38:00.01N 12:31.30E

Tuesday 29^th July (continued)

Rest of Tuesday passed without incident although we did find ourselves sharing the same bit of sea with both  large cargo ship and another Sperm Whale all at the same time.

Wind remained light as darkness fell and although there was virtually no moon, the clear sky and bright stars helped a bit, but inevitably there was reduced visibility at sea level. It is remarkable how quickly we have become used to all the modern aids to navigation and take them for granted. Night watches are usually pretty straight forward as you can track all ships over 300 tons (they are required by international law to transmit an AIS signal) and we have radar to pick out smaller targets long before they become critical. That is not to say you can always fully trust all this and you have to maintain a full lookout at all times, but......the fact remains that when all this is removed, you find yourself concentrating very much harder, as the time taken from first spotting a distant flickering light, to it becoming a 1000ft container vessel travelling at 22 knots directly towards you is very short, especially if you are heading towards it on a reciprocal bearing! Of course almost all the lights turn out to be no problem at all as they end up passing some distance away, but you don’t know until you know.

Wednesday 30^th July

Happy Birthday to me! Celebrated my 56^th birthday by being woken to do the midnight to 4.00am watch.

So having seen virtually no traffic all afternoon and early evening, the sea around us as we approached the Skerki Bank (serious shoals between Sardinia and Sicily) became positively full of shipping of all sizes and heading in all directions!

Dawn broke as we approached the outlying islands off the West of Sicily and we were immediately reminded that the geography of this island is very different to the ones we left several days ago. Here we found proper mountains, sticking through the clouds, which sort of reminded me that Mount Etna is around here somewhere!

The approach to Trapani is made by threading through some large islands and rocks, added to which you have ferries and hydrofoils as hazards. The good news about the hydrofoils, and truly they have loads operating here, is that the time from first spotting them to the moment when they roar past is very short, so you do not have to waste much time agonising as to whether you are on a collision course or not!

We entered the large commercial port and we made our way to the boatyard where we had planned to stay, we spotted a fuel station. It really might have read ‘Welcome to Sicily and the Sicilian way’. We came alongside the quay wall and the two chaps were extremely pleasant and helpful, notwithstanding our lack of a common language. Filling the boat with fuel was the easy part, but it was trying to pay that caused all the delays whilst they seemed to have to wait for a part for the telephone (credit card payment) to be delivered. They were very hospitable and we had some very interesting discussions about our travels added to which we started to learn some Italian! Anyway, we were happy to wait as long as they wanted as we were in their beautifully air conditioned office with an amazing teak floor, which beat the unrelenting baking sun outside. Finally all was sorted when a van screeched to halt and a chap jumped out clutching the missing part. We then headed into the boatyard and were shown our berth (lazy lines to a concrete quay) in what appears to be a rather run down yard. Nevertheless at just 16 euro a night, with power and water we are quite happy. (Hope the shipyard next door building a very large ship do not feel the need to start too early in the morning.)

We tidied up Serafina after three nights at sea and then Sarah worked her magic on making some fantastic fish cakes using fresh .....yes of course you remember, Tuna.  I am perhaps beginning to wish I had caught a rather smaller one as this is beginning to resemble Christmas where you know you are getting turkey every day, it is just all the different incarnations and creations.

I now also got to open my birthday presents which Sarah had bought and wrapped back in the UK. Slightly spooky as the principle gift was “The River Cottage Fish Book” and the card was a Simon Drew cartoon of the “One that got away”.