03 December 2018; Messina, Sicily, Italy.

I love Dubrovnik but Messina is so much easier for the guests as we dock right in front of the down town area. The port is the main ferry & access port to East Sicily from the Italian Main Land and thus there is heavy ferry traffic all day and all night long. Some of that traffic goes to docks south of Messina, some to the North and some into the port itself. The port is a natural curved harbor with an opening at the North side, sheltering all the docks from any waves and swell caused by the wind in the Messina strait. It also reduces the current here to a very faint .01 of a knot or so, while in the middle of Messina Strait it can run up to 5 knots. We will have that this evening when we sail to the North.

Although there is not much tide in the whole Mediterranean (about 10 centimeters), there is a local phenomenon here. The small tides in the Med are semi diurnal, which means two high and two low waters in 24 hrs. But for a number of complicated reasons, they do not happen at the same time at the North and the South Side of the Island. They are almost in phase opposition.  So with little tide there is still a lot of current as it is high water on one side and low water at the other side. Tonight at 18.37 hrs. it is low tide, which means it is high tide at the other side and thus full current. By the time we leave, 20.00 hrs. there will still be a lot of current left.

Due to the current, the ferries do not sail in a straight line but drift across which makes it sometimes quite complicated to figure out what a ferry is exactly doing. Same goes for the other ships coming through. Their course might be 270o over the ground but they might be steering 260 or 255 or 250 to counter act sideways push of the current. But as this changes the angle of the ship when looking at it, it might look as if the ship is heading straight for your own ship but is set clearly free by the pushing current.

The Strait of Messina from above. (Thank you Google earth) The port is sticking out as a crooked hook into the Strait. The buildings on “the hook” are mainly shipyards, a Navy compound and ferry docks.

Thus when you move out of the current of the Messina Strait towards Messina Harbor you first battle the full current and then it gets less and less and thus the course you steer comes closer and closer again to the real course if and when there would have been no current. Luckily the current in the harbor is nearly zero and thus the Nieuw Statendam could sail straight in and swing around off the dock and come alongside, portside too, with the nose pointing to the outside. The captain had opted for swinging on arrival to make it easier and faster to sail on departure. The weather forecast was giving quite a bit of wind from the North West and then for Messina the question is “what is north west”? If is close to the North, then the wind will push into Messina harbor but if it is close to the West, nothing is coming in as the mountain range to the West shelters the port.

After an extensive crew fire drill this morning, we had a full boat drill for all starboard side boats. There was no wind, nice in the shelter and all boats went down into the water for some exercising. Being just fresh from the shipyard means, that the crew needs some extra training to raise their comfort zone with handling the lifeboats. Lifeboats are meant to sail full with people and when they are empty they lay on the water as an empty walnut shell.  To get the shell back in the blocks and back home again, the asst. commander / driver has to use the wind as his/her friend to drift back into position. And that takes a little bit of training and refreshing the driving skills.

Tonight we sail at 20.00 hrs. and then tomorrow afternoon we will arrive in Civitavecchia. Some guests with early flights will leave the ship after arrival; the rest will enjoy a final night on board and then disembark the next morning. That will be our first turn over for the ship and by lunch the first guests ever will board the ship to sail with us for the Trans-Atlantic to Florida.

We still have one more surprise for our “Shake down” guests on board. We are going to test the Guest Boat Drill one more time tomorrow to see if we have all down to routine now.