High pressure over the Mediterranean gave us flat seas and very little wind in the southern Tyhrranean sea.  With such settled conditions we decided to divert to Stromboli on our passage south to the Straits of Messina.

100m off the pier at San Lorenzo was an inviting looking mooring buoy but the line to the bottom looked suspect. Frank, who ran a trip boat and whose buoy it turned out to be, accepted a beer and spelled out clearly that it wouldn’t hold if the wind got up and anyway we had to be off by 7 o’clock. A point he reinforced later shouting from the beach.

Dutifully we waited for the trip boats to tie up at the pier for the night and gingerly approached looking for a spot for Compromis. Large gruff ferrymen made it quite clear that we should go somewhere else and drop our hook. We took their kind advice and all was well.

Tim and Stewart walked up the volcano in the afternoon and returned with tales of derring do and large falls of hot pumice down the scree slopes and into the sea. Back on board after a couple of beers ashore Ian set about the evening meal. I saw mince, onions and peppers go in and heard talk of two or three cloves of garlic while I was sent to the vegetable store in the stern to get the potatoes. The resulting dish was served in the cockpit under the red glow from Stromboli’s crater and accompanied by delicious broccoli steamed with garlic, lemons and butter. Dismissive of his talent, Ian gave the dish a very rude name but the next morning sailing across to Messina Tim came up with Strombroccoli.

Next morning we motored past the vent and the scree slopes. High up near the rim puffs of white ash marked the path of large boulders bounding down the slope, each impact dislodging others until there must have been a hundred or more and soon the first ones were plunging into the sea sending up clouds of water and steam and giving off the sound of artillery shells.

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