Calamoni Beach - 26 October 2021

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.

View from our anchorage, note the castle at the highest point of the hill.

Our challenge for today was that the instruments stopped working. Fortunately the plotter on deck was ok, so we had our position and could follow our course on that, but everything else was off. This meant no wind readings and no depth reading. We are all sufficiently competent and experienced sailors that the lack of the former is not a big problem, but the lack of a depth reading, is really a pain. However on arrival at the anchorage, we could just use the chart and look at the bottom to find a suitable place to drop the anchor. We had chosen a wide bay and there were no other boats, so plenty of room. The anchor didn’t bite on the first two attempts, but third time, we went shallower and found a patch of sand.

Having read the manuals, we checked through all the cabling to try to find the problem with the instruments, but to no avail.

The wind continued to blow all afternoon, so we had a couple of windsurfers for company, but no rain came and we were able to watch the sunset over the horizon.

Tricia (Steve and Chris)

Distance today             22 miles

Total distance 2021:   547 miles

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