Tuesday 20th October

Left Milazzo, again to try the non-stop run to Sardinia, with a good forecast of south-easterly winds. However, the forecast lied to us! Again we hit strong head-on westerly winds. We now know from our pilot book that this area is known as the "Aeolian Triangle", which apparently did for Odysseus and his crew and the weather here has been catching sailors out ever since.

The wind did improve for a time, and we had some fun watching dolphins swimming and jumping around the bow of the boat for a while, which was great.

Later on, while off-watch, we hear sounds of the others reefing the sails and exclaiming that the boat was now making about 10 knots (very fast for this kind of boat).

Little did we know that in the darkness, one of the sets of fishing gear we had been spotting and avoiding all day had become entangled round our propeller, to be discovered tomorrow.

While on night-watch, we saw loads of shooting stars.