Oh dearie me, what a catalogue of errors, poor judgement and bad luck.  On Tuesday we set off from Sivota, said goodbye to Greece, and set off for Italy, a journey of some 250 nautical miles.  The wind was forecast to be on the nose and so it proved (familiar to readers of our Juniper blog in 2011).  The weather quickly worsened and we ended up punching wind and waves under engine to keep on course – first error, why didn’t we lay off our course and put up even some small sail to stay comfortable?  Heather was quickly badly hit by seasickness followed by Gordon.  By nightfall conditions are quite miserable and I’m left helming while the others continue to throw up and feel ill.  The autopilot can’t keep the course so there’s no reprieve from the wheel.  About 3am we pick up a line round the propeller and the engine cuts out.  Great, now we have no engine, so we put up some well reefed sail and sail as close hauled as we can so as not to stray too much off course.  Daybreak comes about 7am and we heave-to (back the headsail to stop in the water) but there’s no respite to the lumpy sea.  It’s time for a review, we’ve only completed 60 miles with 190+ miles to go, no engine, two people still very ill and me gut tired.  There’s only one sensible solution so, even though it hurts, we set the sails back to Sivota.  We arrive back here about 4am but the wind dies just as we want to enter harbour.  We cautiously try the engine and it starts, so then we try one click astern and one click ahead and the engine responds.  We can’t believe our luck and dare not try higher revs so we inch our way into the harbour to drop anchor, falling into bed fully clothed just before 5am – the reason for that being that a forward porthole let in a steady stream of water and the bed and cushions are soaking.  Later Thursday morning we wake to a brilliant blue sky and gentle breeze and the world seems good again as we set about getting Deep Blue shipshape once more.  Diving under the boat shows no sign of a rope so we assume it unravelled on our sail home.  Tonight we’ll review the lessons learned and, if the forecast is favourable, we’ll have another go tomorrow – watch this space.