Late Night Blogging

Apparently late night blogging is a bit like late night ebaying for motorbikes.
Anyway there are a few updates required.
The navigation light failure was due to poor contacts in the port light requring a bit of pliaring and the stern light bulb being put in the wrong way round.
Of more interest is the fan belt. When I picked up the boat the service seemed to have not involved tensioning the fan belt, which was very loose and impacting on the engine casing. This had caused rubber dust to be distributed on the front of the engine. I re-tensioned it but on the passage from Bar to Brindisi it had clearly thrown out more rubber. On inspection something strange was happening in that a section of 6 inches of the belt had the teeth worn away almost completely and other parts were relatively intact. I went to replace the belt with the spare to find it was the wrong size being 2.5 cms longer! It could just about be made to work temporarily but I needed a new belt.
The chandler in Brindisi had a range of Volvo Penta spares but not the size I needed. However they directed us to an auto shop on the Via Appia that might have one. An hour later on the Via Appia, and realising that the Via Appia goes all the way to Rome, and that slaves were crucified aloong the road, I suspected a Brindisian joke. We were relieved to find an auto spares shop with the walls festooned with fan belts.
 However they could only supply one 13mm in width whereas the incumbent was 12.5mm. Whats 0.5mm between friends. I bought two and off we went.
Fitting it nearly killed me but it finally went on, but with one section inverted! I pulled out the engine stop and turned the motor a fraction. Fortunately this sorted the belt into place the right way round and all is well and the tension is about right.
However I would be grateful for suggestions or theories as to why the belt wore in this eccentric way. I am concerned that a shaft could be running out of true.
We finally managed to get our paperwork sorted at the third attempt. The first twice I visited the Polizia Frontiera there seemed a distinct shortage of policemen.
This is strange given that about one in ten people you see on the streets is some type of policeman. They have a bewildering array. There are the straight forward Polizia Stata, and the Carabinieri, there are also the Guardia Finanza, The Stradale Polizia, the Polizia Locale, the Vigilanzia (a sort of pumped up neighbourhood watch), there are also the Guardia Coastal, the Polizia Frontiera, as well as the Forestry Police, the railway Police and the Prisons Police. It turns out that there over a third of a million police in Italy, by far the greatest number per capita in the Westen World.
I noticed a warship with major guns on deck thundering down the harbour with Guardia Finanza on the side. It turns out this particular lot have 600 ships and 100 planes at their disposal. Perhaps the UK needs a bit more muscle in regulating the financial sector.
 So we went to the Polizia Fronetiera office again, passing the security guard, Securicor Guardia Puglia or some such. He wrote down the details from our passports, issued badges to be worn and directed us to the office. There are several different doors. I had worked out at our last visit that the one with the buzzer and CCTV is the staff entrance. There is then a public entrance and exit around the corner.
As we passed the exit we were accosted buy a slightly disshevelled guy wearing a torn T-shirt, jeans and green headphones. He inquired if we were from a yacht and then asked to see our various papers.
I was pleased that someone seemed to be taking an interest in our business and started handing over stuff.
 I then had a sudden panic that unlike every other Polizia we had seen, this guy was not in resplendent regalia, but in distinctly down market civvies. Did the Polizia Frontera really have an undercover squad. It seemed a bit unlikely.
Next thing was he shot off into the building with our documents. Convinced I had just naively conspired in an identity theft I pursued him down a few corridors and into an office. He looked a bit aghast when he turned round to find me standing behind him. It turned out he was fetching the keys to open the office with the Passport reading gear.
We were both a bit confused but he reassured me that he was really a Polizia and the rest of the procedure took place uneventfully, although he could not remember the English for "flag" and we sure could not work out the Italian. In the end he was a very friendly and affable guy to deal with, so thanks to him.

During our wanderings we came across this memorial to Il Duce Benito Mussolini. I was a bit surprised to see this as in other parts of Europe the fascist era has been mostly expunged from public memory and certainly celebration.
It turns out this was an important  issue in the history of this area with Il Duce making major speeches both here and in nearby Taranto that you will recognise the clips of.
What is interesting when you read translations of these, is that the words pass through time unchanged. We will make Italy (USA, Russia, Britain) great again. Strong men for difficult times. Guard against the poor nations.

We forget history at our peril, even if that history was Tennents Lager.