Otranto, Italy

This was our first stop in a new country, and being a British vessel, we had to go check-in at the local port authorities.

Having read Tristian Jones recently, we came in quite nervous, expecting to encounter narrow minded bureaucrats but instead we spent a very humorous hour laughing in a mixture of German(?) and sign language at the process’ silliness with the local officers.

It’s a cute, bizarre little city where nobody speaks English except for the lady at the hipster bookstore in the old town (and slightly embarrassingly we speak nil Italian). The old town is beautiful during the day, all shaded alleyways and sudden bright piazzas when the tourists are scared away by the heat. The ancient ruins are threaded nicely into the city, for example the fortress’ modern metal staircase addition serving as the infrastructure for getting back down onto the dockside. At night the fluorescents come on and the shops blaze white light onto the crowded streets. 

It was late when we arrived and by the time we had settled in it was dinner time. We wandered around looking for pizza, as we decided the night before in Othoni, that it would be our tradition to eat out on each last and first night we mark in a country. Beyond that we didn’t manage much since our energy during the days was sapped a little by the constant rolling from swell flowing into the wide open harbour.

We knew that if we wanted to make it to Sicily without getting caught by the weather we couldn’t linger too much in one place. So after two nights on anchor in Otranto and another calmer night in Santa Maria di Leuca, we woke up early and set out on a 13 hour sail down to Crotone.