Aeolian Islands (Part 1) - Alicudi and Filicudi

We left Ustica on 13 June and headed east towards the Aeolian Islands 60 miles away. These are a chain of volcanic islands, which we particularly want to sail through because they sound very pretty and visiting them will allow us to see some active volcanoes. The god Aeolus was still on holiday so the passage was, once again, a motor rather than a sail.

You can see from the pictures how still the sea was as we were accompanied on our passage by a school of dolphins. We never tire of watching these amazing creatures play in the bow wave and their visit certainly helped to make up for the lack of wind.

The closest Aeolian island to Ustica is Alicudi and we enjoyed watching it appear on the horizon looking very much like a volcano. We intended to anchor just off the small town of Scala Palomba on the eastern side of the island after arriving in the early evening. The houses looked like they were barely clinging to the steep sides of the island and higher up we could see the old terracing which allowed the population to cultivate the land. Everywhere is very steep, including the seabed; we would have needed to have anchored very close in to the shore and that area looked congested with local boats on moorings. A German yacht had already taken up the only space on the quay not used by ferries. As neither of us was very happy with the anchorage we moved on towards the next island, Filicudi.

Fortunately Filicudi is just a further 10 miles east and so we were able to arrive with some daylight to help us avoid any rocks in the anchorage. The pilot book warns of an old groyne close to the beach which lies just under the water. To further complicate things, the photograph in the pilot book doesn’t really tally up with our chart as to the location of the groyne. We definitely needed the daylight and so we pressed on rather than diverting to take a closer look at La Canna (pictured above), a 67 metre high needle rock which rises sheer out of the sea a couple of miles to the north-west of the island. In the end, our potential anchoring problem was solved as, having worked our way around the marine reserve area off Capo Graziano on the south-east corner of the island, we saw 2 other yachts at anchor in the south of the bay. They were further away from the town than was recommended by the pilot book (in which there was also a hint that the holding there might not be too good) but they were well clear of the groyne and appeared to be quite happy with their location. We joined the Australian catamaran and the very large and elegant yacht Song of the Seas in that area and spent a very peaceful night there.

In the morning we were pleased that we were well clear of the main quay and the old groyne anchorage area because a ferry rushed up and did the nautical equivalent of a handbrake turn to get up to the quay. His stern swung very close to some small moored boats and the spot where we had expected to be anchored. I feel that the side of a large ferry swinging rapidly towards us would have somewhat distracted us from our breakfast had we been anchored there.