{"id":1701,"date":"2015-06-15T00:53:15","date_gmt":"2015-06-15T07:53:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/?p=1701"},"modified":"2015-09-04T03:18:52","modified_gmt":"2015-09-04T10:18:52","slug":"bari-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/?p=1701","title":{"rendered":"Bari Style"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Our three day passage from Siracusa to Bari was relatively uneventful except for one evening on our last night.\u00a0 I was on watch and noticed that there was a blip on the radar ahead of us but I couldn\u2019t see any boat lights.\u00a0 I kept a close watch monitoring the radar and then suddenly a single red light appeared ahead of us.\u00a0 I woke Darold up and we watched as a large motor yacht passed our port side very close and then began making a U-turn towards our stern.\u00a0 Then, it shone an extremely bright light into our cockpit.\u00a0 \u00a0Extremely bright. Darold got out our super bright flashlight (pale in comparison to theirs) and we tried to see any distinguishing markings on the boat to see what it was.\u00a0 They weren\u2019t hailing us on the radio or shouting into a loudspeaker; they were just shining their extremely bright light at us.\u00a0 We were totally blinded and couldn\u2019t see what was going on, nor could we see any hazards around us.\u00a0 Darold picked up the radio and pointed to it, assuming they could see us and indicating\"\"<\/a> them to hail us on the radio.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Then he got on the radio and said, \u201cBrindisi Coast Guard, Brindisi Coast Guard, this is the sailing vessel Benevento.\u201d The coast guard responded and then Darold said, \u201cI don\u2019t know if I\u2019ve reached the Coast Guard on shore or if I\u2019m talking to the ship that is shining a light in our cockpit at (Darold stated our position.)\u00a0 If you are the vessel shining a light on us, please tell us how we can assist you or if we can provide you with information.\u201d The Coast Guard then proceeded to ask us where we were headed, where our last port was, how many people on board and where we were from.\u00a0 To the last question Darold responded, \u201cUnited States of America,\u201d to which they responded, \u201cGrazie!\u201d and promptly left. We then watched them on AIS as they approached another sailing vessel, but they immediately hailed the other vessel on the radio instead of leaving them in suspense like they did with us.\u00a0 Nothing like a buzz from the Italian Coast Guard to get your adrenaline up and running!<\/p>\n

The rest of the passage was uneventful.\u00a0 We snaked our way through day tripper boats off the coast and made our way into the fuel dock in Bari and got checked into Nautica Ranieri.\u00a0 This marina would be Benevento\u2019s home base for several weeks as we made land trips to visit family in Italy, friends in Prague and more family in Slovakia.<\/p>\n

A few\u00a0days after arriving in Bari is headed for Campobasso to visit Darol’s Italian relatives. \u00a0See La Famiglia<\/a> blog post. \u00a0 We returned about a week later and that Sunday got to meet our boat neighbors. \u00a0The usual buongiorno was fulled by, in English,\u00a0\u201cWhere are you from, friend?\u201d\u00a0 This benign question would turn into an 9-hour eating and drinking party\u00a0aboard our boat! \u00a0We became friends with Carlo, his son Luigi, Nicola (the boat owner) and his wife Giada.\u00a0 They brought over homemade eggplant parmigiana, meatballs, tiramisu, and a whole platter full of desserts, along with wine and prosecco. Every time they asked us if we\u2019d tried a different local specialty they went over to their boat and brought it over if we hadn\u2019t tried it.\u00a0 This way, we sampled marinated artichokes and marinated sundried tomatoes \u201cBari style\u201d (spicy) as well as local olive oil and wine. We joked that their boat was really a supermarket, but the truth is that Italians love their food and take it seriously! We drank and ate for most of the day, just enjoying each other\u2019s company and delighting in the sunny Sunday.\u00a0\u00a0 At one point we put on the Beach Boys and Darold, Dante and I sang along to \u201cSurfin\u2019 USA.\u201d\u00a0 Carlo said, \u201cItalian food and American music. Dolce vita!\u201d \u00a0The next day we had to visit the marina office and Antonio Ranieri (the owner) said, \u201cI heard you had a party aboard your boat yesterday!\u201d \u00a0It was great fun!<\/p>\n

A couple of days later we were on our way to Slovakia via Prague (See Na Zdravie blog post<\/a>). \u00a0But when we returned about 10 days later we\u00a0found time to visit with our boat neighbors in the marina again, and got to meet Carlo’s daughter. \u00a0They gifted us with wine and olive oil and dessert on their\u00a0boat. \u00a0Pastries from the South of Italy are so good! \u00a0The night before we left they took us out for special coffee, that we’ve never had before called caf\u00e9 con latte di mandorla – deliciozo. \u00a0We also had gelato and they made sure we had enough pizza and panzerotti for our trip to Greece.\u00a0 And if that wasn\u2019t enough, while we were in Prague, Carlo even had a special piece of stainless steel fabricated\u00a0for our forward hatch window\"\"<\/a> (which was\u00a0broken) and refused to take any money for it.<\/p>\n

In one of our conversations with our new friends, we asked them why they thought Italians were so friendly.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s the sun,\u201d they said.\u00a0 \u201cWarm people from a warm climate!\u201d \u00a0And it is true. \u00a0We have been to Italy a number of times and\u00a0we have consistently found the Italians to be some of the most generous people you will ever meet. \u00a0Especially with food. \u00a0So if you find your self chatting with some Italians about food …. pay attention … you will learn something and may be in for a pleasant treat.<\/p>\n

For more pictures go to our Flickr<\/a> site!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 Our three day passage from Siracusa to Bari was relatively uneventful except for one evening on our last night.\u00a0 I was on watch and noticed that there was a blip on the radar ahead of us but I couldn\u2019t see any boat lights.\u00a0 I kept a close watch monitoring the radar and then suddenly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sailing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1701"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1716,"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1701\/revisions\/1716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}