It might not have been one of our better decisions to leave Vieste on Wednesday 17^th July to sail to another coastal town further south, but set off we did. The moderate northerly wind was no problem but the sea was still boiling from the strong winds of the previous few days and even getting out of the north facing harbour was excitement we had not bargained for.

It was a downhill sail and very fast which was a great relief to the crew who had to don the sea bands to maintain equilibrium!  Trani and Bischelie, the ports we had hoped to visit were going to be untenable with the big onshore swell, so we kept going a full 55 miles to the major port of Bari. We arrived just before 7pm to a warm welcome from a private sailing club who helped us moor up on their visitors’ pontoon.  We were a long way out of town, but the bikes came in handy and we enjoyed exploring the old medieval town of Bari, complete with castle, lots of churches, residential back streets and most famously the shrine and tomb of Saint Nicholas, who is, amongst other seasonal obligations, the patron saint of sailors.

On Saturday 20^th July we sailed 12 miles down the coast to Mola di Bari, a smaller characterful fishing port that had been commended to us for the fresh fish being landed, traded, cooked and served straight onto your plate! The harbour was very shallow and despite going aground where the pilot and charts promised us deeper water, we made it into the small harbour and secured the penultimate berth in the Nautical Daphne Marine.

We just happened to be in Mola di Bari on the same night as a great commotion. This turned out to be the opening ceremony of the area’s ‘Games’, due to start the following day. It was like the Olympic ceremony all over again only without Danny Boyle’s input and short of a few million quid in the kitty for special effects.  Despite a charming lack of organisation, several teams, led by rather good drummers and talented flag wavers, converged from various side streets on the town’s central square. We were royally entertained along with what seemed like thousands of others spectators. After enough of the festivities we fetched up in a fish restaurant alongside the fish market to enjoy the day’s catch. Nigel devoured an octopus and Mo enjoyed a Spingola, or sea bass.

Back to Bari, we are now moored in the Marina Ranieri  as we are leaving the boat here to take a bus to Naples to meet up for a day with nephew Nick, his wife Maria and children Elin and Mia, who are spending a few weeks with Maria’s family in the town she grew up in.

Lastovo is one of the western most islands of Croatia and makes an attractive setting off point for Italy as the distance to cross to the tip of the peninsular jutting out from the east coast of Italy is only 60 miles, a manageable day sail.  Fun and games as usual to clear customs out of Croatia, but the police were very co-operative and met us out of hours at 6am to give us the necessary departure stamp, so we could get an early start to ensure our landfall in daylight. The policeman was anxious to ensure that we left immediately, which of course we did. We don’t think the Lastovo police know that Croatia has joined the EU, or more likely the central authorities had no plan lined up to roll out after July 1^st to ease all these departure regulations.

We motored for 3 hours, sailed on a beam reach for 7 hours and reached the Italian coast soon after 4pm.  It was a great sail with the autohelm on most of the way.

We received a warm welcome onto the one and only viable yacht pontoon in Vieste, but we were surprised not to find the larger marina that the pilot book had promised. We subsequently found out that there had been a marina but someone absconded with all the EU investment money and left a huge infrastructure in such debt that the project was frozen.  What Vieste is left with is the basis of a fantastic marine facility, smart wharves, pontoon facilities, all new, but abandoned and not being developed as there is no more money.  It is in the hands of the local community now, so in true Italian style it may never develop further which is a great shame for visiting yachts.

We spent 4 lovely days in Vieste, exploring the old and new towns and soaking up our first real taste of Italian life. Vieste is a busy seaside resort with long sandy beaches both north and south of the town, which itself has bustling main streets with shops, cafes, ice cream parlours and markets. An old part is built on a rock peninsular which has a myriad of quiet meandering backstreets containing houses,  restaurants, shops and cafes winding up to a castle and church from which there are magnificent views.

We enjoyed good food and good wine, stocked up on proscuttio and pasta, lovely fruit and vegetables and spent much time people watching, entranced by the Italians’ ability to speak loud and fast for hours on end. Even buying one loaf of bread seemed to take the locals several minutes of dialogue each!

Our inability to speak and understand any real Italian was frustrating for us and for them as we found very few Italians who could speak much English.  Thank heavens for Catrionna, the lady who runs the pontoon we are moored on.   She is the local Mrs. Fixit and fount of all local knowledge, organising laundry, gas and many other things requried.  She is also the local HLR for the Cruising Association.

Hoping to leave Vieste on Wednesday 17th July, but we have to wait for the strong winds to abate which with any luck may happen during tonight. Heading south towards Bari.

Deja Vu’s re-rig by Sunbeam Yachts went well, according to plan and on schedule.  New stays, spreaders, fittings, wind instrument and refurbished genoa furling gear had all been installed and set up, under the excellent expert supervision of Sunbeam’s director Manfred Shoechl and we were ready to leave San Giorgio and the sweltering 30 degrees C, mosquito-ridden river marina.

We stocked up with a variety of Italian goodies at the nearby supermarket we had pedalled to via the cycleway running alongside the busy dual carriageway, and we awaited the arrival of Farnham friends Peter and Sharron Hornsby. They duly arrived in time for seafood pasta at GiGi’s, unpacked in the comparative cool of late evening and were ready for their onboard safety briefing before our departure at 9am on Thursday 20^th June. Farewell to Northern Italy this time round.

We made it into Italian waters on Saturday June 1st after a good sail from Umag. Crossing the Gulf of Trieste was quite hazardous with lots of floating logs and tree parts around, presumably washed down the Italian rivers. It gets quite shallow in the northern most part of the Gulf and acts as an anchorage to many ships waiting to go into the port of Trieste, so we navigated around quite an array of vessels to find the small buoys marking the channel into Porto Buso, which was the gateway to the Lagoon and eventually mainland Italy.

The flat rough ribbon of land that was Porto Buso was littered with a few trees and a couple of derelict buildings and beyond this the lagoon stretched three or four miles across to the actual mainland of Italy. It was surreal motoring through the narrow channel, dredged to about 6 metres with the surrounding water being very shallow indeed. Channels across the lagoon, marked with red and green buoys were actually signposted…Grado and Trieste one way, Murano the other. We went straight across and into the River that led us up to Cantieri Marina San Giorgio, where Sunbeam yachts have their yard.

It was all very rural in one direction but we passed ship yards and signs of industrial activity in another before reaching the Marina and finding ourselves a berth to tie into. We were faced with stern-to moorings with tall posts which Mo had to lasso ropes onto to hold the bow! Nigel moored up perfectly but Deja Vu had to breathe in as the berth was obviously meant for less beamy boats.  Ashore we found very little English was spoken by the locals so were grateful to meet Gigi in the Marina restaurant who helped us with some of the translations. We had to wait until Monday for Pierre Angelo to turn up for work to get any sense at all out of the Marina officials, as fortunately for us he spoke quite good English. We feel as if we have discovered the only other nation with the same application for language learning as the English!

We have met a lot of other Sunbeam boat owners as it is a very popular and convenient place for the Swiss, Germans and Austrians to keep their boats, being only a three or four hour drive to their homes. We were even invited to a German couple’s launch party for their shiny new Sunbeam 42 which took place on the same pontoon we were on. Champagne and canapes at 1600 was very pleasant!

We have been here now for 4 days and return to UK on Wednesday 5th June. We have noticed a stark contrast  between what we have been used to in Croatia and what we find in this relatively sleepy Marina. Admittedly they are not used to visitors, especially not English ones, but there is a very ‘demani’ attitude where nothing seems to matter. How this contrasts with the relatively teutonic approach of the Croatians!

The marina has a pleasant swimming pool which was very welcome after the bike ride into the town of San Giorgio, about 4 km away.  The purpose was to replace an empty gas bottle.  A mission duly accomplished after a few wrong turns.

We are here in San Giorgio for Sunbeam to replace the rigging on Deja Vu II whilst we return home for a couple of weeks. At last  on Tuesday Manfred from Sunbeam yachts duly appeared and confidence that the rigging job might eventually get done improved.  Time will tell, we leave tomorrow for home!