kateandjohnsail.boats

Traveling along the south coast of Italy, it came time to stop for the day in a place where there was no harbor or even a little bay. This particular day, while we were sad to be motoring due to the absence of wind, we also had the most serene water ever—we kept commenting it was like a lake. And there were no ships to be found anywhere nearby to churn up wakes. So we took the unusual step of anchoring off of a beach. It was a beautiful place that was part of a nature reserve, calm and peaceful.

After we went to bed, the rocking began: slosh, slosh, back and forth, back and forth. One might think this would have a cradle-like effect, lulling us to sleep. Actually not. It was pretty obnoxious, rocking ourselves, the contents of our cupboards, and every unsecured object back and forth with regularity, several times per hour. All. Night. Long.

In this type of situation, all you can do is try to sleep, then get up to leave at first light, which we did. But how did our formerly calm water turn on us?

Only after we turned out our instruments did we figure it out: the shipping channel south of us, which had earlier been empty, was literally filled with vessels, each of which had been sending its big fat wake across miles of water to lap against our boat and the shore. All we can guess is that the previous day was Monday, and perhaps that’s a big day for loading ships, so they can depart at night. Who knows? We just know that however it happened, it caused us rock’n roll.