On 15 June there was some wind! After having had to motor on the last few passages, 2 of which were really fairly long ones, it was nice to enjoy the noise of the water bubbling and fizzing past BV as she sailed along, rather than the monotonous drone of the engine we had become used to. We sailed north through the collection of enormous motoryachts anchored off San Pietro (some even with helicopters on the back) and then headed north-east towards Isola Strómboli.
For most of the passage the 925m (3036ft) peak was obscured by cloud but it did clear for a brief period. It was hard to tell if there was smoke coming from the top of the volcano; it was probably just cloud, but it certainly had the profile of the typical volcano a kid would draw at school.
We aimed for the western side of the island because this is where the lava flows down to the sea, the Sciara del Fuoco. Our pilot book suggests that you can find small pieces of pumice floating on the sea some distance off the island but we didn’t see anything but a bit of volcanic dust.
Closer to, we could see smoke venting from the volcano and steam rising from the shore where the hot, blackened lava was hitting the sea. The whole of the west side of the island is black from the lava flow. Disappointingly, we couldn’t see the red glow of lava or any definite signs of mini eruptions. However, there is no doubting that Strómboli is very much active. About every 10 minutes there is a large explosion and we both lost a few heartbeats when the sound of the larger ones reached us.
We continued clockwise around the island to the north-west tip so that we could anchor off the village of San Bartolomeo. It is a pretty village with square white houses scattered along the top of the black cliffs and beach.
There was a large group of yachts and tripper boats anchored in the area waiting for darkness. Around sunset, whilst we were enjoying an after-dinner coffee and a digestif, seven tripper boats picked up their passengers from the shore and set off in stream around to the western side of the island. We also watched short chains of torchlights energetically working their way up the steep paths to the summit. These are the standard tourist excursions, each aiming to keep their punters happy with about an hour watching the volcano when it is dark enough to see the flames.
Unfortunately the anchorages are very exposed and not secure enough to allow us to go ashore for the several hours we would need to climb Strómboli. So, our plan was to wait until 3am before motoring the short distance around to the Sciara del Fuoco to enjoy the firework display. This worked very well and we set ourselves up in a slow racetrack pattern orbiting just offshore with another British yacht. We could practically hear their oohs and ahhs each time Strómboli sent up a fireball of lava.
There was absolutely no cloud and so we could see everything very clearly. Despite that, most of my pictures are a bit blurred because, not surprisingly, standing on a moving yacht is not the best place to take slow shutter speed night photos.
From our vantage point we could see two distinct areas of eruptions quite close together. Each eruption was accompanied by a loud explosion, like a long rolling clap of thunder. This happened about every 10 minutes and explained the noises we had heard during the daylight. With the larger explosions we could see the spray of lava, still glowing red, start to roll down the slope and, every now and then, there was a hiss from the shoreline as some hot lava made its way into the sea.
We headed south leaving Strómboli behind us still making impressive smoke signals. Our course was towards another active volcano, Vulcano. It’s not quite as active as Strómboli but has better anchorages close by which we hoped would allow us a reasonable time ashore to climb it.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.