The picture above is of the cruise ship STAR CLIPPER ITALIA. Star Clipper’s website opens with this rather vomit inducing copy.
“Natural beauty, culture and history converge in Italy, Greece, Croatia and the islands of the Mediterranean. The taste of sweet green olive oil and fresh ripe tomatoes, the sound of carefree children laughing on sun drenched beaches, the sight of yachts at anchor in picturesque harbors.
These are the scenes which await you in the Mediterranean. No matter what your choice of cruise, you will discover the special and magical atmosphere of the Mediterranean that has enchanted travelers (sic) for millennia.”
The image was made this morning in the bay below Taormina, on Sicily’s east coast. The town itself has recently reached elevated levels of fame as the location for the second series of the cult Netflix show “White Lotus”. But it lost any semblance of authenticity well before the TV show. With 1.4 million instagram obsessed visitors expected this summer, it trembles under the sheer mass of tourism, the extreme heat and the brooding hulk of Mount Etna on its doorstep.
But all this is no excuse for the STAR CLIPPER to pump clouds of toxic black exhaust fumes into the sky above the bay for hours on end. They steamed into the anchorage around 0700 with a particularly nasty belch of fumes and then settled down to emit the steady stream you see in the picture, until we left around mid day. (and who thought it was a good idea to rum the exhaust pipe up the mast!) Read on!
