We are still in Rochella Marina as our planned get away last night was postponed due to poor weather.

So we are leaving here tonight at midnight to sail over to Ripsto on the east coast of Sicily. There were strong winds and thunderstorms forecast last night near Messina and the toe of Italy and we even had some rain this morning.

We’ve had a lovely few days here and even managed to find the pizza by the metre restaurant where Andy and Paul shared a 1/2 m Napoli pizza and I even got a Gluten free sea food pizza.

This is the first place we’ve been where there has been evidence of the migrant crisis. There is a set of shelters behind the marina where the migrants were housed. They looked to be mostly young men of African origin. 2 days ago there was much activity and police and guardia in evidence. Buses arrived to take the migrants away. We assume this is a staging post for people coming from Tunisia which is only about 100 miles from Sicily.

On one of the quays there are 5 or 6 impounded boats at least 2 of which had probably been used by people smugglers as there were abandoned life jackets, clothing and various bags of view. These were large yachts (1 was 50 foot long) so perhaps slightly safer than open boats but who knows how many people it carried.

We had a swim at the beach 2 days ago which was great until Andy got a slight jelly fish sting, so we both got out of the water pronto! The water is about 19 Deg C here so still feels cool but you can stay in for ages.

We had a short walk east of the marina earlier. There are still some wild flowers out and there were orchards of citrus trees and we even saw a mulberry tree. The land is still quite wild between the villages. There were quite a few butterflies and we saw some lizards and even a small snake.