July 18, 2019 (Day 4,431)
Quick Fix: 37° 50.7 N / 15° 17.2 E
Sicily, Italy

Night Sailing, West
With a full moon laying a silvery rhumb line for us to follow, we sailed west in the night carried by a wispy northerly wind spilling down from the southern mountains, across the bottom of Italy's boot, towards the smoldering cone of Sicily's Mount Etna, who, at first light and softened by early dawn, welcomed Dream Time with a tiny plume of grey ash belched from the depths before being carried gently away to meet the clouds and smudge the morning sky. Night sailing is a quiet and reflective time, well, when the conditions allow, and they do tonight. The Mediterranean Sea is calm, the steady flow of commercial traffic - freighters and tankers riding an invisible highway heading from Messina or the Suez Canal, and local fishing boats straining ahead of heavy nets - are far to port, further offshore, leaving only the occasional sail boat to grab your attention and a lone navigational light to follow across the horizon.

July 1, 2019 (Day 4,414)
Quick Fix: 41° 08.1 N / 16° 50.8 E
Bari, Italy

Warm Limoncello
We just returned to the boat to discover an eye-watering stench wafting from Dream Time's cabin. It seems while we were away exploring Croatia our fridge/freezer compressor, after 9 years of faithful service, most of which in the tropics, decided to finally give up, letting our supply of frozen meat and cold vegetables stew in their own warm gooey juices for a few days while cabin temperatures soared to a rank 90 degrees. We had planned to sail south last week but we're now waiting for a new compressor to arrive - thankfully the city has an unlimited supply of gelato. We're also shopping like locals now, who only seem to buy enough groceries for one meal at a time, which of course with no fridge and a European heat wave, we have no choice. We hope to be back in business this week when we'll continue our voyage to Sicily. We could leave without fixing the fridge, but I like my Limoncello cold, so it's worth the wait.