A snoop around, however, revealed a lovely little town, painted in pastel colours reminding us the Greek Island of Symi, although inundated with crowds of people, mostly Italians coming over on the fast ferries from Rome. We did spot the odd foreign tourist, but they were few and far between.
The longer we’ve stayed in Italy, though, the more we see the similarities with sailing in Australian in so many ways; speedboat manics who don’t care what damage they cause with their wake, marinas full of local boats and, hence, no room for transients, rules on where you can and cannot anchor and for how long, no dinghy docks anywhere and very few places to land a dinghy, resulting in us permanent hunting for a secure location, preferential designated anchoring areas for locally flagged boats only, no convenient laundry services or laundromats and no convenient way to fill up propane tanks. We had the same opinion of Australia as we do of Italy, in that they don’t need or particularly want the transient cruisers, because they have a huge boating market of their own!
By late afternoon it was bedlam in the anchorage after the Rome yachting invasion. We’d barely re-anchored further out of the bay, to remove ourselves and Paw Paw from the situation, when a huge yacht decides to anchor right across our bow, less than two boat lengths in front of us and then short scoped to squash in, when there was ample place to go further into the bay. Needless to say, the cruisers were quite happy to stay there until Roy said something after about half an hour, when they showed no signs of moving. Lo and behold the response Roy got in perfect English was: “I was just looking at that”; really, well when exactly were you going to stop looking and move! It just never ceases to amaze us. There have been many times where we’ve misjudged our anchoring, but at least we’ve had the common courtesy to move before being asked to do so, especially when you can clearly see it’s unsafe.
While Roy monitored the situation in the anchorage, Elaine did the laundry then unpacked her summer wardrobe; at last it was definitely hot enough for shorts and t-shirts, but she still hasn’t braved the freezing water. Just having to put her feet into it every time we beach the dinghy is enough for her. Roy, on the other hand, braved another plunge before dinner time, after he was sure a speedboat wasn’t going to ride over him!
Dinner onboard sealed the day, primarily because neither of us could be bothered to deal with the crowds ashore again. Once in the day was enough.
