Escape on CAPE - Carnivale, warships and watercolours

Carnivale, warships and watercolours

Escape on CAPE

David, Sarah and Bryn Smith

Wed 18 Mar 2009 15:26

Carnivale – Sardinian style

If you cast your mind back to the end of February, we were celebrating Carnivale (that’s one of the ways that they spell it here), Sardinian style. In Cagliari this involved a week of evening parades through the streets, with performers, masks, music and costumes, and lashings of confetti, fake snow and silly string.

Face painting and masks.

Music of many colours.

One of Cagliari’s cardinal marks (sorry, non-boatie folks, this is a yottie joke).

Jugglers and stilt walkers.

Stunning costumes (photos courtesy of the Pyxi-cam).

Mamuthones – men with bells, sheepskin and masks (photo courtesy of the Pyxi-cam).

The Mamuthones do a traditional dance – coordinated stomping and shaking of bells – then meet up with their bone-and-antler-toting mates to light bonfires in the street.

Impromptu BBQ (photo courtesy of the Pyxi-cam).

Karen caught in a confetti snowstorm.

The week of celebrations was rounded off by the burning of a straw man on the Bastione overlooking the city. The king-shaped bonfire was lit by flaming arrows provided by the ‘Crusader’ contingent of the parade.

Playing with matches – before and after.

Sartiglia in Oristano

A crowd of us from the marina travelled up to Oristano (1.5 hours by train) for one of the largest annual Carnivale events in Sardinia – Sartiglia. We set off from the marina at 8 am and had tuna butties for breakfast on the train. Nothing much happened until after lunch, so we wandered around the town looking at the stalls of local produce and crafts.

We had BBQ’d lamb sandwiches for lunch.

Sartiglia is a huge equestrian festival set against the backdrop of a medieval town – think International Eisteddfod meets Horse of the Year Show in a classy Italian town. A sand race track is laid through the town for the parade and mounted activities, edged by metal barriers into which the hoards of spectators get squished. Proceedings are led by Su Cumpoidori – the 'demi-god' for the day (complete in mask, top hat, frilly blouse – a bit of a Boy George look-a-like if the truth be known). There is lots of ritual – Su Cumpiodori is dressed by virgins before being placed into his saddle, and he isn’t allowed to touch the floor for the whole day. (I’d like to know what happens when he wants a wee…) There is a huge parade of national and medieval costumes, and displays of courage and skill by more than 100 horsemen in teams of three (all colour coordinated and masked).

Sardinian national costumes.

The band provides dramatic drum rolls to punctuate the proceedings.

Medieval costumes – even the horses got to dress up.

Medieval horsemen and women, complete with chain mail.

Medieval Swordsman 1 to Medieval Swordsman 2; “Does my bum look big in this?”

After the parade, the mounted activities start when Su Cumpiodori has a go at spearing a star suspended over the racetrack, at a gallop using a foil. Then some of the other horsemen have a go, and finally there are mounted acrobatic displays – all at a gallop three abreast.

Su Cumpiodori.

Jousting in a medieval setting.

The ‘Green’ team.

The ‘Pink’ team.

The (only) girly team.

By early evening we'd had enough and wandered back to the station to wait for the train back to Cagliari. We caught a bit more of the action on telly in the station café. Unfortunately, one of the horses had a heart attack, then once that had been dealt with, a local bloke did a runner across the path of the horses and got wiped out (a stunt that went wrong apparently), so a bit sad at the end. Karen and Richard (PYXIS) have a full run down of the theory and practice of Sa Sartiglia plus more photos from the Pyxi-cam on their blog http://blog.mailasail.com/pyxis/651

Miscellaneous other activities: grappa, pancakes and curry

We went across to ENYA for a superb German supper (with the children) and to see Rosie and Otwin’s photos of Sardinia so that we have a better idea of where we want to go in the summer. We also ended up on ENYA for an impromptu pontoon disco party (without the children) and ended up drinking far too much grappa. I never want to drink grappa again (no, really).

Bethany, Bryn and Lynne (MOYA) organized pancakes in the gazebo on Shrove Tuesday.

The pancake production line.

Behind the scenes – Beth and Bryn balanced on chairs to reach the hotplates.

It was Richard’s birthday, so we turned up with a lemon drizzle birthday cake and helped him to eat it.

The birthday boy with his cake and the diplomatic ‘fork ‘andles’.

We had a Curry Evening – about eight different sorts of curry plus rice, naans and beer – followed by dancing to shake it all about.

Curry and beer consumption underway.

The mundane bit in the middle

I've been really busy with work and the dentist (I’m having some old fillings replaced, and a root canal treatment, lovely). I had a stomach bug that laid me low for a couple of days (I thought that you’d all like to know that). The children have been learning about teeth and healthy eating (a homeschooling mum never misses an opportunity…), letter writing, and working on their watercolour technique, with guitar practice and maths in between. They’ve been earning extra pocket money by sorting loads of washing, and boat cleaning (and learning how to calculate the extra money that we owe them using Excel with WANDERING DRAGON). Bethany is saving up for a laptop, and Bryn is saving up to buy a batch of new books from Amazon to keep him going through the summer. We’ve all had colds, but you’ll be delighted to hear that the coughing, sneezing and snot is subsiding now.

David has been fiddling with the outboard – changing the oil, replacing the impellor (a sort of rubbery tubular star thingy that appears to be very important if you want a happy outboard), and wiggling the fuel cut-off switch. His fiddling seems to have paid off – not only does he know his way around its insides more intimately (useful for when he needs to fiddle in the middle of the fairway in the path of an oncoming ferry), but it runs for longer than 5 minutes without cutting out! Yotties have a bit of a saying – that there is nothing more annoying in an anchorage than a 12-year-old boy with an outboard. Well, Marina del Sole has its very own equivalent – a 45-year-old boy with an outboard that he has just mended! He has also changed the impellor for the water pump on the main engine, as well as spending lots of my hard-earned cash on coloured string to attach to sails and other bits of boat equipment.

45-year-old boy with an outboard that he has just mended.

The engine – plan C

On the engine front, we are up to plan C. David got talking to a German engineer who gets flown down from Hamburg twice a year and services all the German boats in the area. He comes well recommended by everyone who has dealt with him. Anyway to cut a long story short, he came over and looked at the engine, listened to it with a screwdriver to his ear, and did lots of engineery inspections to the engine. (We always take advice from engineers who listen to their screwdrivers...). His verdict of our problem was that we had a valve that wasn't closing properly, which was causing the knocking noise, the blue/black smoke and loss of power. He reckons that we can run the engine as normal for a while but we will still keep losing power slowly and the engine will get noisier as time goes on. He is going to find a new head for the engine in Germany, prep it, supply the new gaskets and new valve(s) and come down and fit it all for us in July or August for a reasonable price plus the EasyJet flights down and back. He'll take the old head back with him and rebuild it to sell on again. We'll keep you posted!

Published at last!

Yes, after writing professionally for the past 20 years, I am finally starting to publish under my own name – it’s so exciting! My first article (about this trip) appeared in the April issue of Sailing Today, and there will be three more. The second article has just gone to press, and will hit the unsuspecting shelves of W.H.Smith mid-April I guess.

Warship trivia

There appears to be a multinational warship convention on here in the harbour, and following on from the tug-identification tips that appeared previously, I am now delighted to be able to pass on what I’ve learned about military watercraft. You’ve heard of Jane’s Planes – well Sarah’s Warships and Tugs has got to be a number 1 bestseller in the making. Warship identification appears (so far anyway) to be a bit more straightforward than tug identification. Basically, each type of ship is identified by a letter – F for frigate, M for minesweeper and A for auxiliary vessel. I didn’t get close enough to the submarine to see if it had an S on the side.

F is for frigate.

M is for minesweeper and A is for auxiliary vessel.

Spot the submarine.

The arty bit at the end

The art classes have continued to expand, and now include Stephen and Anne (WANDERING DRAGON) too. We've been meeting up a couple of times a week to paint things that we would never have dreamt of painting in the past (rusty JCB grab, white sheet on a white plastic chair, odd bits of boat) as well as the boats, sea- and landscapes that we all wanted to learn to paint. People have been really keen to see what we have been up to and Delores (TYFON) and Lynne sorted out posters and flyers, and Delores gathered together all the ‘masterpieces’ to put on the Marina del Sole Art Exhibition (13–15 March). Lynne did have 40 or so paintings/drawings from before, but even so we managed to display about 100 paintings between all of us. We had cheese and wine to start things off and the gazebo buzzed all weekend with people dropping in to see the paintings and stay for a drink. We even managed to sell about 40 paintings between us!