We go for Mallorca! We buy 4 jerry cans & fill them w/fuel & tie them to the sugar scoop (stern, that's the back of the boat) Skip Pallermo & go straight for Palma. Forecast was good, but wrong. We ran into T-storms. Terry managed to avoid 2 or 3 squalls on his watch at night (22:00 to 02:00) but Cynthia headed right into a giant one formed from several smaller ones combining after that. Thanks, Terry. You can see it on the radar. There were 3 other ships on the radar at close proximity but Terry only noticed 2. Thanks, Terry. I was supposed to have been sleeping before but the storm & kerfuffle, & depth sounder alarms, & lightening did not make for much dream time. As I focused on the giant blob on the radar, & tried to keep track of the ships, I could see the black velvet horizon approaching quickly. Terry had mentioned watching the lightening strikes ahead for a couple of hours. Now they were here. The ships stopped to let the storm go by, but we idiots kept going. The lightening was striking all around & closer & closer, until one loud flash & crack made me jump. That's when I started praying again. But I didn't actually feel real fear, I had complete confidence in the boat, which behaved very solidly in the conditions. Just as we seemed to be approaching the other side of the storm, it changed shape & we were at the beginning again. It shadowed us & rained & blew force 7. Finally we could see some stars again, yay!
Not making much headway in the calm after the storm we all decided to go for Cagliari on the southern coast of Sardinia. You can see the mountainous coast & lights for hours before you get close. We arrived at 04:00 Sun. & tied up at Marina del Sol with the help of a strangely silent (for an Italian) dockhand. The line he pulled out was so encrusted with shellfish you could have opened a seafood restaurant with it. Serge didn't want this on his boat so we got another line. After congratulatory drinks & trying to figure out what day it was, we went to sleep.
This post is a week old as free universal wifi in S. Italy is neither free, nor universal. Cynthia
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