Equinox 2021

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...

Sundays' weather systems Saturday was a day for chores and preparation for the time with our son, Chris. We ultimately made three round trips into town, climbing the steps up the cliff side each time. We were first to arrive at the excellent laundry, so had our pick of the machines. It did not take too long, and we returned to the boat for coffee, before starting in the food shopping. We had to keep an eye on the weather, as we did not want to get caught in the open during one of the downpours that were forecast. Bread, fruit and vegetables, fish and then on the final trip, supermarket essentials were accumulated. And all without getting wet. Our worries about the replacement of Alitalia with a new airline, ITA, proved to be unfounded, Chris’ flights all ran as expected and landed early. He did receive a text update saying that the time of his flight had been moved forward, but as he was sitting on the plane before the message was delivered, there was no problem. The taxi that w...

We’ve had a challenging couple of days. All was well as we made our way back to Spaggia di Guilaloca, a bay we had carefully selected as it gave protection from the forecast wind. We knew that the mild conditions we experienced when we arrived would not last. By the evening, the wind had come round to the south west and grown in intensity. It was particularly gusty, and as a result the boat was swinging on her anchor and corkscrewing. By morning nothing had changed and we sat it out rather uncomfortably, filling our time with chores and reading, while regularly checking that our position was not changing. We were the only boat in the bay although we saw some rented day boats come past. Why anyone would have chosen to rent a boat that day, I’m not sure. The wind continued to increase and gust. During the morning, we became aware that the jib had started to unfurl slightly. Usually the jib (front sail) is rolled around the forestay and quite safe. Sometimes the prevailing conditi...

We got up to a glassy sea, completely calm, with no wind at all. Just a few fishermen were bringing in their nets. Blue sky with no clouds emerged from the dawn. The temperature had dropped to 13C an hour or so before, so the deck was wet with condensation. I did my best deck hand duty of wiping down the windows and cockpit area, to have Equinox looking her best. We decided to make a day of the journey, as we weren’t expecting any wind. We chugged along at 3 knots, with our fishing line out. Faster would be no good for fishing and even 3 knots may have been a little too fast. We’ve noticed that locally, as well as elsewhere, the medium sized fishing boats move at 2.3 knots, when they have their nets out. We didn’t catch anything. We crossed under the flight path of several planes arriving at Palermo airport. It was good to see two Alitalia planes. We are booked to travel home with them in two weeks time and have been checking, today, whether our flights will still be going, as ...

Our son is coming to visit us next week for our last week of sailing. Most of our plans for the short term are to get the boat to the place where we will meet him. We have concluded that we will be in Balestrate when he arrives, as this is closer to the airport than the city of Palermo. We will then go on further west. T his means that we have all of this week to cover very short distances, retracing our steps. We know that we want to spend most of the nights at anchorages and concluded that as there was no wind and where we are is one of the nicest and safest, we would go absolutely nowhere today. It was very relaxing. The weather is back to being hot and sunny, sufficient that we had to put the smaller of our sun covers over the cockpit to provide shade. The anchorage filled with a few more boats during the day and then emptied out to just 3 or 4 overnight. The boat we had be envying left, en route to Palma di Majorca having spent the day having people ferried back and forward to t...

We are a bit surprised by how the day light hours are changing. The sunrise seems to be getting slightly later each day but the time of sunset is moving forward rather quicker, so the days are getting shorter. This is not a big problem, as we are only doing short distances each day and are happy to be secured for the night well before dark. The weather is a big influence on our lives, and it seems as if the excesses of last week are starting to disappear. It was a joy to be back to short trousers today after a couple of days that were colder. We continue to retrace our steps as we head back west. We left Solanto reasonably early as rain was forecast later in the day and we want to avoid being out in it. As we left we could see an array of small fishing boats in the bay, fortunately having removed the nets that were down nearby. As it was Sunday, we guessed that there were lots of leisure fishermen out, as there seemed to be a variety of different types of boats, from the traditiona...