Calm waters greeted National Geographic Orion as we cruised from Sardinia towards the Italian mainland today. A series of lectures, an outdoor lunch in the beautiful Mediterranean springtime, and wildlife watching filled the hours until early afternoon, when our first cruising destination came into view: the volcanic island of Stromboli, a 3,031-ft stratovolcano with two active craters that erupt continuously several times a minute! Fortunately, these eruptions are relatively mild, allowing our ship to sail by safely and take in the phenomenal landscape. Evening brought us to the Strait of Messina, a narrow and tumultuous gap between southern Italy and Sicily that made for formidable sailing for early Mediterranean explorers. Her terrors are now more the stuff of legend, most famously the story of Scylla and Charybdis in “The Odyssey.” Still, it’s never a bad idea to keep an eye out for sea monsters…