to capture a nice aerial photo of our beautiful boat, the day and of course the Piratis!

At 9:40 Amos and Dan weigh anchor as we leave Saint’ Angelo bay to move our sail further West into the Med.  

But the sailing gods frowned on us (and perhaps we learned a new lesson?) and we fouled our halyard (the rope that pulls up the sail) on the mast light fixture while hoisting the main sail. We tried for about 15 minutes to clear the tangle but the harder we tried the worse it seemed to get. Thinking our only option was to admit failure and make the call of shame to the sailing company to bail us out Steve remembered the bosun seat and I “volunteered” to be the Mast Monkey and take a vertical hike up the mast.  

Amos winches me up using the genoa halyard and in a few minutes I had the halyard free and we were able to raise the mainsail!  Luckily the seas were way more calm than yesterday, Amos didn’t drop me and everything worked out to plan!

Before we knew it Steve was working hard as the Cap’n as we motor sailed our way about 25 miles to Ventotane.  The seas and winds were incredibly and disappointedly calm today so lots of time for day drinking. 

However Steve did have to hustle hard at Ventotene because our plan to dock in the much bigger and therefore easier Porto Nuova port was hijacked by the guy on the harbor radio who sent Enrico out to lead us into the much, much smaller and difficult Porto Vechio. Enrico squeezed us into a very tight marina and Steve did a great job (thanks also bow thrusters and Enrico for the push!) and we ended up with a very nice berth in the  heart of the village and center of activity. We were too busy to grab a photo of the parking job but this photo from later that evening should give you an idea of how tight the marina is. 

Another new experience, we docked bow first and had to use what seemed to be a miserably small and wobbly gang plank to get on/off the boat.  Jimmy leveraged his past athletic career as a balance beam gymnast to make it ashore. It was a wobbly ass board and way more harder than it looks. 

In the process of giving Bill a hand coming down the gang plank my sun glasses were knocked off my head and became the casualty of an errant footstep. Good bye $12 sunglasses!!  Hello Bill!

A late lunch of octopus was had by all (but me) right across from our overnight parking spot. Mmmm. It actually tasted pretty good from the one bite I had but everyone else cleaned their plate!

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Ventotane has been worn down by the sea over millions of years and has left many caverns and caves. This tunnel connects the marina/town on the west to the east side….

….providing this secluded and calm beach and bay on the other side. 

Another view of the marina village and merchants tucked into caves worn into place over time.  

We had a very nice happy hour of wine and bruschetta/olives/cheese but for some reason the only picture we have from 2+ hours was this photo adjacent to our table of two attractive dive shop women and our server.  Oh well, you get the idea?

Facing our bow and the marina street scene you get  perhaps a small idea of what a very nice time we had today.  Good night Ventotane!!