The crew - Andy, David, Phil and Young David

ALMA BLOG - 26 MAY TO 3 JUNE Hi This is our first blog of the new season. We sailed out of Grand Harbour, Malta on 26th May after a very busy 4 weeks of boat preparation and admin. May is a great time to be in Malta as the weather is lovely without being too warm. The sea is just beginning to warm up and I had my first swim of the season in the Blue Lagoon at Comino island between Malta and Gozo. Water temp was around 20 degrees so it was quite refreshing! I'd sailed there with Ian G for a test sail - Ian had come out to help me prepare ALMA for the season. We got most of our jobs done including getting the new main on (with new batten cars with ball bearings so should be a lot easier to hoist and drop), fixing the cockpit VHF (wonderful work by Ian as yard in UK had said not able to repair!!!), antifouling done, engine, generator and outboard serviced, lifejackets checked (2 failures!!!!) and lights and auto inflation units changed, all lines back on (new spinnaker halyard which is a huge improvement and runs much more freely), lights, flares etc checked, boat polished etc etc. Andy, David T, Young David and Phil arrived 25th and after fitting the new anchor which Andy had brought out as "sports equipment"! Malta Air were happy to allow it as sports equipment but asked if it was fragile? "Its an anchor" "Is it fragile?" They insisted it had to be bubble wrapped! After assembling and fitting on Sat am we set off in very light winds and motored about half way to Sicily. We'd decided to go northwards to Sicily and then follow the southern coast of mainland Italy in the hope of catching sea/land breezes. And this worked well. We picked up the breeze as we approached Sicily mid afternoon and sailed until around 2130 about an hour south of Siracusa. We motored then for about an hour and entered the magnificent bay south of the town where (as the ancient Greeks had done) we anchored for a quiet night. Sunday morning we explored the wonderful historic sights of Siracusa as well as visiting the terrific food market, picking up emails and the sunday papers in a cafe with wifi. I'd hoped to get away again just after midday but the boys by now were starting to relax and had decided on lunch ashore. We got away early(ish) afternoon with a good breeze which built into the Messina Straits Mistral and we made great progress across to the south coast until the wind dropped in the evening and we had to motor overnight. Monday the breeze kicked in again in the morning and we had a wonderful days sailing - broad reaching with main and gennaker all day in perfect conditions and again the next day after another night's motoring. By late afternoon Tuesday we anchored in Lakka bay in Paxos in time for a swim, a beer and dinner.