We are now in Malta having passed through Gibraltar, Palma Majorca and Sciacca a port on the south coast of Sicily.

There has been too much motoring for my liking but we had to keep up to our schedule.

As with all new boats we are still having niggling problems.

The bow thruster, which in my view is an old man’s bit of kit, and which a good skipper should be able to dispense with in the case of breakdown, has done just that.

The batteries powering it have decided to divorce themselves from the boat’s electrical system and we have no indication that the auxiliary batteries exist.

We have managed to overcome temporarily the problem of chafe with the cruising chute on starboard tack by padding the forestay base below the furling drum. The owner will need some form of proboscis to overcome this.

The rivets holding the goose-neck on to the boom had failed to hold the two parts together and holes had to be drilled to put in larger rivets. This was done in Gibraltar and it seems to be holding up.

We had an interesting run going towards Sicily. A following sea with gusts to f7, three reefs in the main and a pocket handkerchief of a headsail gave us speeds of over 9 knots when surfing down the waves on a broad reach.

Helming was quite tricky, the waves were picking up the stern and skewing the boat off course even before the preventer lashing came adrift. After that we stowed the main and sailed under headsail alone.

The auto pilot really came into its own with the less experienced helmsmen and kept us on a really steady course. The battery drain was quite high and during a seven hour stint we had to recharge the batteries three times each for an hour. Fortunately with a generator as well as the auxiliary engine (should it be called that now?) there was plenty of power available.

The spreaders are not set back all that much but I am surprised that a new boat with brand new sails does not have ante-chafe patches to cut down wear. With the headsail halyard fully tensioned, we are still getting chafe on the foot against the pulpit, so we do not pull the headsail out fully however light the winds.

The mainsail reefing system has been changed from single line to slab. A great improvement in my view, as you get far less line in the cockpit with the latter.

Blocks on the clews of the reefs cut down on the friction and in order to ensure the blocks are reasonably secure we moused the pins with cable ties. (See photo). I am indebted to Ian Whitmore, who came with us on leg three from Bayona to Gibraltar for this idea.

Despite all these niggles, the boat does sail extremely well and we are making good progress. Like a lot of modern boats, there is still the uncomfortable slamming of the bow going to windward when the fl at forefoot comes down from a wave.

My old Rival 34, and later my Laurent Giles 44 never suffered from this problem because their keels were much longer and cut through the waves rather than slamming down on to them. The added bonus with both of these boats was that their ballast was all encapsulated, so there was no question of a keel bolt problem or of a keel coming adrift!