Calaforte to Palermo, Italy

Sad as it was to leave Calaforte, we needed to continue on our passage toward Greece. We had planned to position ourselves on the southeast corner of Sardegna to make the passage to Sicilia a little shorter but in the end decided to take advantage of the last bit of Mistral and have a nice downwind start to the journey right from Calaforte.

We anticipated strong winds and possible gusts over 30 kts so we started out with two reefs in the main and the jib with the staysail standing by 'just-in-case'. It turned out to be a very smart move as rounding the southern tip of Sardegna we came up against 37 kt winds, furled the jib away and deployed the staysail. The yacht became much more manageable and we continued on enjoying a fast downwind passage.

Then we heard a Mayday call faintly and he wasn't getting a response from the Coast Guard so I picked up the mic and tried to do a relay call but I also could not contact the Coasts Guard. Luca called the Coast Guard on his phone and we relayed the distress message to them. The boat was a 15m sailboat with one guy onboard and he had lost his steering. He was drifting in the strong winds toward the rocky shoreline. After a bit of back and forth the Coast Guard sent out a boat to help him and we felt pretty good about being able to assist.

After continuing the passage to Sicilia we stopped overnight in the bay of Capo San Vito and it was beautiful. We had been here 10 years earlier with our last yacht and we happy that we returned to this lovely place. After a calm and relaxing evening, we departed the next day early to try and get to Palermo as soon as possible.

After a few hours sailing we were close to Palmero and saw our friend Tony in front of us just leaving for Siracusa. We missed seeing him (and he our new yacht) by just a few minutes. We had left Calaforte early trying to reach Palermo before he left and were disappointed to come so close.