The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.2005, Side 19

Vol. 59 #4
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
145
The Ferry Repossessed
Final instalment
Told by Erling Palsson, Gudjon Valgeirsson and Valentinus
Olason at Akranes, Iceland
The conclusion of the adventures of three
Icelandic men who have themselves been
involved in an international scheme to salvage a
ferry boat out of Greece. Will they be caught?
Leaving Messina
On Monday morning the Turks left us.
Johan did well with them, paid them a large
fee and travel costs. They had never in their
lives received so much money for their
work. We said goodbye to them with
regret, for they had become good friends of
ours. They took a ferry to Italy and then a
train to Rome, where they went on a plane
to Instanbul.
Now we needed to provide oil, water,
provisions, chart and other things to con-
tinue our trip. We didn’t have much luck.
All doors seemed to be closed. No service
available. Finally we met a shipbroker that
took on our case. At last things started to
happen and we got everything we needed.
The chart we got was inaccurate, there was
no information on lighthouses. Erling and
Valentinus visited a Russian ship that was
in the harbour where they got the charts we
needed.
At 17.00 hrs on Monday, 13 June, we
sailed out of the harbour in Messina. We
were as pleased to leave there as we had
been to get there the day before. We sailed
north from the Channel of Messina and
headed for the island of Stromboli. Just
after midnight we were close by the island.
Erling was in the bridge and Gudjon
down in the engine room, but Erling and
Valentinus took turns at the bridge.
Gudjon came upstairs and told Erling that
he had seen a gleam of light in the distance
behind the ship. They looked out for it, but
didn’t see anything, so Gudjon went back
down below. Erling kept on watching out
for something unusual. All of a sudden he
saw an enormous, red flame towards Sicily,
like from an explosive eruption. That was
very impressive to see in the dark. Later we
heard that the volcano Etna had erupted at
that time. That explained the flame.
Drug Search
From Stromboli we headed for
Bonifacio Channel between Corsica and
Sardina. Things were quiet on the way
there but when we got to the channel we
heard a storm warning on the radio. From
our earlier experience we decided to sail to
harbour. We didn’t dare go through anoth-
er storm on the ferry if we could avoid it.
The nearest harbour was Bonifacio on
south Corsica. We called there and asked
for permission to land. The answer was
that we could come in if we thought we
were able to get into the harbour, which
was very narrow and could be difficult to
sail into on such a big ship.
After getting information on the har-
bour and how to approach, we decided to
attempt to sail in. The waves were getting
bigger and the storm was obviously about
to hit. The pilot wouldn’t sail out to us
because of the waves. We waited for a
while, but then a ferry from Sardinia came