Alcudia to Mahon
We knew that PYXIS was already in Mahon and waiting for a weather window to cross to
Sardinia too. We set off from Alcudia at 18:00
with the aim of going straight to Cagliari if
things went well or stopping off in Mahon if they didn’t. They didn’t. We had a
choppy sea slopping the starboard quarter all through the night, which made me
nauseous and Bethany sick – at least she managed to miss our
bunk and get the companionway steps instead!
At 04:30 we motored into Mahon and anchored off Isla
del Rey (of “no you can’t have water” fame) and went to bed. The next morning
PYXIS called us on the satellite ‘phone to see where we were and ask us over for
coffee. It’s very exciting when the sat ‘phone rings ‘cos it doesn’t do it very
often! Not long afterwards, the port police arrived to move us on. This time
there was room on the Port Authority mooring buoys and as the rip-off season was
over, they were a reasonable 12€
per night. We picked one up near Isla Christina and PYXIS and waited patiently
for a weather window. David had a lovely time playing with the new generator,
while I did a bit of work, and the children brought their journals up to date
and we baked banana cake. The outboard still isn’t right (possibly water in the
fuel??), so David stripped it down (again) and we bought a new fuel can and
fresh fuel.
Sunset over Mahon.
Sardinia here we
come!
On the morning of Saturday 20th
September we waved goodbye to Spain and set off (with PYXIS) for Carloforte in
Sardinia. For the first 12 hours or so we had
brilliant sailing conditions – 20 knots of wind from the N/NE (15º abaft of the
beam, perfect!) – and we made an average speed of 6 knots with 1 reef in the
main and 4 turns in the genoa. Eventually the wind died away to nothing and we
cranked up the engine. At 02:00 my LifeTag alarm went off – scaring the life out
of me. It didn’t do much for the sleeping David either – I have never seen him
get out of bed and into the cockpit so quickly! We wear the LifeTags during
night watches or if the weather is bad, and they are activated if you go more
than 10 metres from the central station or are immersed in water for more than 5
seconds – basically if you go overboard. The alarm is painfully loud and
penetrating – designed to alert any sleeping crew that they’ve just lost
someone. Once we had ascertained that I hadn’t gone overboard, we changed
watches – David’s adrenaline levels weren’t going to let him go back to sleep
anyway! Two more of the damn things went off later, so we ended up taking out
the batteries and will have to dig out the instruction book to find out what’s
going on. Bryn slept through all of the excitement (so much for loud and
penetrating…).
Apart from the excitement of the man overboard
non-events, we had a quiet passage; not even a plastic bag was tempted by our
sparkly pink squid lure, and there wasn’t much to see –only PYXIS as a little
white triangle in the distance. Eventually Sardinia appeared as a smudge on the horizon and we
hoisted our Italian flag.
“Make sure you get it the right way up,
Dad.”
Carloforte in the
dark
It was dark by the time we started our approach
into Carloforte, on the small island of
San Pietro off the south west corner of
Sardinia. We crept in slowly. While the
navigation buoys and cardinal markers were there, they weren’t where the chart
said they would be. There were also lots and lots of other lights put there just
to confuse yotties coming in at night – on the oil refinery on the mainland and
on the small islands dotted around the channel. PYXIS went in first and anchored
in the harbour. As it was pitch black inside the harbour, we couldn’t see
clearly enough to find the marina pontoons, let alone go bows-to safely, so we
went alongside some likely looking big-ship bollards on the south mole and PYXIS
rafted up to us for the night. At 08:45 the next morning we were woken by the
sound of the police car horn and the first words of Italian we heard were the
police asking us (quite politely) to move on (this could become a habit…)!
The likely looking big-ship bollards in
Carloforte.
We moved across to Marina Tour, next door to the
ferry port and just across the road from the town centre. Carloforte is a buzzy
little warren of a place, its narrow streets and steps packed with bars and
restaurants, designer clothes and coral jewellery shops, shops selling fishing
and diving gear, gelaterias, pizzerias and shops selling divine bread and fresh
pasta. I predict that Italy is not going to be good for our
waistlines! We went out for a fantastic (and extremely reasonable) pizza one
evening in a little restaurant tucked away down an alley. Later on we found out
that the chef is actually one of Silvio Berlusconi’s personal chefs and the
chef’s Dad is reputed to be the one of the best pizza chefs in
Italy.
Carloforte.
Scooting along the tree-lined road that runs
alongside the harbour.
It’s official – Italian ice-cream is
heavenly!
We celebrated arriving in a new country with
American pancakes and Sanders special
butterscotch caramel sauce – a special present from the USA from Nancy’s Mom.
Thank you Nancy’s Mom!!!
When we weren’t eating and drinking, David changed
the fuel filters and did an oil change, I did some work, we did a spot of
school, and we explored the town. The island of San
Pietro was named after Saint Peter, who is said to
have sheltered there during a storm, and who then taught the islanders how to
fish for tuna. Carloforte, the only town on the island, was founded in the early
18th century by 30 or so families of coral fishers originally from
the Italian region of Liguria who had settled
on the island of
Tabarka off the Tunisian
coast. When the coral in this area was exhausted, the families headed back
towards Sardinia and asked the King, Carlos
Emmanuel III, if they could settle on the island. When permission was granted,
they named the town Carloforte (meaning Charles’ Fort) in his honour. The town
was originally walled and some of the walls (the bits that haven’t been recycled
into other buildings) are still standing. We visited the tiny museum, which is
packed with information about the tuna fishing that used to be the main industry
on the island, mining (mainly lead if our limited understanding of Italian is
anything to go by), and an impressive collection of shells from local beaches.
The town now has a thriving tourist industry, with a constant stream of car
ferries bringing in tourists from the mainland.
Part of the Carloforte walls.
Looking across the San Pietro channel to mainland
Sardinia.
The weather blew up a bit, so we weren’t keen to
leave our cosy marina berth to head for Cagliari. Karen negotiated a better rate for
the two boats and we stayed a couple more days.
The technical hitch
bit
By Saturday 27th September, we’d
finally done enough eating and drinking and we had a decent weather window
without an easterly wind that was suitable for heading towards Cagliari. We stowed all
the junk back into its various homes to go to sea, started the engine which ran
for 5 minutes then stalled and refused to start again. We unpacked all the junk
and David started hunting for the cause of the problem. He and Richard
eventually worked out that air was getting into the fuel system – somewhere.
Possible points of entry were the seals on the recently changed fuel filters.
Nope, they were checked and found to be fine. David did, however, find a
stripped thread on the top piece of the fuel lift pump (gosh, don’t I sound
knowledgeable!). We just happened to be carrying (in bits, to rebuild at some
point!) a spare fuel lift pump, so David was able to replace the top piece and
bleed the system again. She still wouldn’t start. We booked ourselves into the
marina for another couple of nights. Karen and Richard stayed too, to keep us
company (while we bored them with every permutation of the potential reasons why
CAPE wouldn’t start). On the Monday, having
done all that we could and having bled the engine at least a dozen more times to
be sure, we got hold of an engineer. He diagnosed a porous fuel line, end
fittings and seals (vintage stuff, remember), and took them away to make up new
ones. He was back later the same day with new lines made up, which did the trick
and got CAPE started. We were relieved to have
diagnosed the main problem correctly, even if we hadn’t been able to pinpoint it
sufficiently to correct it, and relieved to get a very reasonable bill for the
engineer’s time. We planned a sea trial for the next morning and had a pontoon
BBQ with PYXIS to celebrate.
Scuttling off to Cagliari
The sea trial went well, so along with PYXIS, we
scuttled off towards Cagliari before the weather window narrowed any
further and before the wind changed direction again.
PYXIS sailing past Isola Vacca (Cow Island, which is part of a group of three
islands – the Bull, the Cow and the Calf).
Once again we were able to sail for the first few
hours of the passage, finally giving in and putting the engine on when the wind
dropped away. When darkness fell we saw some impressive lightening in the
distance, but none came close to us, thank goodness. With the most recent
technical hitch fresh in our minds, it was reassuring to have PYXIS with us. In
the end, however, we were glad to be able to stand by PYXIS when she picked up
something around her prop. Richard did a bit of going backwards and forwards and
the something eventually cleared.
Sunset behind Isola del Toro (Bull Island).
At 03:30 we picked our way carefully into the
black hole of Cagliari harbour, past the unlit concrete bases
of the cranes on the east mole, and almost into the dry dock. Luckily Stephen
and Anne (WANDERING DRAGON) who were already safely installed in Marina di Sant
‘Elmo, had been primed about our arrival and were waiting to meet us and take
lines. Glad to see some 'navigation lights' that we were sure of, we homed in on
the lights from their head torches bobbing up and down in the gloom. Once both
PYXIS and CAPE were safely tied up it was time
for a celebratory beer! I’m not sure what time we actually got to
bed…
