39.12.065N 9.07.517E

We loved all the suggestions for the limes. We decided to go for the logical solution – transport the limes to some Tequila. So we headed back to Cagliari, Sardinia.

To be fair there were other factors in deciding to move:

1. We couldn’t get fresh bread for lunch. During Ramadan the Tunisians only eat after sunset therefore bread was made in the afternoons
2. We only had a few more days left on our Tunisian visas
3. There were very few weather windows to head back to Sardinia
4. Some shops have closed down for the month – the key one was our local patisserie. This meant no cake and no granary bread!

The weather over the past few weeks has been very changeable. The weather forecasts were changing each time we looked at them. We eventually decided to head back with a forecast that didn’t look too bad and had stayed static for a day. The forecast was for light northerly winds for the first 6 hours then calm then southerly winds to push us into Cagliari.

Unfortunately this is not what we experienced. We had Northerly winds most of the passage and stronger than forecast. Most of the time this wasn’t too much of a problem as there was very little swell and we could do some long tacks to keep heading north and also avoiding the rain. This is the first time we have seen rain clouds on the radar. However in the early hours of the morning we found ourselves slamming into the swell which was very uncomfortable and it slowed us down considerably.

After trying a few things we eventually went onto a completely new heading that was more comfortable, gave us reasonable speed and would bring us to the southern tip of Sardinia (not quite where we wanted to be). We hoped that the swell would be less near the coast and we could then head north again. Fortunately this tactic worked so as we approached Sardinia we altered course for Cagliari. Our passage that should have taken us 22 hours took 26 hours. Very unusual for us to be this slow!! We averaged 5.2kn as opposed to 6.2kn on the passage to Tunisia.

During the passage Yoyo spent most of the time with the person on watch in the cockpit. She found a comfortable spot under the spray hood wedged in by a winch, the clutch’s and some ropes. Koshka wasn’t happy this trip. He suffered rather badly from seasickness. During the night he made a dash onto the back deck. Luckily Stephen, who was on watch, felt him brush past him and managed to grab him before he got too far. Stephen was clipped on with a safety line at the time and had a limited “grabbing” range. Koshka was then safely “deposited” back into the cockpit.

The weather was warm during the passage – we managed the whole trip in shorts and t-shirts even over night!

We arrived quite exhausted and bruised but received a lovely welcome back in Marina Del Sole. We managed to nip to the shops to buy fresh pasta and pesto for dinner, tidy the boat up a little, and then had a very early night.

The next day we did another shop – Yoyo inspects the purchases! Can you spot what is wrong with this picture?