Salina Island, Aeolian Islands, Italy
After mooring at the fantastic Riposto Marina, we sailed all day and all night up through the Messina Straight into the Aeolian Islands. In the darkness of night, around 3am, we approached Stromboli Island with the hopes of seeing some volcanic action. To our absolute delight, we saw several flares of lava flying high into the sky. What a treat!
Read my article about Stromboli here: Sailing Around Stromboli Volcano Must Be On Every Sailors Bucket List
Feeling exhausted, we put an anchor down at the base of Stromboli and went to sleep. Waking up to see the beautiful volcano seemed almost too good to be true. I kept thinking, ‘where am I?’ Perhaps I was just overwhelmed by the beauty?
With a cup of coffee made, we pulled up our anchor and sailed over to Salina Island. We motored into the marina and with the help of an attendant we moored up with our stern against the jetty and lazy lines at the front. Easy peasy. The image above is Britican moored up in Salina Marina with the island of Lipari in the background.
Our first objective was to get clean and refreshed
Some of the crew slept on deck while anchored at Stromboli and were desperate for a nice hot shower. Overall, the facilities were great however limited. There are only two showers each for the men and women so if you have a large crew some will have to wait for others to finish. The showers have two sections – a dry place for clothes and toiletries and the actual shower.
The showerhead wouldn’t stay in the holder so I held it in my hand. The temperature was good and the pressure great. The showers were fine. As for the toilets, they all worked very well. The sinks were great. Overall, the facilities were very good. My cousin, Loryn, offered to model for the facility pictures…
With this review, I’m not going to drill into too much detail as we only moored at Salina Island Marina for a few hours. The scenery was breathtaking – a full view of several of the Aeolian Islands. The marina was clean and very well maintained. There were several restaurants nearby and a short taxi ride could take you to other towns.
We were fortunate to enjoy an aperitif at Signum Spa (www.hotelsignum.it) offering the most amazing views! If you’re going to visit Salina, I highly suggest that you visit the spa. (The view from the spa is below)
We didn’t have time to try out the geothermic water baths or the orange blossom, lemon, mud, water and salt treatments, but if I’m ever in the area again, I’ll book myself in! We were fortunate, however, to enjoy some drinks and local cheese, bread, olives and sundried tomatoes. I highly recommend a visit.
Overall, our time in Salina was very short but wonderfully magical! I highly recommend the Salina marina and suggest you enjoy a hot shower as the neighbouring island of Lipari has moorings but no facilities.
Check Out Some Other Areas In Sicily & The Mediterranian
If you’d like a good summary of our time in Sicily, read Visiting Sicily. And if you’d like a breakdown of all the places we’ve visited while sailing the Mediterranean please read our destination overview: Sailing The Mediterranean. Otherwise, check out more posts about our time spent in Sicily.
