Buongiorno Boys.

We left Ericoussa, an island north of Corfu, at 9pm and headed out towards Otranto in Italy. The wind was due to steadily build, and it did, from the north west. As we were heading north west this meant that once again we were beating into a steadily building breeze. At midnight we had a close encounter of the big ship kind with a cruise ship passing 2 NM to the east of us at the same time a massive car ferry passed very close by on our port beam. Close enough for us to almost work out the makes of the cars on board!  I don’t think they even saw us, nor would they have felt us had they run over us…..gulp.

By 2 am it was blowing 13 knots, by 4am it was 20 knots and by dawn we were punching into 25 knots. Vega sailed well,  cutting through the angry sea. We had a big reef in the main sail and a small reef in the head sail and we were sailing really well. But again, it was wet and windy. Arriving into Otranto at 9am, it took a while to find a berth – Italian fishing ports are generally chaos and it is always hard to work out where to Berth and Otranto is no exception. We are well of the cruising path here and there are very few spots in ports for visiting yachts and you can easily find yourself moored up against a fishing boat.

After drying out, we had a sleep having been up all night and then went off to explore the old town and its great beach. Ourselves and the guys from Antigoni had a great Pizza dinner with lots of wine  and some footy on the beach before falling fast asleep, the wind still howling through the rigging.