37:47.29N 12:26.48E

Wednesday 6^th August

9.00am pulled away from the boatyard at Trapani and were very happy to be back on the sea again. Had a real problem trying to book a berth at Marsala as the phone numbers appeared to be wrong and the Sicilian on the other end was unable to comprehend a word of our excellent attempts at Italian! Decided that we would just have to wing it and turn up anyway as it was only a short trip and in the worst case we could simply press on to an anchorage 10 miles further on.

In the event we arrived arrived just after midday and we were met anyway by the chap in charge of the local sailing club moorings and he was unbelievably helpful. We secured a good bows-to mooring using a lazy line and he and I went off to his office to do the paperwork. Our timing today was spot on as very quickly the few remaining moorings filled with yachts. We had lunch followed by a siesta and then at 5pm set about visiting the town and seeing if we could arrange a tour of one of the Marsala wine lodges.

Marsala is famed for its honey coloured dessert wine and the industry seems indebted to John Woodhouse who was the first to ship the fortified wine back to England. Nowadays there are large pipes on the main quay which pump the local wine into small tankers for export, apparently largely to France!

Marsala got its name from the Arabs (one of many invaders) who called it Marsal – Allah (Harbour of God). We were certainly expecting a rather more tourist orientated town than Trapani and were surprised to find that it is quite small and disparate. There is a nice cathedral which although largely built in the 17^th century, it was not actually completed until 1956 when a returning emigrant produced the much needed cash. Again like Trapani, the town is spread over a wide area and so there is no real shopping area, although the bit around the cathedral was fairly busy. They do not have squares as such with cafes and restaurants so there is no real buzz about the place. We had a long hot walk, failing to find much of what we were looking for and discovering that here, most of the shops do not open in the afternoon during August. It was just as we got back to the yacht club that we chanced upon a Distillati which makes a very fine local Grappa. However the lad running the shop this afternoon was happy to let us taste the Marsala wines and eventually we found one that we very much liked. We bought a bottle with a view to perhaps returning in the morning to buy more, so he then invitied us to try some finer wine which was fabulous and we could see where this was all heading! Being tired and hot, we opted to return to the boat so that we could consider what we would buy the next day. The real catch is that we simply do not have the room for all the nice wines that we keep coming across on board. We need to drink some before we can buy yet more.

Very hot evening and we have decided that really this is not the nicest place we have been to and the facilities are very basic, bearing in mind the 41 euro a night charge, so we will head off tomorrow, probably to Sciacca which the pilot book descibes as a neglected fishing port, but one that will grow on you.