Friday morning 10am we left Arbatax to make the long crossing to Sicily. I have not done very many long sailing passages at all, and found the crossing from the French mainland to Corsica rather tedious. But this one from Sardinia to Sicily was even longer! But the weather forecast was excellent, a fair wind, in the right direction, and sunny. It was around 180 miles in total, and took 30 hours non stop, so you can see that we did on average speed of 6 knots. We managed to sail quite a bit of the way too, and it's so peaceful with no engine!
The best thing were the dolphins! I love a dolphin, I do. They just pop up next to the boat now and then, usually two or three together, but sometimes many more. They love to swim on the bow of the boat, and a group of eight dolphins stayed with us for about half an hour. We stood right on the bow and peered over the guard rail at the dolphins. They seem to know you are there. Tney turn on their side and appear to make eye contact, and I swear they even smile at you! You can even hear them squeaking to each other! I love them! We also saw a couple of big sea turtles too, miles from anywhere. The water is very deep there, in some places it is over 2000 metres deep!
As we approached the islands off Sicily we had to keep a careful look out for nets used for tuna fishing. It's not that common anymore, as the poor dolphins keep swimming into them, but sometimes there are vertical nets stretched across huge areas and warnings are given on the VHF radio as to the locations. We didn't see any though, although we did see a surprising number of single fishing
pot buoys for lobsters etc, miles from land.
There was a wonderful sunrise on Saturday morning, and for a while it was very sunny, but suddenly it became very foggy for about an hour so we had to keep a careful watch although we hardly saw another vessel on the whole crossing.
We were planning to anchor in the bay at Levanza but when we arrived there, they had laid a number of small white buoys everywhere, making it impossible to get close enough to the shore, so we decided instead to cross over to Favignana, about two miles further on.
We are now moored on the quay for free, for a day or two. It is quite shallow in the harbour and not many yachts come here, but it is fine for us. The water is so clean and very clear. Such a beautiful turquoise colour. This morning we went for a walk around the other side of the bay where there is a little sandy beach, and we also explored the very interesting buildings of the old tunny factory - once a huge industry where they caught, processed and canned the local tuna.