This morning we woke up to a chilly surprise. There was a white carpet covering the roof tops and streets of Villanova Monteleone. This is very unusual here. November is often a very wet month in Sardegna and this year has been no exception. Its feels like it has been raining for 3 weeks non stop but we needed it. The water stores and reservoirs need to be replenished after a very dry summer.
Its very difficult to say anything positive about 2020, that I am sure you will all agree. We have tried to put a brave face on, but the reality has been far from something to smile about. The season began with state imposed Covid-19 lockdown in early March. We were able to quickly move onto the boat from Villanova and spend what we thought was going to be a short period of isolation and limited movement away from the boat. How wrong we were. Life under Covid restrictions has become the norm.
The good thing was that we were able to make great progress with the pre-season boat preparations and Andrea was looking great by mid April but we had no-one to share her with!
If you have read my previous blogs you will know that in early May we discovered by chance, that the main mast had a large area of rot. The rest is history that I will not repeat. Suffice to say we did not take our 1st guests on board this season until early July, after Sardinia finally opened its ports to foreign tourists from Europe. What is normally a 6 month season was drastically reduced to 2 months, through no fault of our own. We have all become slaves to Covid-19, lives put on hold in a cruel way, businesses devastated and the sooner we can bring this dark period to an end the better. There lies the next sequence of questions. When will it end? How will it end? Unfortunately, nobody knows the answer.
Andrea Jensen consumes our life and a whole new World has opened up to us, which we could never have imagined when we first stepped aboard her in 2016. We feel truly blessed at times and at other times we think ‘what have we done?’. You could say one of those times is now, in May 2020 with no prospect of a summer season due to Covid-19. But we have so many great memories which we need to pull on at times like this, to keep us motivated to keep going.
The virus is nothing we have brought upon ourselves of course. It’s really something we were unable to have foreseen, planned or prepared for. Its come at a time when we really thought we were getting the hang of this Mediterranean life, then bang the wind is knocked out of our sails.
On top of all this we have found rot in our main mast. The clouds are really hanging over us just now. I think we are living a nightmare just now and not the dream most people think! Yesterday we had a mammoth task of having to prepare and remove the rigging in order to have the mast removed at Alghero Ship yard by Rafael and his merry men. Thank fully we had lots of help and there is a local ship building expert, who has worked on Andrea Jensen previously, and has said he is able to fix the mast. That’s a relief! But at what cost?
Well it’s going to be May next week and we are still in lockdown on the boat here in Alghero, Sardinia. We have had some encouraging updates from the Italian government this week, that they are easing some restrictions and this is to be ongoing throughout May. This is urgently needed, especially here in Alghero. The town is like a ghost town, with all bars, shops and restaurants closed. This is obviously hitting the our economy hard. We too are very worried about our future here. If tourism is slowed then our business becomes questionable as it is solely reliant on the summer tourist trade (as are most businesses here in Sardinia). Northern Europeans are our main customers like Germany, Netherlands, Sweden and France. If they stop coming to Sardinia, we will be in deep trouble financially. We always try to look on the bright-side but this is very difficult with Covis-19.
I write this with a heavy heart. What is happening right now, across every continent, is truly frightening. The disaster here in Italy is particularly alarming and shocking to say the least. The daily numbers of Coronavirus cases and deaths continues to rise, almost uncontrollably it would seem. Sardinia, at the moment, is not as affected as mainland Italy and from what we can see from looking outside of the boat in Alghero Port, everyone here is sticking to the rules of social distancing and remaining indoors. This is particularly hard for us here, I can tell you!
Another observation is that the people here are very socially conscious. They are not going out to the supermarkets and filling their trolleys full. Panic buying does not seem to be the headline here, thank goodness. But what we all are, is scared, along with the rest of the World. Where will this pandemic lead us? Will it lead to a shrinking of the World economy and make countries and governments think more about self reliance and move countries to a more home grown economy? Out of these dark hours, days, weeks, months hopefully people are being made to think about humanity and how fragile life really is. We certainly are!
The summer is flying by at such a rate but thanks to our great team and fabulous ship, we are once again the top rated excursion in Alghero on Trip Advisor. Its the end of July already and we have had lots of great days sailing with great guests on board. How they love our little ship, we are so proud of her. 5 star reviews are really making the difference. Thank you everyone for contributing.
We have 2 days of Mistrale right now and are marina bound today and tomorrow. The thunder storm last night was spectacular and we watched from the deck as the lightening lit up the skies of Alghero in dramatic fashion. This was however, quickly followed by torrential rain and a very disturbed night for all aboard! Thank goodness we are not working today and a strong westerly is drying all our damp things in record time. You cannot beat sailing life!
The 2nd weekend in May, each year in Sardinia is special. The island opens up all the religious monuments, churches, museums and some other related places of interest for free, to help encourage the locals and tourists alike to visit these places and celebrate the rich history of the island and perhaps learn something of Sardinia’s past. Local school children are present in each monument to help guide the visitors around and talk knowledgeably about the monuments history and elaborate on the important points of interest. It never fails to surprise me however, how poorly advertised events such as these are! The May Day Nautical event a few weeks ago appeared to be very badly advertised too, which is such a shame when clearly a lot of hard work and time has gone into organising such events.
This year we were able to take advantage of this opportunity and visited many sights in and around Alghero, some of which we had visited before and others which we were visiting for the 1st time. We climbed to the top of the Bell Tower of Saint Mary Cathedral and were able to see right over the roof tops of Alghero and across the sea to Capo Caccia and beyond. The views were spectacular and well worth the climb to the top.
We also visited the Church of San Francesco and the cloister which date back to the Gothic period, end of 15th century and the very well preserved, very precious Church of Santa Barbara with it wonderful, colourful painted walls and ceiling.
There are so many interesting, historical monuments and churches in Alghero that we have still yet to visit all of them, but my favorite so far is the small and beautiful Church of Saint Barbara.
After working hard for the past four days we decided to take our 2 volunteers Ant and Ella, out for a wee tour of the stunning Alghero coast. Here they are in the net and loving their first experience out on the water. We were lucky enough to have two sightings of Dolphins on the way too! Great day
The wind dropped and the sun shone so why not get our new volunteer to climb the mast? Welcome on board Ant and Ella! No time to waste, we start our fabulous day trips in 3 days time and there is still lots to do
(I cannot believe its Easter already). Something important is missing from the boat? Yes you guessed it, the SAILS! We are not going to get far with out them. But before they can go back on we had some blocks to change at the top of the MIzzen mast. Thankfully we had a brave volunteer. Thanks Ant!
Ella, in the meantime was getting to work on some sanding and painting. Those all important finishing touches make all the difference! Great work guys. Thanks.
