Equinox 2021

Saturday would have been the day to go to Erice, if the weather was the deciding factor, the views up to the top were glorious, but this was not in the plan. Chris had to return home and so we spent the morning with him packing while one of the workmen struggled to remove a hatch cover that needs to go away for repair. Then we sat in the sun at a café, having a coffee overlooking the harbour. Trapani has a good bus service to Palermo airport, and is no further away than Palermo itself is from the airport. We saw Chris on his way, which he later said was very picturesque, and then returned to the boat to continue with the packing up. It was dry so the focus was on clearing equipment from the decks while we could.   Everything needs to be cleaned and packed away for the winter. We had a near perfect mackerel sky Sunday and Monday were both more of the same, with the focus shifting to below decks. We won’t go into all the details, but gradually the list has reduced to the extent tha...

As we have said before, t he sun is waking us up quite conveniently on time at the moment. It streams in from the back of the boat straight through to our cabin in the bow. So we were up and doing promptly.  There were a couple of things that we need from the chandlery, so we left Chris to sleep and set off to where Google said there was one. When we arrived there was no sign of anything resembling a chandlers, but we got redirected to a plumbers merchant, as it was a hose for one of the showers that was needed. The plumbers merchant didn’t have what we wanted either, but sent us on to another chandlers, who fortunately did have the required hose, but with the wrong thread size. They equipped us with a piece of paper stating the adjusting piece we needed and sent us back to the plumbers merchant. For the princely sum of 1 euro, he supplied the converter and all was well. We had just walked a bit further than we expected. We wanted to go to Erice again, and this time planned to ...

It was blissfully quiet and still in this very sheltered and protected corner of Trapani harbour overnight. The night temperatures are dropping to about 15C now, so there is a lot of condensation on the boat in the morning, which mainly means that we can’t breakfast on deck. It was a shame this morning after I watched the orange sunrise behind the palm trees from my bunk. We walked all around the old city of Trapani, in the morning. It has style. It is fabulous. There are a lot of signs of it being out of season now, but there are still a few tourists about and there was quite a queue boarding the fast cat ferry to the Egadi Islands. We found out about buses, locally in the city and to Palermo airport, from the tourist information office. The post office and telephone exchange are impressive After lunch, as there was no wind or rain, we took the opportunity to take the sails off. It was so much easier to do this while we have Chris with us. We had them bagged up beautifully and, very...

The wind had been blowing strongly when we arrived yesterday, and the land we were behind was not as protective as we had hoped, but by the time we awoke, the wind had died and we were still in the same place. This was to be our last night at anchor on the trip, and Tricia made the most of it with an early morning swim. The sea was much clearer and she could see the anchor well. It was not fully bedded in but had obviously held us securely. On this trip we have done much more anchoring that previously, and have gained confidence in our ability to set it, especially when there is really good sand as we have found in many places in Sicily. We also replaced the control unit for the anchor winch early in this trip and it has worked faultlessly. I no longer have trepidation every time we use it. To our surprise, the instruments that had malfunctioned yesterday, all decided to work properly today. This was both a relief, as we had depth readings, and also frustrating, as it is always more ...

The wind dropped off completely overnight, so we had a peaceful sleep. It’s quite handy, at the moment, that it’s getting light, just before sunrise, at the time we normally get up, so it seems very natural. We were able to see that the bottom of the sea below us was all sand, always great for good holding of our anchor, which came up pristinely clean, as an extra bonus. We motored about half of the way to our destination and then the wind began to blow, giving us very nice downwind sailing conditions, in the warm sunshine. We had left promptly after breakfast because some of the more pessimistic weather forecasts were predicting rain in the afternoon, so we wanted to finish our journey before that. Happily for us, the sky was blue, with few clouds. It was glorious. We skirted around this small island, almost completely covered in buildings. We passed by Trapani dodging fishing boats and ferries, and rounded the south side of the island of Favignana in, by now, a stiff breeze. Vi...

The plan had been to stay in Balestrate until Tuesday, but our early morning review of the weather forecast indicated that this was going to be the best day to leave. Although it would be a bit blowy, we would be able to get around the headland at Capo San Vito, the last remaining challenge on our trip back to Trapani. We had also identified a suitably sheltered bay for the night. We rushed to town for the fresh food we would need for a few days away from towns and shops. The fish shop had no fish, obviously the fishermen had not been out in the storm the previous day. Then we said our goodbyes to Balestrate and the friendly folks at the marina. There was no wind at first and we had to motor. We went though large patches of flotsam dislodged by the storm, having to avoid branches and tree trunks in bands in the water. Most of it was harmless bamboo, but there were the odd more substantial pieces that we did not want to hit. We think that the bamboo was from the sunshades that they ha...