It was time to continue the last part of our journey to Palermo, where Maria and Bonnie would remain for a week while I returned to England to work on site at the two NHS Trusts that have contracted me.  This journey should be easy although there is barelky a breath of wind and so we will be using some of the fuel we have just added.  The journey is less than 100 miles so this should be get out of the marina, get going along the coast for twelve hours and then tie up.  Hopefully, in time to join some new friends, Rob and Jo from Anchor Management that we have mat at Milazzo.

There are a few tasks that need to be done before we can get there and I will be working at the chart table for a lot of the day too.  Over the preceding 24 hours, we have worked with a rigging expert who has been able to supply a block for us.  Unfortunately it is a lesser specification than the one we had so we decide to swap the bigger block for our main sheet and use the smaller block on what should be a lesser load.  That said, there is no wind and so no opportunity to get any sail out! The dangling wires of our solar will have to wait and I cant get a new sheave for our traveller that also broke on the way down – again not critical but something I want to fix. The next important thing is fixing the lifting point on the rib.  Fortunately this is above the waterline because fixing it in the water is substantially easier than fixing it on the davits or straps. It takes a little while but I am able to get that fixed the previous evening and the rib is back up, covered and we are ready to go.

Maria needs to get her confidence back and so at 6:30am she takes us off the wall, going sideways and then straightening up once we are past any obstacles.  I’m sure this will be like muscle memory for her and she will remember all the times she has manoeuvred Mariadz in and out of tight spots. We had out avoiding fishing net markers as we get to the North of Sicily for the short hope across the top to Palermo.  Maria has identified a funky little marina, Yacht Club Mediterraneo, which is a little away from the hustle and bustle.  It is also adjacent to the Guardia di Finanza and the carabinieri which, you would have thought, would make it quite secure!

With no wind, it is an uneventful trip over, I am working down below and checking periodically but one of the things I do want to check is the alternator.  After a few hours, I notice that our batteries are full.  It is a sunny day but this is a good sign.  I also notice over the course of the day that there is some power coming into it form the alternators.  Mariadz has two alternators setup on the engine.  The original charges the start battery and then, once this is full, as a mechanism to provide charge to the lithium house batteries. However, the big Balmar alternator is responsible for doing the big batteries.  The problem is of course, that when the batteries are full, you cant really test your alternator.  As part our refit, we changed the aircon units to state-of-the-art inverter units. These do not pull a lot of power on start up but gently ramp up and their maximum drawer is 720W, which is rarely achieved, and coincidentally is equivalent to the capacity of our solar.  For that reason, we have switched our electrical system to allow us to drive the aircon from our inverter.  We would never run all of them and we couldn’t run them for long but it is a way to use excess energy.

I therefore switch on an aircon unit, which will use some of the battery capacity and create the demand for the alternator to do some work, as long as I switch off the solar charging so it doesn’t do it for us!  When I do 1Kw of energy goes into the batteries! That isn’t the small alternator.  My current theory is that there could be a problem with the fuse on the charge circuit which is intermittently breaking the circuit. Unfortunately I haven’t found that fuse yet! But good news is that the charging is working fine for the moment.

It is getting to the end of the day and it is time to tie up.  We are a little later than we would have liked.  As we approach the marina we cant see anyone, and it is nearly 9pm, but soon enough we see a waving figure on the shore, telling us to come in astern. 

We will be picking up lazy lines and there is lots of space in front and a wide area for us to aim at.  Mooring doesn’t take long and we can drop the rib and get ashore for a lovely dinner and a well earned week chilling…. Yeah right!