Other boats have already escaped; PYXIS and ENYA have gone to Tunisia. Lynne (ex-MOYA) has gone to a new life on a catamaran. YELLOW BIRD has headed off towards Gibraltar, come back (due to bad weather), and gone again. TYFON also headed off for Tunisia but had to come back after running into bad weather and ending up with damage to the sails and rigging. Luckily Delores and Preben were OK, if a little shaken.

Karen and Richard leaving on PYXIS.

Rosi and Otwin just about to leave on ENYA.

We, however, are still here in Cagliari, and will probably stick around for most of May (we’ve paid for the whole month…). For a start, although the weather has improved, it still isn’t really settled enough to anchor comfortably yet. Every time we think the weather has settled, we get another blow through. During one blow, the end of our pontoon buckled badly at one of the joints, and we all pitched in to help move SKYSONG onto a more stable pontoon. SKYSONG belongs to Michael Buerk (of BBC fame) and his wife Chris who were weather-bound here for a few days on route to Turkey with their friends, Liz and Bill.

Moving walkways…

We also have other reasons for sticking around. We are hopefully going to be doing some First Aid training (basic first aid plus second aid for yotties in peril on the sea – you know, injecting vodka into oranges and sewing up chicken legs in case we ever need to do this at sea). We did go out for a sail on Saturday, but it was too bumpy to anchor anywhere so we had a brisk sail back in. I've got plenty of work on and have also been commissioned to carry on writing my series (up to part 6) following the antics of the 'intrepid Smith family' for Sailing Today.

More boring boat jobs

David has been really busy with boring boat jobs. Mr Stainless Steel came and opened up our pushpit (metalwork at the back end). With the pushpit opened up, we were able to fit our bargain boarding ladder, which means that we will now be able to get onto the boat out of the water without having to climb into the dinghy first. As we can now fit the passarelle to the stern and walk through rather than clamber over ironwork, we also have the option to go stern-to against the pontoon, which is much more sociable. Reorganizing the pushpit generated lots of other work – moving the stern light and re-routing all of the wiring for the various aerials. We now have music in the cockpit as David fitted the outside speakers that we have been carrying around with us since we launched CAPE in February 2006. Other jobs that have been ticked off the list include:

·        fitting a shelf/barrier in the hanging locker to stop things dangling in the fridge compressor

·        putting extra fiddles in the galley, under the chart table and under the companionway steps to stop the kitchen stuff/generator/toolboxes sliding around when we are at sea

·        getting our big gas bottles refilled (people who write in pilot books that gas bottles can be refilled obviously haven’t got the gas bottles that we have…)

·        servicing the Aries self-steering gear

·        sending the Iridium satellite phone to be fixed, as it appears to have developed a mental disorder – hopefully it should be back from the Iridium phone hospital in the USA before we leave Sardinia!

David re-routing the wiring at the stern.

We thought that David had managed to fix the outboard, but when we got it out to play safety boat for canoe races, it was back to its old tricks of a) not starting and b) spewing petrol everywhere once it did start. It had also been working on a new trick on the quiet – seized gears. David took it off in a marina car to find the outboard hospital and the engineer quoted us 400 € just to have a look at the carburettor problem. As there is no greasing nipple for the gears, they cannot be greased without dismantling the whole engine – this is a special Suzuki design feature apparently. David brought it back to think about the problem and give it one more go himself and the starter button disintegrated, so we have given up on it, stripped it of useful bits and spares and will try to get hold of a second-hand 15 HP, 2-stroke at some point (not this month!).

Beth, Bryn and I marked up the dinghy, canoe and petrol tank, stencilling on our registered number and green frogs to identify them as ours and hopefully put anyone off pinching them.

Bethany and Bryn marking up the dinghy.

Bryn caught the stencilling bug and moved on from the dinghy to pillowcases and T-shirts…

The CAPE merchandising department – frog pillowcases and…

…frog T-shirts.

If we carry on like this, the list of boat jobs might actually get shorter not longer!

Catapults, canoeing and other water-based activities

The children are currently into catapulting, fishing for blennies and starfish, and canoeing.

Bethany honing her skills in the CAPE seagull and crow repellant programme.

We borrowed another canoe and had races with Julia (WILD OATS) and Conrad (AYA) to the dry dock and back.

David stirring water.

Julia racing back from the dry dock – note the sky with a thunderstorm brewing in the background!

Bryn beating Conrad back to base.

I fell into the marina. I was reaching for a rope and tripped over a plank on the pontoon. I have to say that the water was quite warm, and it wasn’t a shock going in because it was one of those inevitable things that happened in slow motion! I was giggling before I even hit the water… David is now calling me ‘Flipper’.

A change of plan

Having said that we were going to potter slowly around Sardinia and Corsica this year, we are seriously thinking of going a little further afield. Of course everything does depend on how the engine behaves, but we have decided that we don't want to just hang about waiting for it to go wrong (which is what we feel we are starting to do), and that we will deal with it going wrong wherever we are. We were toying with the idea of joining the Vasco de Gama rally in 2011, which goes from Turkey, down through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea and across to India (dodging the pirates off Somalia, of course). However, having been in touch with the organizer to find out more, it turns out that this rally is likely to be the last one. So we have provisionally put our names down. The rally leaves from Turkey in October 2009, visiting Cyprus, Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, Yemen, Oman and India, arriving in Cochin in April 2010. The extra incentive is that there is another boat – with children – booked to go on the rally too. We would still like to have a look around Sardinia and Sicily, before heading for Greece (the Ionian) and then on to Turkey for the beginning of October. The engine is still a sticking point, so plans may change again. Hopefully our German engineer will still be able to join us at some point during the summer to sort us out with a new engine head and piston valve(s). I am now worrying about when and where I will be able to get internet access…

Sagra di Sant'Efisio and other reasons to party

St Efisio is the patron saint of Sardinia, so the May Day celebrations are big here in Cagliari, with the Sagra di Sant'Efisio – the Festival of St Efisio – held from 1–4 May. Efisio was a commanding officer in the Roman army and was sent to Sardinia to suppress Christianity. Things didn’t go quite according to plan, however, and he had a vision similar to the one Paul had on the way to Damascus, and switched from persecutor into ardent follower of Christ. When he was asked to deny the Christian faith he refused and was sentenced to death. He was imprisoned in Cagliari, but was then moved secretly to Nora 40 km further down the coast to prevent the people from protesting against his sentence. He was beheaded by a Roman soldier on the beach at Nora in the year 303, where there is a tiny church dedicated to him. St Efisio is also attributed with saving Cagliari from an outbreak of plague in 1650.

According to my internet research, the festival is one of the largest and most colourful processions in the world, involving several thousand pilgrims wearing 16th and 17th century costumes, oxen carts, musicians and mounted pilgrims and soldiers, who accompany the statue of the saint on a pilgrimage from Nora to Cagliari and back again over 4 days. We arrived early to get a good view, watching the oxen-carts-and-foot-pilgrims part of the parade. Rose petals are scattered as they go, so a thick bed of rose petals develops as they pass. We gave up after 2 hours in the sun and went off to find a drink and look at the tourist tat stalls set up along the front along the length of Via Roma – apparently the procession takes about 5 hours to pass!

There are carts from each town and village in Sardinia, each decorated with flowers and examples of local products and handicrafts – drawn by very impressive and beautifully groomed and decorated oxen!

Each town and village has its own distinctive costume, with permanent-pleat skirts, lace blouses, coral jewellery and colourful embroidery for the women.

Even the children have full sets of traditional costume.

Musicians playing the traditional Sardinian launedda – an ancient polyphonic reed instrument that is made of three canes (sounds a bit like a cross between a recorder and a bagpipe).

Knowing my luck, if I’d been born Sardinian, I’d have been born in the village that wore just black, with an interesting shawl arrangement designed to accentuate the female bottom…

Sardinian woman 1 to Sardinian woman 2; “Does my bum look big in this?”

There was a large festival on in the Fiera (congress centre near the marina) timed to coincide with the Sagra di Sant'Efisio. It included folk dance displays, Sardinian arts, crafts, food and wine, home and garden displays (Ideal Home Exhibition – Sardinian style), tourist tat stalls, and agricultural and industrial exhibition, as well as large fun fair. The children bumped for Wales in the bumper cars and took a Harrier Jump Jet ride in a simulator. We bought a new frying pan as the handle has fallen off our old one.

The kids bumping for Wales.

The arty bit at the end

I have managed a couple of watercolours for Big Dave (BRUMBY), and branched out into a new medium – oil pastels – for a study of some rusty old chain in the cantieri.

‘BLACKBIRD’ number 1.

‘BLACKBIRD’ number 2 (with penguin at the helm).

Delores says I need to work on people next…

Rusty chain.