After 10 days of fattening ourselves up with bread and pastries in Corsica, we're back in Italy which does neither of these things well. I'm pretty sure I've hinted at the high quality of their ice cream once or twice though?? We celebrated our arrival in Portoferraio on Elba with a triple cone (each) so I suppose it's swings and roundabouts. Good thing Gerard's already locked in - and I suspect he knows better than to comment on the growing waistline of the person with whom he's committed to share a mere 30sq meters with for the next year!

Celebration of our arrival was well-earned since we undertook our first ever unsupervised (in the sense that it was just the two of us rather than that we weren't paying attention) night sail to get here! On Tuesday night we were lying in a marina on Cap Corse called Macinaggio and this area is quite well known for getting strong winds. Not having a working wind speed meter (still), we could only judge by the rising volume of the wind whistling and ropes creaking and by the amount of wobble on a nearby flagpole which looked as if it wasn't going to last the night (but thankfully did). It was really windy. This carried on into Wednesday morning but the forecast was telling us it would die down mid-afternoon and that this would of course be followed by 3 days with no wind. We had a tough decision to make - stay on Corsica until the wind picked up again (it's a 40nm trip so not one you want to take on by engine if you can avoid it) or head off mid-afternoon and arrive at night. Being the adventurous (read impatient?) souls we are, we decided to go for it, safe in the knowledge that we could divert to another island, Capraia (about halfway) if we felt the need to wimp out. Other considerations deterring us from staying put included the fact that there was an almost-full moon and clear sky so it was never going to be totally dark, the sea state was manageable, and we've still got a fair bit of distance to cover to get to our wintering location. We set off at 3pm and remembered as the sun was going down that with night sailing you're supposed to let people know what you're up to - not wanting to panic the parents, we each picked someone reliable and asked them to start panicking at a pre-designated time if they hadn't heard from us. While en route we were treated to a stunning sunset, had to avoid a huge container ship which, despite miles and miles of sea all around, coincidentally happened to be heading straight for us, and Gerard whipped us up a very tasty just-add-water risotto (Italy's answer to Cup-a-Soup). Apart from that it was a very uneventful 9 hours - not sure you can really ask for more from a night sail, we were not complaining! We arrived in Portoferraio at midnight, dropped the anchor in the bay and passed out in bed, hoping we'd be clear of the ferry turning circle but not having sufficient energy to do anything about it either way.

We're both inexplicably happy to be back on Italian soil, Corsica was amazing and overall probably prettier than Sardinia but there's just something about Italy and Italians! They're so friendly and there's such charm in the way that things just happen when they happen - we've missed it. I also can't get over the specificity of their retailers… you have a few obvious dedicated establishments (pizza at the pizzeria, fish at the pescheria, bread at the panetteria, ice cream at the gelateria) but then you also have some brilliantly limited businesses like the carteria (postcards), mieleria (honey), birreria (beer), culminating in Elba with a chain which solely sells one scent of perfume dubbed "Acqua dell'Elba". How these little places survive is beyond me but I get no end of enjoyment from them!

Yesterday we spent the afternoon exploring Portoferraio and visited the house where Napoleon lived during his exile here - pretty amazing views, not sure why he was in such a hurry to leave. Today we hired a car and did a bit of sightseeing around the island - it's pretty small but very cute, lots of lovely little villages (a slight shame that they all seem to be in hibernation). We also had our first beach day of the whole trip! It was very welcome, especially after Wednesday's long sail and late night. Also a good chance to try to sort out our tan lines, we both have pretty noticeable lines on our thighs where our shorts end.

In other news, since the last post we had an opportunity to get the gennaker up (basically a massive massive sail that replaces the genoa - the front one - to help you go faster when there's not much wind). Like a kid with a new toy, Gerard has been hankering to try it since we set off from Cagliari but you need to have certain conditions to use it safely because it's so big. Those conditions (wind from either 8 o'clock or 4 o'clock, not too strong, flat sea) finally coincided and lasted precisely the amount of time it took Gerard to get the sail out, attach it and hoist it. So we didn't get very far before we admitted defeat and took it down again but at least we know it works! We've also branched out a bit in the culinary arena; after some taunts from Gerard about the can of chick peas that I insisted we bought a month ago (not unfounded - we had an identical tin in our cupboard in London for about 3 years), I decided to make houmous. Lacking any appliances more high tech than a fork and not being too confident about what the Italian word for tahini might be, it wound up being reasonably coarse houmous but houmous nonetheless! Feeling proud of my efforts (and smug about using the chick peas), I decided to raise my game and embarked on a spot of baking. I found a very easy recipe for a raspberry bakewell cake which required little skill beyond setting the oven to the right temperature - not as easy as it sounds on a boat. It looked like cake, tasted like cake and was all gone within about 36 hours so I take that as a good sign - in any case I can vouch for at least a 50% approval rating. It's given me a bit of a bug now, maybe we haven't escaped the bread and pastries after all…