Pelago arrived in La Spezia

We docked safely at Nettuno Marina on Sunday 26/3 early evening and slept long to undo the fatigue of the previous days. I spent a good part of the day walking to Anzio to find the health service to remove the stitches from my little surgery of the last week in Greece. Then shopping supplies for the rest of the trip that we started early morning on Tuesday 28/3 to take advantage of the favourable wind in the early hours.

Gradually the wind turned head wind and we continued tacking towards Rome. I stayed up till midnight when the wind as predicted turned side from the land. It was weak at the beginning and we had to add some speed with the motor but it kept increasing, so we turned the motor off.

In the morning of Wednesday 29/3 we passed Civitavecchia and the wind became 180⁰ tail so we set the sails wing wing (Papillon) and we did not change them til we approached Elba. It was the longest I ever continuously used Papillon. We passed Elba at very good speed by Thursday morning, the wind kept being tall with small variations.

We had a close encounter with a fishing boat named Monster due to our sleepiness but everything continued smoothly until we reached LaSpezia by midnight and we anchored till Friday morning. We then docked at Assonautica marina.

During the last half hour of sailing we found our Genoa roller almost completely blocked so we spent a good part of the day dismantling it to repair it, which was succesful. One mm of different placing two attachment screws.

On Saturday morning we started preparing the unloading that had some problem because the water that came in the boat during the trip destroyed some of the carton boxes and we repackaged the wine in recovered cartons we collected locally.

After a good lunch in the sunny afternoon at the fishermen’s restaurant with the Swiss friends who arrived at about 14.00 we loaded all our cargo on the their vehicles. A nice local dinner with the local Slow Food friends closed the day. Sunday afternoon 2/4 is the planned departure for the return trip when the wing turns NW. It is supposed to stay favourable for a few days.