Why is Nobody Taking About This Island? S2 - EP15

So we have a three-way race between Runa, Darcy Green and a Leopard 42 and Woosh who are there. They are in Fontaine Pajot, I think. I'm not sure what size they are. Let's look on AIS and find out how big our competition are. But they're both flying parasailors. We're flying our Code Zero. We are racing to our anchorage. Sorry, we're not racing. We're not insured to race. We're all having a leisurely sail down the coastline collectively together. And we'll see who gets there first. You're joining us right at the start of a race along the northern Sicilian coastline against our friends from back home, Sam and Amy, who've been sailing their Leopard catamaran for the last four years. And today marks the first time we've ever been able to sail together. And with the race starting, Sam and Amy rushed to launch their parasailor, but very quickly ran into an issue with their sail setup. So our Danish friends are 12 metres. The Leopard 42 is obviously 42 foot, so 13 metres. We are the smallest coming in at 11, which will be our disadvantage potentially, but we are lighter. So I think it's going to be quite an interesting race or casual sail down the coast. We'll see who gets there first. And with everyone's sail set, the race officially started. And whilst Runa might be the smallest boat in the lineup, we're also the lightest. Plus our Code Zero is a little bit more versatile than our competitors' parasailors. So this is going to be an interesting race. This is so much fun. We've never had a three-way race with our friends before. Sorry, three-way casual sail down the coast. It's so much fun. And with eight to 10 knots of wind directly behind us, Woosh and Darcy Green took an early lead. So Woosh have lived up to their name and they have overtaken the pack. They have gone from last to first. We are still in last position. We are catching Darcy Green, the Leopard 42. We're catching. We're trying to take her up the inside. How far have we got to go, Ru? Six miles. We have six miles to go. So this race is only just getting started. I'm considering getting rid of all of our water supplies. No, not really. We're going to ditch the water, ditch the diesel. Let's go. Okay. So live race updates. I'm going to say we're in second place at the moment. 100% we're in second place. Darcy Green, which is Sam and Amy, have veered off deeper than us. I don't know why, because we're literally aiming straight for our destination. So I think they're hoping they're going to catch some better winds further towards the coast, but I don't think they're going to catch us. And in front of us, we've got Woosh, which are very much deserving of that first place at the moment. I'm not sure we're going to catch them, but we're going to try. Try indeed. We were tweaking the sails and working our sheets to try to maximise our performance in these lighter winds. But with the wind starting to shift and come around onto a beam reach, the guys started a struggle with their downwind sails. We are neck and neck, and I reckon we've got this. The winds have shifted around just a little bit in our favour, so they're still using their downwind sails. And we've got our code zero up, which means we can go all the way up to 40 degrees if we want. But we're on about 70 at the moment, so we've definitely got the better angle. We're going to win this. Let's go. Darcy Green. Darcy Green has her engines on. Given up. Engines on. Disqualified. Runa officially took the lead. And whilst Darcy Green may have resorted to using their engines, we were determined to sail all the way to our anchorage. So we are officially the last ones standing. Woosh and Darcy Green have both had to get sails down and get their motors on. And we are still sailing, just, we only have seven knots apparent. The other guys have motored up to try and get a better angle. And we are two miles to our anchorage, so they've got their engines on, they're disqualified. I think that gives Runa the win. And this little town marks the finishing line. This is Silla, a historic coastal town and fishing village in Calabria, on the mainland of Italy, located on the Strait of Messina. And of course, we all came together in the evening to celebrate a fun day of sailing. The next morning, it was time for me to try something a little bit different. This is e-foiling, basically a surfboard with a motor and foil attached to it. This is my first ever time being on a foil board. And after quite a few big fails, I finally started to get the hang of it. Well, almost. But that's enough mucking about. I wanted to explore the town before we left for our next destination. OK, our wait is finally over. We have been waiting weeks to come to one of the most special places in Italy, but we've been waiting for Andrew's brother and his girlfriend to come out so that we can explore the Aeolian Islands together. We're finally here and look how beautiful it is. And after spending our first night anchored in Vulcano, we were heading to the second island of La Pari, aiming for a small beach called Canetto. And whilst we couldn't sail thanks to the lack of wind, the scenery definitely made up for it. We arrived, dropped anchor before going ashore to introduce our guests to one of our favourite beach games, Mulky. So we are just having the best time on these islands. I've currently got two princess passengers on the front, sunbathing whilst we motor along. Andrew is in his office and it is a perfect temperature now. We were suffering from like mid to high 30s a few weeks ago. We're now like high 20s, about 30 degrees at the max, which is perfect. We haven't got much wind and I suppose we can be grateful for that because the downside is obviously we have to motor at the moment and we've got two knots of wind and you can see how flat it is behind me. The positive of that is that everybody that we've spoken to about the islands has said that no matter whether you think you're going to get protection, because the islands are so small and there's a lot of different swells around, you always seem to just be in the swell overnight and it can get pretty rough. So we've had flat seas for the first two nights. First night we stayed in Vulcano, which was a beautiful little town, really cool volcano, not active anymore, but really cool kind of topography, really steep. The only downside of Vulcano is it has a really strong smell of sulphur so you just wake up and you've got an instant smell of egg up your nose. We've just stayed behind us on the second island, which is Lopari. We stayed in a more remote anchorage last night. We haven't been into the main town and tonight we are going to a place called Salina, which is a tiny little island. We've heard or read that it is beautiful and can't wait to explore the town. So we're being absolutely spoiled at the moment. So we have arrived into yet another beautiful anchorage, but we're not sure if the anchor's held. Well, the anchor's held, we're not sure quite on what. We dropped the anchor in what we think is a sand patch, but we felt the anchor drag and then it caught. I think it might be a rock. So I'm going to jump in, I'm going to go dive the anchor and we're hoping we found some sand. If not, we have to re-anchor. I'm not going in now, Ruthie's going in. There's only one way to find out. There's Ruthie diving the anchor. We've anchored at about five metres of depth. We've got about 20 metres of chain out. It's going to be a really calm day. We're really open to the swell, but there is no swell. It's 0.1 metres tonight, that's forecast. So it should be a relatively calm, easy night and it's a good anchorage for this type of weather. So I've just been and dived down and the whole terrain in front of our boat is lots of mounds of dirt and weeds and just not a flat sandy patch. When I swam back, I thought we were anchored over this massive black rock that was really smooth to start swimming. Took a closer look and then realised that the sand is black here. So when we were looking for a sandy patch, a big white sandy patch, we were actually being numpties and we should have been looking for a big black sandy patch. And as soon as we repositioned our anchor in the sand, all the charter boats decided to join us and the anchorage started filling up very quickly. And the damage on some of the boats didn't fill us full of confidence. The next morning, we wanted to go ashore and explore the island. So we jumped into our tender and loaded up with garbage bags so we could get rid of them in town. Rubbish dealt with, we wandered through the beautiful streets of Salina. Exploring and breakfast completed. We headed back to the boat and left the anchorage looking for a swim spot. So I'm definitely glad that we came around mid-September because there is just charter boat after charter boat after charter boat around here. It's definitely the busiest area that we've been in Sicily but we had heard that if we come any earlier in the season around July and August, it is just chaos. So even though it's busy, I think we've nailed the timing because there's still plenty of space. We have been let down by a couple of quite rude Italian skippers, unfortunately, letting the side of the sailors down. We can't win them all. But we are... Um, I dropped the thing. Where are we? Lipari. We're lucky, we've got, at the moment we've just stopped off for a swim stop. We've got two other boats in this anchorage so loads of space. And all that's left to do for this afternoon before lunch is get the floaters in and go for a swim. So the wind is just not on our side at the moment. We are sailing around Lipari and as we were anchored over lunch we started to get some winds coming in but we were head to wind as we were leaving the island. So we thought as we come around to the 90 degree we'd be on a nice beam, perfect. And as we came around, as soon as we did we're still head to wind. We've got two knots of true wind. We just can't get our sails up round here. I mean, I suppose it could be worse. We could be in completely unprotected waters and we could have storms coming in but I just want to sail. Hey ho, we'll motor for a few more days. Okay, but one of the positives around sailing around here even if there's no wind, everywhere you look is just beautiful islands and gorgeous scenery. Normally I'm pretty bored when we're motoring. Eh, can't say it. When we're motoring, there we go. But you just can't be bored around here. It's just beautiful. We left our swim spot and motored round to the east of the island anchoring right outside Lipari town. So it's 11.30. I'm going to have to whisper because Ruth is in bed just below me but I've stayed up slightly later than I normally would because we're anchored right outside Lipari and Wendy, I don't know if you can see, has told us that at midnight, 11.30 right now we should be experiencing up to 33 knot gusts. Now 33 knots is pretty strong. Boats will start dragging. If you don't have good holding, you're potentially in trouble and we are maybe 50 metres from a breakwater from a big concrete breakwater. So I stayed up to be like, okay, well let's just keep an eye on this wind and it is 11.30. We should have really strong gusts. I don't know if you can tell, it is absolutely still. We barely have one or two knot gusts. There's no wind whatsoever and the forecast on Wendy has just been crazy today. It's not got anything right and it said we should have had 40 knot gusts three hours ago then the update changed, then it disappeared. Now it's back, it's not actually turned into anything. So I'm gonna go to bed, keeping one ear, one eye open to see if they do arrive but I think we might just avoid the storm. And heading to bed just after midnight, the weather was perfect. So I was hoping that the forecast was wrong once again. Okay, so quick update from last night. The weather, oh, I'm getting a wet bum from the rain. We were expecting 30 knots of wind to come in about midnight. It didn't come, I went to bed and turns out it was just four hours late. About four o'clock in the morning, we had high 20s come through, probably 28 knots, probably the highest we saw and then we saw a huge thunderstorm and for the first time this season, the first time in five, six months, it started raining as well. We've not seen rain at all and it was quite a rocky night. Swell started to come in after the wind and obviously with Ruth and I, it doesn't really matter. We're not overly bothered by a little bit of swell but my brother and his girlfriend are here. It's the first time they've ever been on a boat so they're slightly nervous and they were somewhat scared with the thunder and lightning last night. I'll look at the forecast again today from 11 o'clock. They were gonna have 30 knots come through La Pari again so we made a decision, let's get into a marina for tonight and that way, we don't have to be on the boat, the guys can go off exploring and they're gonna feel a little bit safer and we've just got a weather update at just past 11am and the storm has disappeared but the most we're gonna see is about 12 knot gusts today so we have booked into a marina for zero reason which is so frustrating because we hate marinas, we can't cancel it now, it's non-refundable but yeah, the weather has been so unpredictable the last few days. So off we went to the marina, Ruth was taking us in this time so I prepared our lines. With no wind and plenty of space, this should be a very simple docking. And just like that, we're docked up and this is a very unusual place to see Runa as we very rarely come into marinas. Well, we are in, we are docked based on the weather we had last night, I think it's probably the safest option. Not necessarily the safest but probably the sensible option for my brother and his partner. They were both quite nervous last night with the thunder and lightning that we were getting and it was a bit choppy with the swell as well. I mean, right now the clouds look okay to us and it's actually quite a nice day but we'll see what happens. But we've come in, we've docked and we've actually, to our surprise, we've docked right next to Capricorn. Capricorn are a ballet that we met in Western Sardinia probably about two months ago now. We had dinner with them and they went one way, we went the other and to our surprise, we've come in and we have crossed paths again and we've actually docked right next to them. So that was a nice special surprise for us. So we're on dock, so we might as well make the most of it, go explore Lopari and hopefully it gives the guys a bit of a better night's sleep tonight. So I'm just servicing our winch. We do this every year, it's come to the end of season so I thought whilst I've got an afternoon off, I'm going to service this winch, get it all sparkling and new and then it's done, one job out of the way. So I'm just cleaning it down with some soapy water and then all the components that need grease, that connect, just wiping down and putting some fresh grease on them. And with 12 months of salt and grime scrubbed off our windlass, it was time to head to shore and explore Lopari. We wandered around the town, admired the view and got a bite to eat all before the heavens opened and we got very wet. And whilst the rain only lasted for half an hour, the forecasted thunderstorms made a very brief appearance before we went back to the marina to dry off. So we have now been in a marina for two days which is very unusual for us but we've actually loved it. We came in initially because Andrew's brother and his girlfriend are quite nervous, have never been on a boat before and we just thought that it was a bit safer with the weather forecast that was due to be coming in or a bit more comfortable shall we say, not safer. But it turns out that the last two days have been calm as anything, the weather that was forecasted didn't come so actually we would have been totally fine on anchor but this marina has been a really nice little community, it's a nice vibe, there's lots of people around, the water is clean, it doesn't smell, it's actually been a really refreshing change for once. So I actually think we might do a few more marina stops next year. Well that was fun. We are leaving La Parry, we are excited to be back on the boat, back in the wild, but we have 1.9 knots of true wind. We're not sailing anywhere. It's just been week after week after week hasn't it of just no wind and we have been motoring, we've motored more in the last few weeks than we have done the whole of last season. Oh yeah. Yeah, crazy isn't it? But so no wind, we're not going very far, we're just going to head to a little island, no we're not. We're going to stay on the same island. We're staying on the same island but we're going to head to a beautiful little anchorage south of La Parry. Yeah. Yeah, get a little bit rugged vibes, leave the big cities or big towns, little towns behind us. Back into the wild. And despite motoring everywhere since arriving onto the islands, spirits were high as we headed towards yet another beautiful anchorage for the night. And this anchorage looks pretty special. All we had to do was find a spot and drop anchor. Well we have dropped anchor. Thankfully it was a relatively short motor for us. We did about half an hour and look at this anchorage. It is beautiful, so much more beautiful than a marina and there's a big sea stack as well. So we'll go get the snorkels out, get the paddleboard out and go for an explore. I don't know if we've mentioned, it's just the two of us again. We have Ditch, my brother and his partner. It's been lovely having them but we left them in La Parry. They've got the ferry back to mainland leaving us to explore these beautiful islands all by ourselves. And it's fine for us to celebrate because they don't watch Hatch Island anyway. When we were sailing mainland Sicily we would go several days, several hours without seeing any other boats and we'd come into an anchorage and we'd be the only ones there. And we asked the question kind of like, where are all the other boats? Turns out they're all here. Every bay that you come into is just full of both liveaboards and a lot, a lot of charters. But when the view is this special you can forgive how busy the islands are. And tonight everyone in the anchorage was treated to the most unbelievable sunset. Please remember to like and subscribe, drop us a comment below and we'll see you next week.