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Say Goodbye to 2020

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.

End of season mast painting

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What a Roller Coaster of Emotions

It’s hard to believe we are in our 5th season on Andrea Jensen here in Alghero, Sardegna, one of the Mediterraneans stunning Italian Islands. AJ is dear to us and indeed to all who have been lucky enough to sail in her. But I do have to admit, it’s not all been plain sailing. We have experienced a roller coaster of emotions since we first became the proud owners of our little ship in February 2016. We left our families in the UK and moved lock, stock and barrel to Sardinia.

The season started with a disappointing panic in May 2016. We had bookings but no license from the Port Coast Guard Office in Alghero. We were the new British owners of Andrea Jensen and the Italian bureaucracy seemed impossible to navigate. We had to cancel the initial sailing bookings because without a licence, we could not operate. All we could do was keep turning up at official offices day after day and plead that someone would give us the official stamp to get started! This needed enormous patience but it finally paid off. On May the 10th we had our license and could confirm with our first 2 paying customers and of course – it rained!

I could not believe it when our 2 guests told us where they were from, Billingham in the UK. It’s the next town to the one in which I was born, in the North East of England. How bizarre was that? They were brilliant guests and did not mind the rain (it was only a light shower actually). What a relief, we had a lovely day out and received our first 5 star review on Trip Advisor. Our new life aboard Andrea Jensen had begun. What an adventure!

Early Years on board Andrea Jensen
Alghero Port, Sardegna
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It’s Nearly May

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.