We leave Vulcano at 10am for the 35 mile ride to Stromboli. The plan was to arrive just after sunset on the west side of the island, where eruptions occur every 20/30 minutes. So on the way, we stop for a few hours at Isola de Panarea in the Nonna Malfada anchorage for a good lunch, a swim and to clean the bow thruster blades that I forgot to do when I refitted the boat in April.
With a week to explore the Aeolian Islands, we decided to leave early on Monday 22nd May to reach the island of Vulcano by the end of the day, 77 miles with very light winds. We left at 6.15am, heading east-north-east towards the island of Vulcano. With back light reach winds, on engine, we reached 5.8 knots for most of the day and arrived around the island of Vulcano at around 21:00, in time to see the amazing sunset over the islands of Alicudi and Filicudi.
The routage proved good when we left Arbatax on Sardegna at 2:30 in the morning as it took us 36 hours to reach Palermo with balanced winds. I have been using Weather4D for routage, and despite it is difficult to find its way through the screens and options, one finally get a meaningful routage. In our case, it worked perfect, and this is particularly useful when you have 200 miles to go with unstable weather situation.
