A great place to rest in Italy’s foot

With an eventful overnight crossing behind us and a dead engine in front of us, we ended up spending three days and nights in Roccella Ionica. Well, really in the marina – Porto Delle Grazie Marina di Roccella. The town was a forty minute walk away. Location-wise, you can think of it as the ball of Italy’s foot. We arrived on a Saturday, and the engine mechanic wasn’t able to come work until Monday.

Unfortunately, we were not able to get Cuala and Olivier to their departure destination of Catania, Sicily. So, they left us a day early and took trains there. Interestingly, they texted us with news that their train was actually boarding the ferry from the mainland over to Sicily. Hard to imagine! They sent great photos and news of Catania, so we’re looking forward to seeing it soon.

Conor and I strolled into town one of our afternoons, and found it to be quite uninspiring, unfortunately. Cuala had warned us as she did the walk the day prior. Given we were there on a Sunday, pretty much everything was closed too.

However, we can’t say enough good things about this marina. Highly recommend as a beautiful, restful place! Conor can’t stop saying how much he loves this location, and it’s probably one of the nicest marina locations we’ve stayed in. You just have to come well provisioned due to its distance from town and its lack of much facilities. However, what it does have:

– The nicest, most helpful marina staff we’ve likely encountered. They’ve been great helping with our special docking, sourcing an engine mechanic, organizing a taxi for Cuala and Olivier, fueling, etc.

– A beautiful, calm setting. It’s a lovely, spacious marina with a row of pine trees at the top, shallow bright green water, lots of (jumping) fish, seagulls playing in the water, and the perfect view from our stern of the marina entrance, mountains and sunsets. Turns out this peninsula is made up of national parks and beaches.

– A nice promenade all along the endless sandy beach well into and past town. We meant to go swimming one day, but didn’t end up swinging it.

– Great Wi-Fi. That’s a treat as of late!

– A handy fuel dock. Many marinas don’t have these, but this one was straightforward to use and great for filling up after our long crossing.

– The best self-service laundry opportunity to date! If you read my former post, you know how important this is. While the rest of their facilities were not great, they had available two large washers and one large dryer, each only 4 Euro a load. And, there was no need for special coins. I had three large loads done in record time! 🙂

The quiet time here afforded us the chance to catch up on sleep and all kinds of boat chores. Conor had time to fix the broken reefing line, the jack lines, and the forward cabin ceiling.

And, the engine was successfully repaired on Monday. Hallelujah! I’ve come to understand that some readers are interested in the techie details, so I’ll try to provide some here… 🙂

Symptom: The engine sputtered out a couple minutes after starting and eventually wouldn’t start at all.

Problem:  The mechanics discovered a clogged nozzle in the fuel line from tank to fuel pre-filter. The clog was caused by a dissolved silicon gasket made with wrong materials – it became corroded by diesel, fell into the fuel tank, dissolved, and got into fuel line. There was also a starter motor circuit with severed electrical connections that needed repair.

Resolution: They cleaned the nozzle and reconnected everything. They also fixed loose electrical connections and checked the starboard engine. Thankfully, it didn’t have these problems.

Another interesting thing about this marina is that strolling around it seems to be a big activity for the locals. Most of the boats here are small motor boats and fishing boats. So, a catamaran sitting at the end of a big dock promenade like we were must seem interesting.

We had many visitors! Twice we even had people come aboard. First, an older couple came by shortly after we arrived and were eating lunch. They looked super curious, so Conor invited them aboard to check out the boat. Very nice local Italian couple. Many hours later we heard a knocking on the boat. The same couple had returned to thank us with a goodie bag of local delicacies such as olives, sausages, onion jam, etc. We were so surprised! Extremely kind of them. The next day a father of four very young children (all under the age of 8) were walking around and also seemed super curious. Conor invited all the kids aboard and we were shuffling them to the helm seat. They seemed quite tickled to all be able to sit up there, and Conor took a photo of them for the dad. We’ve just never had so much interest in the boat before!

After our restful time here, we were rejuvenated and ready for our last long haul of the year…