Italy...Nearing the halfway mark

Flying the Italian Flag

Captain Andrea and crew arrived in Italian waters the other day.  There has been little wind and it is stifling hot there as Europe is in the middle of a heat wave.  Temperatures have been as high as 104 degrees!  Without the wind it is fairly miserable.  And it has been very hot and humid at night as well which, of course, makes it hard to sleep.  After a couple of days in Sardinia they departed for Sicily.  Sicily is now requiring everyone entering to have a Covid-19 test.  Initially, they were going to go to Milazzo which is very close to the Straits of Messina.  But they found out that they would have to go to a hospital for the test.  The decision was made to head for the Aeolian Islands instead in hopes that they would be less stringent.  Europe is in the midst of a "second wave" of Covid and as a result many countries are re-instituting restrictions that had been lifted. 

Arrival in Italy

It is now about midnight as I sit here writing and it looks as though they have just arrived to the Aeolian Islands so now they will just have to see what the requirements are.  In addition, to all the Covid stuff another wrinkle was recently added.  Apparently, tension is rising between Greece and Turkey over drilling in the Eastern Mediterranean.  Trouble has been brewing for awhile over this issue but recently bubbled over when Turkey sent a guarded survey ship out to investigate drilling very near to a Greek Island.  

 

 That island is Kastellorizo and you can see that it is just a few miles from Kas.  So the conflict is directly at Kas' front door.  And of course, Kas, Turkey is our destination.  If things heat up too much they could halt all ship traffic in the area.  That would not be a good thing for us.  At present Turkey, Greece and France all have a military presence in the area.  France joined in to defend Greece - an EU member country.  This is a boat delivery Andrea will not soon forget!  So now for the weekend we just wait to see what goes on with the Covid testing.  I am sure everyone is negative - they have been at sea for a week now.  But still they will have to wait around for test results.  At least, they can go to a marina and fire up the air conditioning for a bit.  That will help everyone to get rested up before continuing on.  With any luck they should arrive in Turkey in another 10 days or so.  Fingers and toes crossed.