Palermo, Sicily

We are in a marina north of Palermo for the past two days, waiting for yet another weather disturbance to move through. Gusty winds of force 5-7 from the NW, thunderstorms, rain and then periods of sun during which we catch up on laundry, shopping and boat maintenance.

It's not a bad place to stop – there is a good chandlery and market nearby with street sellers offering fish, olives, fruit and vegetables. The ice cream and bread are wonderful as well.

When we arrived, we were welcomed to a dock on the private club side of the marina by Nino and Jackomo who, after helping us tie up and hook up to power and water, have invited us to share pasta and wonderful Sicilian wine with them. In turn, we had Nino and his family over for drinks and home made tiramisu, thanks to Nino's wife Marisa's assistance with her special recipe. They also took us shopping with their car for more wine and other heavy items. My crew, Rob is repairing Alexandro's video game box and if we don't watch out, we'll end up growing roots here. Perhaps that wouldn't be such a bad idea, except for the curiosity to see what's past the next headland that keeps us moving.

And so, while waiting for the weather, Rob, has installed a drinking water tap with an inline filter, so we can be sure of good quality water. He also installed an anti-siphon for the head water intake, and so I no longer have to worry about forgetting to shut off the valve and sinking the boat. The next project is to install a manual pump for the holding tank because we haven't been able to find a pump out station in Italy. The Yanmar is humming happily and can now do 6 knots without straining, due to some well deserved maintenance, the outboard has new spark plugs, and over all, Eidos is happy.

As soon as the squally wind eases (tomorrow, we hope) and it stops pouring rain, we plan to head towards the Lipari islands. There are two volcanos (Stromboli and Vulcano) that are worth seeing. Stromboli is continuously errupting and pouring lava into the sea. It is supposedly a wonderful sight to see at night. And you can walk down into the crater of Vulcano (and I mean you can – I don't intend to) to dip your feet into geysers and hot pools if you can stand the smell of sulphur.

We are about a week behind schedule, but such is the life of cruisers – plans made in sand. Ciao for now.