We knew we would have to wait out some high wind days in Trapani and rented a car our first day there to make good use of the time with a day trip to Palermo. But our wait to cross to Sardinia kept getting extended. Thu night the forecasts looked good for going Friday/Saturday. This would be an overnight, 30 hour trip. But Friday morning, our last minute check of the weather at 0600 had us going back to bed. Saturday forecast showed some big swells, but wind was going to be out of the N or NE, making it sailable, since we were headed WNW towards the southern coast of Sardinia. The wind was to get less as time went on and quite low on Sunday and the waves and swell would get smaller along with that. Early morning Sat weather forecast showed the same conditions so off we went. We enjoyed a nice sail for the first hour on that N wind, but then the wind came around to right on our nose and the seas actually were getting larger and very confused. We considered our backup plan which was to head to an anchorage on an island just northwest of Sicily, but decided to carry on and turned on the engine. Conditions didn't feel unsafe or scary, just uncomfortable. We got a workout (especially Dennis) as we did a lot of sail changes - reefing, shaking out the reefs, putting out the jib, reefing the jib, furling the jib. If the wind changed slightly back to a position where we could get use out of the sails (along with the engine) we would go a bit off course to give us the sailing angle we needed and put up the sails. But with constant wind changes we were kept very busy. The confused, big, seas were getting to Virginia's stomach. She took 4 of her magic pills and didn't eat much.

There was rain all around us in the distance - we even saw a rainbow, but we had blue skies and were spared the thunderstorms that we had every day when in Trapani. We ended up motor sailing the whole way. In the middle of the night the wind did start to die a bit and the swells with it. We even both got a few hours of sleep. The seas were quite calm when we arrived in Cagliari, Sardinia around 1:30pm. About 12 miles out the wind finally came around to SW and we entered the bay doing 7+ kts. Inside the harbor there was still enough wind though to make med mooring complicated, but fortunately we had two deck hands and the folks on the boat right next to ours that patiently assisted us.

Forecast is for high winds tomorrow, Monday. So we'll be here a couple days waiting for another weather window. Meanwhile we are deciding whether to hop our way up to Corsica, then mainland France, and then all along the coast to Gibraltar, or whether we will jump from Sardinia to the Balearics and Spain. Skipping France and especially the windy Gulf du Lion this time of year and going straight to Spain is our current thought.

All is well aboard.