We left Sicily in the afternoon to catch the 9 p.m. current in the Straits of Messina. Then we traversed the 40 n.m. we had to go to catch the current. It was a challenging strait. As we were going down it, several freighters were coming up it. In the midst of avoiding the freighters, we caught something on our propeller that made the engine throb. So we turned off the engine and resorted to sailing for awhile. But eventually the engine was turned back on to avoid more freighters (at a low R.P.M.). We then motor-sailed until day at which point we were through the straits and a nice breeze was building. That held all the way through 'till sometime at night. We motored 'till the morning when the breeze picked up again and continued to build.

The wind leveled out to a 15 to 20 knot breeze (we had the spinnaker up by then). I got nervous and woke my dad up. I found out at that point that we were headed about 20˨ low of our destination. When my dad went up to our supposed-to-be course we ended up reaching at 9 knots with a spinnaker up!! Eventually the wind died down and when I woke up in the morning we were motoring (again).

Sticking to the pattern, the wind piped up in the afternoon along with huge waves. We had 15 knots of breeze and waves meant for 25 to 30 knots. Then we proceeded to play a game of Scrabble®. Seventeen n.m. out of our anchorage we ended our game and sailed most of the remaining way to our anchorage.

It was a big relief getting here. We just completed our last major passage for a long time. We plan to stay here another day to check out the ruins of a Castle and go food shopping.