Cagliari - 18 September 2021

We know that we will be in Cagliari for several days. We have folks coming for the crossing to Sicily, and we wanted to ensure that we were not prevented from getting here first by the weather.  There is also further checking and preparation needed. Principally there are a couple of spares that we need, so we set off in search of a chandlers that had been recommended. They were very helpful, but did not have what we needed. We tried another chandler but also without success, and then resorted to food shopping. We will return to the first one on Monday to see if the bits can be ordered and arrive in time for us to depart.

They say that every day is a school day, but when you operate a boat, every day is a maintenance day. I note this especially, as today was the first day on this trip that I did not have to get anything out of the tool box, we seem to have made progress on a variety of these fronts.

Despite all of our cleaning efforts, the exterior of the boat seemed dirty. We were covered in a sandy coloured dust. Fortunately it seemed to wash off easily with the hose, and we are now restored to our pristine condition.

The narrow and steep ancient streets of Cagliari 

As usual, we had a quiet period in the early afternoon, when the day is at its hottest, and then went for a walk to re-explore the town. We remembered many places as we got to them, and eventually did some window shopping in the poshest shopping street in town. There are many sales of summer goods ongoing and they are displaying thick winter coats. That seems a bit strange given that the temperature is topping 30 degrees almost every day.

After we had eaten dinner, we headed into town in search of gelato. The town was buzzing with people heading for a night out and even after we returned to the boat there was excited noise from the nearby quayside. It did not disturb our sleep.

Steve (and Tricia)

Distance today               0 miles

Total distance 2021:   144 miles

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cagliari - 20 September 2021

It was a prompt start this morning. On Saturday we had visited a chandlers, but they did not have what we wanted. They said that they could order it but it might take 2 days to get here, and if we wanted them to do this, we should return early on Monday morning.  We were in the shop by 9:30. There were a couple of things that we needed, the one that required ordering was a spare impellor for the engine. We had used our spare while in Bosa, and we don’t like being without at least one spare. The other thing that we needed was a new controller for the anchor winch. This has been an ongoing issue for some time. We have 2 and had eventually proved that the primary one does not work, and the backup does. However, during the intervening years, the design of the connection has changed and they did not have one of our configuration. After weighing up the possibilities, we concluded that we should replace the fitting on the boat with the new style and get the new controller to this specif...
Read more

Trapani - 30/31 October & 1 November 2021

Image
Saturday would have been the day to go to Erice, if the weather was the deciding factor, the views up to the top were glorious, but this was not in the plan. Chris had to return home and so we spent the morning with him packing while one of the workmen struggled to remove a hatch cover that needs to go away for repair. Then we sat in the sun at a café, having a coffee overlooking the harbour. Trapani has a good bus service to Palermo airport, and is no further away than Palermo itself is from the airport. We saw Chris on his way, which he later said was very picturesque, and then returned to the boat to continue with the packing up. It was dry so the focus was on clearing equipment from the decks while we could.   Everything needs to be cleaned and packed away for the winter. We had a near perfect mackerel sky Sunday and Monday were both more of the same, with the focus shifting to below decks. We won’t go into all the details, but gradually the list has reduced to the extent tha...
Read more

Balestrate 23/24 October 2021

Image
Sundays' weather systems Saturday was a day for chores and preparation for the time with our son, Chris. We ultimately made three round trips into town, climbing the steps up the cliff side each time. We were first to arrive at the excellent laundry, so had our pick of the machines. It did not take too long, and we returned to the boat for coffee, before starting in the food shopping. We had to keep an eye on the weather, as we did not want to get caught in the open during one of the downpours that were forecast. Bread, fruit and vegetables, fish and then on the final trip, supermarket essentials were accumulated. And all without getting wet. Our worries about the replacement of Alitalia with a new airline, ITA, proved to be unfounded, Chris’ flights all ran as expected and landed early. He did receive a text update saying that the time of his flight had been moved forward, but as he was sitting on the plane before the message was delivered, there was no problem. The taxi that w...
Read more