37:03.49N 15:16.98E

Funny the impact a lone mosquito can have!

Today was a great day's sailing, which saw us cover 92 miles anchor up to anchor down in around 12 hours. It is extraordinary how we have gone 10 days without a breath of wind and today we experienced most of the effects of the Sirocco, starting with low cloud, poor visibility and a very heavy dew and preceded by stifling heat and culminating in 35 knots of wind blowing from the West, which given that we were heading East, was a good thing!

The plan today was to get away fairly sharply and head either for Pazzallo or Porto Palo. Neither of these sounded particularly attractive as they were both really only anchorages with dubious holding or existing ground tackle for us to snag our anchor on. However, they were about 40 to 50 miles away and that makes for a good day's sailing. We then planned on Sunday to press on to Siracusa where we intend to stay for several days before setting off to Greece.

Sarah's day started badly when she became aware of a mosquito buzzing around her head at 5.45am. She decided to move into the forepeak, but within two minutes had made an executive decision which involved us upping anchor and taking advantage of an early start to head straight to Siracusa! Sadly things deteriorated for her as she had spent the previous evening cleaning all the windows, inside and out, only now to find that the incredibly heavy dew was washing dirt out of the teak and onto all the windows. Shortly after that, the salt spray from the sea washing over the deck did for the rest! The anchor then came up covered in grey clay, which was smeared all over the last 5 metres or so of the chain as well , so we now also had clay and mud on the deck.

We motored out of the harbour mouth under very low cloud and were mindful of the UGrib weather map which last night promised us 25 to 30 knots of wind, so despite the light breeze blowing, we put up the main with a reef in. Before long the wind began to fill in behind us and the wind speed gradually increased up to 18 knots true. We put up the hard wind jib and began to run downwind at ever increasing speed as the wind speed rose further. The seas now began to develop into quite long rolling waves as the wind picked up to 30 knots and we were bombing along at 8+ knots. Next we began to surf down the waves, which is not particularly dramatic but does turn us into a 17 ton surf board and gave us up to 10 knots across the ground. The catch during all this was that we had a headland in the South Eastern corner of Sicily to get round and the course was hard to maintain dead downwind in these conditions, so eventually it could only be done by hand steering and some very hard concentration.

By 1.00pm the wind speed had reached 35 knots, but we had also got to the headland and were able to gybe across the wind and start to broad reach up the East coast, heading Northwards to Siracusa. For the next two hours we maintained speeds of 9 to10 knots as the waves died down a bit and then suddenly the wind veered to the North and dropped to 5 knots! The seas became confused (good nautical term!) as the South flowing mass met the North flowing surf that we had been riding. The net result, sadly was that we ended up dropping the sails and motored the final 15 or so miles to our destination in a flat calm. However, the good news was that having not seen any wildlife since we arrived in Sicily, we were joined during this last stage by 8 dolphins who jumped and dived and pirouetted around us for a while.

Siracusa is an area steeped in history with the principle attraction being the old town of Ortiga dating back to 734BC and the colonists from Corinth. But more of that anon as we plan to be here a few days. Great anchorage in front of the town quay, which we are sharing with a number of pretty spectacular Super Yachts and loads of extraordinary fish that keep leaping several metres into the air and plunging back. Presumably they are being harassed by something bigger still!