We arrived in Santa Maria di Leuca on the heel of Italy in the evening the day after leaving Dubrovnic and then day sailed via Crotone and Rocella Ionica ( pizza is sold by the half metre) along the foot of Italy before crossing to the wonderful city of Siracusa. We felt G&A-M HAD to spend a day in Siracusa – and it's a great place to arrive late at night as the bay is reasonably easy to enter, there’s lots of room to anchor and the ground is great thick mud so the anchor digs in and holds solidly. Another reason for not leaving the next morning was that the engine didn’t start! The previous Volvo engine just had a simple key – turn the key to start. Simple. Now Volvo has an electric start panel and a black box computer. And gremlins. We’d had a previous experience of this problem so I’d bought a replacement start panel so I could unplug the installed panel and plug in the new panel. But that made no difference – the gremlin appears to be in the black box not in the start panel electrics. So the technical solution is to get a really big screwdriver and short across the terminals of the solenoid switch to bypass the start electrics. Started! Well actually on second attempt as it only worked if we didn’t first press the start button on the panel but just switched, waited for the pre-heat then shorted the terminals. If we pressed the start button, then it seems as if it didn’t start with the button the clever computer closes the system down so that then trying to short the solenoid doesn’t work (although maybe moving on to short the starter itself and bypass the solenoid as well as the switch might have worked. Anyway, I hate overcomplicated, unnecessary electrics). Dinner in style at Crotone Marina

So we had a wonderful lazy day in Siracusa, great food (Siracusa has great restaurants as well as great historic sites) and a trip to the market in the morning before heading to Malta. Very little wind so we motored sailed all the way (80M!) with Mario, a member at the Royal Malta Yacht Club, on Jannisah for company on the crossing. Entering Grand Harbour at night with its impressive forts floodlit is always a special experience and it was great to be back on our berth by 2145 Monday night in time for a wee dram to celebrate our safe return on the balcony.