Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Writer and filmmaker Sal + photographer Mark have a five year plan to sail their Swan 47 MATILDA from Palma, Spain back to Sydney Australia. This weekly podcast shares the wonder and realities of living your dream while maintaining careers and a 50 year old boat.
Welcome and we are coming to you from ROCCELLA IONICA but first of all I'm Sal Balharrie
Mark:and I'm Mark Chew and
Sal:we are melting. I wonder if people can hear the heat in our voices. It's 35 degrees today. 55% humidity. What does that actually mean?
Mark:I don't know. I think 55% doesn't sound like a lot, but it's very humid. So last night, we crossed over from Sicily Yep. To Italy proper. Yep.
Mark:And if we can all visualize the boot of Italy Mhmm. I think we're just sort of under the instep.
Sal:Yep. Where where it hurts when you stick step on a piece of Lego.
Mark:Well, it hurts all over your foot, so it
Sal:doesn't really help. When it gets right in the middle of that. Anyway, we're we're we're the insole. The insole.
Mark:Called it the instep.
Sal:The instep.
Mark:Yeah. Okay. The instep. Okay. With the instep.
Mark:And we crossed over last night. It was just under a 100 miles. Not as good wind to start off with. There were some highlights that I'll get someone to talk about. At the start, we had a beautiful first five or six hours.
Mark:But then the wind dropped out, and we had to motor in the heat for the last sort of six or seven hours. Yeah. So what was the highlight of your trip?
Sal:Well, the highlight of the trip for me was actually just before we had dinner. And I and it's not a highlight. It was really a reality check. And that was listening to the radio and hearing banter between, it wasn't banter, was actually a call out between two ships giving the position of a migrant raft. I went over to the chart table, listened quite intently, and they were very strict with one another about getting the position right.
Sal:So I wrote that down. We worked out there about 60 nautical miles to our south.
Mark:Yes. That's about right. Mhmm.
Sal:And, wow. You know? What a reality check. I think what I was saddened by. I mean, the reality is that the both of those ships altered course to avoid, coming into contact with that boat.
Sal:We
Mark:How do you know that? Are you sure they didn't alter course to pick them up?
Sal:They were One fellow said, I'm maintaining my course, and the other said, Well, you're right. I'm not sure, but there was definitely an altered course. Let's hope that they were altering their course tomorrow.
Mark:I think there's been some court cases recently with people not making an effort to save migrants at sea. And I think there is a huge onus on And we had that discussion over dinner, well what do you do if you come across a raft full of, let's say, 20 or 30 people that's sort of slowly sinking Yep. On a boat that's 47 foot long. But we're not sailing
Sal:past them,
Mark:are we? No. You're not going to sail past them. And you certainly could fit 30 people on the boat standing room only or sitting room only. But boy.
Sal:We just have to. I mean, the rattyness of the sea last night, I was just thinking, gosh, if there's children in that boat. I mean, you just your heart just breaks. So no, they would definitely be aboard MATILDA. But, you know, as I say, we sailed we we didn't alter part our path to go and to go and pick them up.
Mark:Well, there was no point because there were two bigger boats in the area.
Sal:So yeah. Presumably. Presumably. But apart from that, I think also the banter that we had at 3AM with a massive cruise ship, the Viking. What was he called?
Sal:The Viking, sadly, a Norwegian ship, and I'm guessing that whole that whole ship would have been watching the soccer last night as England, sadly sorry, England. As England, defeated Norway. But that was interesting. It was interesting working out the lights on the ocean. I'm fascinated by lights and and what they represent.
Sal:And it was interesting because he sort of he cut a we we couldn't work out whether he's going in front or behind, and so you radioed him.
Mark:Yeah. And just checked and said made sure he could see us on the AIS, on our on our tracking device that everyone could see. And he was very polite and said, yes. We're passing a stern of you. Maintain your course and your speed.
Mark:And sure enough, he passes behind us this huge, great Huge. Huge, great cruise ship.
Sal:So close. I'll put a picture on Instagram because it was quite beautiful.
Mark:But I'm I can't remember if you haven't the first highlight I would have mentioned would have been the sun going down behind Mount Hatt.
Sal:Oh my gosh. Absolutely.
Mark:So just at sunset, as the sun just to the left of Mount Etna sort of slowly descended in over Sicily, and Mount Etna was sort of lit from behind. You could see some smoke coming off the top of it just way in the distance. As Sal said, you know, like every sailor who sailed this gulf between Sicily and Mainland Italy for the last Ever. For the last four thousand years or whatever it is has seen that site. Because Mount Etten has been here a lot longer than all of us.
Mark:Yeah. Found that pretty special.
Sal:Humbling. And I think, MATILDA MATILDA MATILDA
Mark:MATILDA MATILDA five nights there, six days. It's the first place we've come to where you're allowed to tie up to the town quay right in the middle of town for free, which is quite surprising because everything in Italy seems to be charged for. And you have to drop a bow anchor maybe about 40 meters from the quay and reverse up to the quay.
Sal:Do reckon that puts a lot of people off? Yeah.
Mark:I think it might. It's a bit tricky. I mean, if you do it in the morning when there's not a lot of wind, it's not too bad. The tricky bit is the last couple of meters because you've got to get your two stern lines and loop them through a ring or over a bollard. And to do that, you've either got to have help on the shore or you've got to make a flying leap with your transfer very close to the concrete.
Sal:So for people who don't understand that terminology, we're reversing in. You're backing
Mark:with reverse in reverse in Yeah. With two stern lines, and you've got to attach those to the key. And so that last little bit's tricky. Luckily, we had some help with somebody on the key to just wrap them over a
Sal:guys jumped off another boat and
Mark:And then once you've done that, you put out a gangplank, and you can stay maybe a couple of meter your transom's about a couple of meters from the concrete. And you tighten up your anchor, and you're sort of suspended there.
Sal:Once again, we're hoping that Rockner the Rockner holds, which she did beautifully.
Mark:Yeah. You can test it pretty hard and you can tension right up on your anchor because you've got your two stern lines tied off, and the boat's pretty much suspended tightly. And, yeah, we had four very very safe nights there and exploring the town. South was working hard mostly. So the town of Syracuse is sort of made up of two parts.
Mark:Half of it, the newer part, is on the on the mainland of Sicily. And then the little island called Dortilla is separated from the mainland by this little canal. That's really where the sort of the heart of the old town is. And that's where we were tied up. And the layers of history there, I mean, I'm not going to go through them now, are just quite extraordinary going back, you know, going back to 3,000 years, nearly two and a half thousand years.
Mark:And you're tied up in the middle of it. And there of course, there's a sort of layer of tourism over it, but I thought it was actually very well handled, the sort of tourist aspect.
Sal:I'm not sure I don't really understand what you mean. I think I like to it just feels a bit judgy about places. It feels like, oh, I'm arriving. I'm going give it my perspective. What do you mean by that?
Mark:Well, think, you know, most people would probably agree that Venice is no longer a functioning city. It's just purely a place that people visit and have art fairs and go for a couple of days and that's the thing. It's not an an actual functioning community. And some people say, I haven't been to Prague, but I've heard people say the same thing about Prague. And there are other cities in the world that are like that.
Sal:Places like Bonifacio, places like Siracusa, if you took the tourism amount, there's nothing.
Mark:Well, there'd be a beautiful town with a fishing village.
Sal:But there's no industry. I mean, the what's feeding the locals is, you know, tourism.
Mark:Oh, you know?
Sal:Okay. There's a dentist and there's a lawyer and but Ottia is very, very much a a tourist hub. I mean, you and I go to these places and, like, we had a perfect example of, like, the hamburger is that I am I love a hamburger, hamburger and and we're we're rating rating the the best hamburgers around Europe as we go. So far the winner is Valencia. And so we go into Siracusa, we've done some research, or sorry, Otilla, we've done some research and we're looking for places.
Sal:And we do tend to find that particularly at this time of year, obviously, you've got families and children. They don't tend to stray far away. They're not particularly adventurous. If there's four landmarks, they're gonna be around those landmarks. And we ended up heading outside of town to where there were locals, and to food trucks, and that was a fantastic, you know, fantastic experience.
Mark:So we're sitting outside the food truck beside this fairly scungy boatyard. And these guys just had been preparing basically sort of grilled meat and salads and things. We arrived about 08:00 and there's probably about four or five tables. By half past eight, that place was booming and not one tourist sight.
Sal:Tourist. It was
Mark:And a fairly basic delicious hamburger and not completely special, but freshly cooked.
Sal:Three on the chart.
Mark:And such a richer experience than sitting in a tourist restaurant on the island. So it's sort of getting back to what I was saying before that the the town does still have those those authentic experiences.
Sal:It's it's interesting. A place like Siracusa these places have I mean, Sicily is probably a bit different. Sicily hasn't had had the poverty that Southern Italy has had, and we're about to sort of experience Poirier in the coming week. But it's pretty it's it's it wears its, you know, heritage on its sleeve. I'm not sure what people are coming to see.
Sal:We tried to see the Archimedes Museum, which was an absolute sort of disaster. You you just need to
Mark:Just explain that to people so that they don't don't just be left wandering.
Sal:We were ushered in, we went into a building, there was QR code or a code to sort of get onto the WiFi. Lady came outside and told us not to go in, that we were sort of second in the queue, there was no queue, but then a man it was just really poorly organized when, you know, this is the thing that in in February, the siege of Siracus is just an extraordinary part of history. It's an amazing part of history. Archimedes held that held that city from the Romans for two years. And, I mean, Sicily was the food bowl, and we've spoken about this on the podcast last week with the, with the hothouses, the modern day hothouses.
Sal:But Sicily grew the wheat for the whole of, you know, for the whole of the Roman sort of empire. That was really whoever controlled Sicily controlled the wheat, and that was very much apart from being strategically important. That was why the Romans wanted wanted Italy wanted Sicily. But, yeah, it's interesting the why why do you think people come and sort of wonder the history and the beauty? Probably that.
Sal:The history and the beauty.
Mark:Yeah. I think people just enjoy the actual physical town with the narrow laneways and the ancient buildings towering over there or hanging over the streets. And, you know, then the amazing swimming. You can swim off this beautiful or few beautiful platforms out to sea in this crystal clear water. They're very beaches, but but platforms swimming off rocks is a Yeah.
Mark:Is a big thing.
Sal:I sort of describe them as mechano structures that have been sort of embedded into the external wall of the city so that there's a a sort of a an external staircase that goes down to the water. They it's pretty special.
Mark:No. No. It's really cool. So I sort of swam off those every morning because where we were in the harbor, you probably could swim, but it wasn't the cleanest in the world because it's right in the middle of town. But around on the outside of the island, it was crystal clear water, and you're swimming under these huge ramparts of the town Mhmm.
Mark:With the stones towering over you as the sun rises. It's pretty special. Pretty special.
Sal:The other end of the day is or the beginning of each day, you know, if you wanna get exercise in this climate at the moment, you are getting up at 5AM. And, like, to get up at five, where we were in the we were to the the west of the sort of main on the quays on the west of the city is sort of on the east, so the sun was rising up over the city. So you had a good sort of after sunrise, a good hour and a half before the boat would be in in sun. And to just to do that, to get up and, you know, do a yoga class whilst the lights of the city are on and the squid fishermen are, what do you call it, jigging away with their with their lines on the key was very, very special.
Mark:Yeah. As I mentioned before, it's it's really wonderful being tied up right in the middle of town. One of the slight downsides was that Mount Etna, which is only about 60 or 70 kilometers away, apparently is going off at the moment a bit. Not not dramatically, but there's smoke coming out the top. So in the morning when you wake up, you can run your hand along the deck, and it is covered in black soot.
Sal:It was incredible.
Mark:And the soot even gets down below, so, like, all the floor got gritty.
Sal:Everything got gritty.
Mark:And now a few days later, now that we're on Italy Mainland, we're only we're still finding grit everywhere, like the cockpits full of
Sal:black dust. Woke up that next that morning, I could draw my thing my book was on the bunk beside me, and I could draw my finger over the cover of the book, and it's pretty full on, wasn't it?
Mark:Mhmm. So living under the smoke of a volcano is sort of sounds romantic, but it's pretty horrible actually, to tell you truth, after a few days. And it's interesting because the big glamorous gym palaces all come in and tie up to the town key as well. And the the poor crew on those spend the whole days wiping the the soot off the
Sal:They had those huge hands. Like, you know how people have those big pointy hands at the footy foam They had massive hands like that, and they were polishing all day.
Mark:I'm trying to keep their their boats dust free for the multi thousand dollar a week charters. So, yeah, for us, it's just a case of our little home having to clean it, not a whole lifestyle.
Sal:So to paint a picture of that quay, we were we were in one corner. We were the smallest boat by far. We're, you know, touching 50 foot. The next boat was it sort of went up and up and up and up. And there were boats that, you know, we got used to thinking, wow.
Sal:They're pretty big. And then a bigger bigger one had come in. And I think by the end of the week, there was a there was a launch that was about a 180 foot.
Mark:There was a yacht that was a 180 foot called Folly.
Sal:Oh, Folly. Yeah.
Mark:A catch. A key a catch built by Alloy Yachts in New Zealand, which was quite spectacular actually for a for a for a massive yacht. Was actually not as ugly. But there was one particular boat that was that really took the biscuit as far as I can concerned in terms of bad taste. Sal and I were sitting in the cockpit one morning and both looking forward, and Sal says, look at this boat.
Mark:It's just huge and it is seriously bigger than anything we'd seen. This is not a yacht. This is a motorboat. And Sal said, there's a helicopter in the bow, and I looked at it from where I was sitting and I said, yeah. I can see that, but it's on the stern.
Mark:And she said, no. It's not. It's on the bow. And then we realized that we're both right because there was a helicopter on the bow and another one on the stern.
Sal:Two helicopters. A two helicopter and a putting green and a nail salon and a it's
Mark:I don't know how putting green works.
Sal:It's Yeah. Maybe maybe it's like
Mark:Maybe it's on a gyroscope.
Sal:Yeah. It's on a big spring. It's on a whatever it is.
Mark:Stupid. So being such a disgusting sort of an ornament to man mammon, I thought better look it up. And it's owned by a guy called Tillman Fertila, who's an American Fertita. Fertita. Sorry.
Mark:Fertita. Fertita. He's an American, and he is one of Trump's biggest donors. Before the last election, he gave Trump a million dollars. And that pretty much bought him the American ambassador to Italy job because he had absolutely zero experience in any sort of anything diplomatic.
Mark:He basically makes his money out of, you know, running casinos and gambling and a bit of hospitality and hotels and things. And, yeah, so he gave Trump a million dollars and got the job as ambassador to to Italy.
Sal:He fronted up he arrived in Italy, got the job, got the ticket, paid the money, rocked up, saw the beautiful villa. You found the name of the villa. Villa Taverna. Villa Taverna in Rome, I'm guessing, and said, I'm really sorry. This is unlivable.
Sal:I am going to live aboard my my boat, which is I mean, it was eight stories. It was 384 foot long. 380 foot four foot long. It it's just so excessive, so ridiculous. And so whilst he's in in Italy, he lives on that boat, and he commutes to the, to the residence that he actually the embassy that he had completely refurbed, and we'll include a link to that on the show notes page, had completely refurbed.
Sal:And he flies in and out in his helicopter. I mean, it's just talk about we need Archimedes back. We need Archimedes the brain of Archimedes to defeat the the Romans who are now the Americans. I think they're pretty much defeating themselves. But it was just
Mark:just The that frustrates me is not that somebody can have a big ugly boat because, you know, if you've earned your money, you can buy what you like with it, and it creates jobs. And, you know, there's there's a crew of 48 or something. So they're all being paid to sell this boat. And, you know, in some weird way, that's okay. What really annoys me is that this show of private wealth then overlaps with the very important public service of of of international diplomacy.
Mark:Yeah. He's not a rat.
Sal:I mean, it's a joke.
Mark:A not. Joke.
Sal:He has absolutely no background in diplomacy. It's just a a typical, you know, Trump placement, which moves does not shift the dial any any way forward, only shifts it back.
Mark:So, anyway, that was that was my little frustration. And so he tied up in the key in Siracusa and invited a whole
Sal:lot Oh my god.
Mark:Whole lot of Americans on board for a party, and then off he went.
Sal:No. It was way better than that. That. He sent a battalion of black limousines. He sent a limousine to each boat to which he had sent an invitation.
Sal:How far was it to walk to the to the to the boat?
Mark:200 meters.
Sal:100 meters. So they had a raft of black limos, huge great big black black limos. There would have been about 30 or 40 of them. And they waited, until everybody was in an accommodate in in an air conditioned limo, and then the train moved off towards I mean, it you you can't write this stuff. It's just it is just it is just absolute absolute madness.
Mark:And meanwhile, you know, like, it's sort of I I'm worried people will think that we're sort of in amongst the heart of all this crassness. But, you know, meanwhile, we're living on our on our boat tied up to the town quay for free and going to the food truck and eating hamburgers, you know, and having a lovely time. So it's a it's a complex world. It's a complex world.
Sal:Yeah. But I I I think it's important that we do see it, and I think it's important that, you know, that he's a real man. He's getting up and
Mark:Cleaning his teeth.
Sal:Cleaning his teeth in the morning. You know? It's the choice.
Mark:Has somebody to do it for him.
Sal:Really extraordinary. Sport, might she?
Mark:Yeah. It's actually a bad weekend sport. I mean, can sum it up pretty pretty pretty well. Wallabies lost. That's the most important one for me.
Mark:Carlton lost.
Sal:That's That was quite a bombarded.
Mark:England won. That's bad.
Sal:Bad.
Mark:What else happened?
Sal:Tour de France, they're cutting back day or not. They're cutting back distance. Today was meant to be about a 100 180kms and they've cut it back to 130kms for heat. But actually there has been some fabulous stuff happening in that the Eritrean rider, got it there finally, come a bike, my goodness, isn't that going to be brilliant? I wanted to just talk about some of the beautiful comments, particularly book recommendations that we've been getting this week.
Sal:We love hearing book recommendations. I had a fantastic book recommendation this morning from my sister, which is a book called The Heir Apparent written by, actually, my publisher, Harper Collins. So I'm gonna be jumping on that.
Mark:Who's it written by?
Sal:It's written by a woman, surname Armitage. I think it's name I think it's Bridget Armitage. I could have that wrong. Definitely, surname is Armitage. And we had a beautiful recommendation from two people.
Sal:Do you want to tell us about that?
Mark:No, I don't because I haven't got it written down in front of me and I can't remember.
Sal:The Last Leopard, a life of Giuseppe Tomesi de Lampedusa. So I'm gonna be getting Mimi to bring that out to us in Greece because I that was recommended by Stephanie Dundas, you've also had it recommended by One
Mark:of the SWS readers.
Sal:An SWS reader. So we love these book recommendations. We have had a few more takers for yesteryear which has been my book of choice when we have been sailing at night. I have one hour I to think it's going to turn around. And once I've finished that book, I'll be putting out some notes, probably on Instagram, to just arrange a Zoom for anybody else who's read it and wants to have a bit of a fun glass of wine and a talk at some time coming up soon.
Sal:That will be, MATILDA RADIO un UNOFFICIAL BOOK CLUB. And, Mark, I haven't said anything about our unofficial sponsor, the unofficial sponsor of this week. Do you know who it is?
Mark:No idea.
Sal:Absolutely no idea. Well, I'm about to tell you. So we where are we? Tell me where we are.
Mark:We're in a place called Porto Di Rocella in the Ionian Sea.
Sal:But Rocella Ionica. Okay.
Mark:That's Well, Ionian Rocella,
Sal:I think
Mark:it means.
Sal:No. Well, it is called rocella ionica. And so when I googled that, because I was thinking, hang on. That's interesting. There's a big chicken brand in Australia, a fresh chicken brand called Ionica, La Ionica.
Sal:And I thought, I wonder if they're related. Yes, they are! La Ionica is a premium Australian chicken brand with a strong focus with butchers and chefs and food lovers. Founded in 1967 by Sam and Marie Cateri who emigrated from here.
Mark:From this town?
Sal:From this town in Calabria.
Mark:Wow. Isn't that incredible? This exact town. This exact town. Whole of the Ionian to come from, and they came
Sal:from place. Rocalla Rocalla I Rocella Ionica. And the Ion it's Rocella Ionica is the name of the Cool. Of is the name of the place where we are. So I thought, isn't that isn't that incredible?
Sal:And doesn't it make you you know, we've constantly the other day, we were in the market in in Siracusa, and we were both both sitting there. And, you know, we both looked around and thought, my god. This just looks so much like Dock in Lygon Street. And we're just so lucky, particularly in Melbourne, food capital of the world, to where to have these stories of these people, the Maries and the Sams who left their homeland in 1967 to go and start a new life in Australia and take their culture, particularly their food with them.
Mark:Yeah. Absolutely. There's sort of some bits of of of the towns here that seem very familiar. Yeah. Even though I've never ever been here before in my life.
Mark:So Yeah. I think we should be eternally grateful for that and also learn a little bit from it with some of the politics that's going on in Australia from what I hear that these things only enrich you.
Sal:Yeah. I mean, it's you can't you just can't imagine Australian culture without all the nationalities that have contributed so so strongly to it. And I feel very proud of that, and I love coming I mean, to sit there and to just you know, I'd I'd have to say the coffee is never as good as what we get in Melbourne.
Mark:Absolutely not.
Sal:No surprises there. Mark, this week, we we've sort of changed our plans, haven't we? Because we were heading, we thinking we were going to head directly straight over to Core Food, but we've kind of changed our minds.
Mark:Well, yes.
Sal:Yes and no?
Mark:Yes and no. We're not sure yet. I need to do a little bit more research. So the choices are, basically, well, Sal's on a deadline with her book edit, her sort of second edit, and so needs a solid time working. So we can't be at sea every single day.
Mark:So really we're looking for somewhere to spend maybe a week, which we can both enjoy, but isn't necessarily too time consuming. Initially we thought we might go over to Corfu, but I think maybe we'll go to the heel of Italy. We've seen the instep and so I think we'll go to the heel and spend some in Puglia before we cross over to Corfu which also has the advantage of only being a 50 or 60 mile trip across to Corfu from there as opposed to 150 from where we are now. But it's always nice to do these things in small steps. So weather dependent and research dependent, making sure that we've got a few nice places to to anchor and tuck out of any wind that's coming.
Mark:I think I'm
Sal:And we're gonna need a new dodger. May maybe new dodger.
Mark:Might see if we can struggle through with our dodger. It's slowly perishing. Yeah. We've got a quote to get one made in Corfu, but whether we can be bothered sitting around waiting for it to be made is another you can mine it. So who knows where the next episode will be coming from?
Sal:Yeah. Well, I'd really hope that well, I'd we might that castle place you found looks incredible. We might put a link to that because that would be an amazing destination. We're slightly hamstrung for safe anchorages, in Puyo, aren't we? There's
Mark:so In Calabria, Calabria, are.
Sal:Calabria.
Mark:I think once we get over to Puyall, Puyall, there's a few more opportunities because there's a there's a couple of sides of a peninsula. We're here. It's just a big, long, flat, open coast.
Sal:Yeah. And we're loving Matilda. Today, we had a actually, this morning, first thing we when when the wind completely dropped out, we turned the engine off, and I tend to throw a rope over because the it takes a long time for the boat to slow down. If you fell off, it really does make you think about it, but I tend to tie a rope around my waist and jump in and then get pulled along. And once again, just extraordinary extraordinary turquoise water.
Sal:Yep. So that's our week.
Mark:Very lucky. I hope everyone back home is coping with the chilly Melbourne weather. Yep. And we're sorry for complaining about the heat. Yep.
Mark:It's very hard to put yourself in somebody else's shoes when it comes to temperature.
Sal:Crippa can just doesn't have to go into the ice bath. He can just walk around the streets and I'll have this week. See you. See you next week. Bye.