Equinox_2019

Dawn on Wednesday morning The hillside which burnt last night, and the rather windy river We twiddled out thumbs for hours, waiting for the wind to die down, which it seemed not to be doing. We were running a graph showing the wind speed over time, and there was a reasonably steady wind of 15 - 25 knots blowing down the river, across our bows.  However, there were frequent gusts that were hitting 45 knots (just over 50 mph), sometimes less than a minute apart.  It was easy to see when the gusts were coming, it was textbook conditions for reading the wind on the water, especially when the surface was being lifted off by the wind. We knew that the river was shallow enough that we had to be precise with the boats position, there were lines from the bows of some of the other boats that restricted our access to the ideal channel, and we had to visit the fuel dock before going to the lifting dock. Oh, and we had flights booked for Thursday morning, so we had to find a way of...

Pretty well everything is done, and initially it was a fairly relaxed day. We were planning to go for a bike ride in the afternoon, but decided to not go ahead with this as the wind picked up steadily.   It funnelled down the river, and there were quite strong gusts, causing Equinox to both swing within the berth and roll a little.   All of this was pushing us back and the stern was much closer to the pontoon than it had been previously. None of this was helped by the marina having asked us to give one of the lazy lines, securing the bow, to the boat that came in next to us.   There was no way of pulling Equinox forward on the remaining lazy line, so after a discussion with our Dutch neighbours, we managed to secure the bows of the two boats together, reducing the swinging. We consulted the marina staff and changed the time of the lift out on Wednesday to a time that the wind was forecast to have dropped. During the evening, the wind continued to rise and we...

The list of outstanding jobs is continuing to diminish and we are now confident that everything will be ready for the lift on Wednesday.   One of the biggest jobs remaining was to put a wood treatment onto the decks.   This I have done before. It is a long process of basically painting it onto an already damp deck, twice.   This is best achieved on hands and knees.   While crawling round I contemplate the romance of being a boat owner.   The glossy pictures never seem to include one of you in rubber gloves, and protective goggles, squeezing into difficult corners to be able to paint wood preservative on the deck. I was pleased when the second coat was finished and I could tick that one off. Most of the remaining jobs are now time specific, things we can only do at the last minute. As we were under less pressure, we were able to go for a bike ride again on Sunday. We cycled along the riverbank road into the larger part of Bosa town and s...

We have cracked on with the preparations, steadily knocking jobs off the list, so this has been the focus of these two days.   We have been cleaning and stowing equipment and have got out some things from their usual resting spots to be put away more permanently for the winter.   I was pleased to note that our foul weather gear has been completely unused this year, just T shirt and shorts for months, although we have resorted to jumpers in the evenings when it cools.   For the most part, as our photos will show, we have had blue skies and very little rain.   It did come down for about 10 mins a few days ago, but I can’t really remember the time before that.   A far cry from the weather that we hear is being experienced at home.   We will miss the warm sun, just remind me why we are leaving this glorious sunshine and heading for Britain in winter? Friday was enlivened by the yard lifting a very old, large, wooden boat for winter storage. The boat fi...

We decided to have some time off from the work list, so we took the delightful journey upstream, about 2km, in the dinghy, to the centre of Bosa. In the town itself it is like going back in time 50 years. The cobbled streets are similar to Alghero, but the heavy doors and lack of shop windows, typical of hot countries, can’t have changed in decades. It is full of charm. We walked the steep alleyways and steps up to the castle, from where we had spectacular views up river, across the valley, and down stream to the marina and the sea. The ground and soil looks poor here, so the river valley seemed to have no crops, but mainly olive trees. We found a traditional restaurant, where could eat outside in a cobbled street. The menu had several typical Sardinian dishes and we were able to enjoy their delicious food. On route back, we called into the panereria (bakery) and bought some more grisini (bread sticks). They are wonderful; a world apart from the ones we buy at...

Wednesday was taken up with cleaning, including the Bimini. We just have to scrub these things by hand, so it’s rather laborious, but satisfying to see the result. We now have top afternoon temperatures of 23C, with clear blue sky and a light breeze, so perfect conditions for getting things dry. In the early evening through, we needed some exercise, so set off to walk the cliff path, that we have seen lots of people traveling along. We had a fabulous time, in the late afternoon sunshine, enjoying the beautiful scenery. Some of the high cliffs were vaguely reminiscent of Mount Rushmore. We ended up at the highest point, where there are radio masts, before it was time to turn back so not finding ourselves up there in the dark. Distance covered today 0  nautical miles Trip distance covered 549  nautical miles Distance covered 2019 1602  nautical miles Tricia   (and   Steve)

As we have now arrived at our destination and are focused on preparations for returning home, we will cut the frequency that we write the blog to alternate days unless there is something interesting to report. We have prepared a list with about 80 jobs on it that either need to be done now or planned for the winter months, and I am sure that there is not too much that I can say that will make, for example winterising the toilets, sound exciting. It is good to have time to go through the list methodically, and not to have to rush.  So, Monday morning we started on the list.  A priority was to find out what the problem was with our windlass, as the anchor chain was not put away properly.  It wasn’t my priority while I was dragging the anchor up by hand.  A guy from the yard came, and brought with him a service specialist in our brand of windlass from Alghero. It turned out to be a broken connection, but not in any of the places that we had tried over the we...

We were up smartly this morning and I could tell Steve was nervous at the prospect of having to lift the anchor by hand. We had 25 metres of chain out, so obviously it’s heavy. The difficulty is compounded by lack of space up at the pointy end of the boat. Today, it was going to be more difficult again because a clean F4 breeze was blowing. I have to control the boat so we edge forward so Steve isn’t holding the whole weight of the boat and also stop us from swinging in the wind, but not so much that we go over the chain and it bashes the hull. It took about 30 minutes, but we managed it. Steve doesn’t need to do a gym session today. It had gone a lot cooler overnight, down to about 13 degrees, so more layers of clothing were required and I put trousers on for the first time since early May. We hoisted the sails and had a superb sail for most of the way; the best sail of the autumn, in almost flat water. The wind was on the beam (90 degrees to the boat) and we were cracki...

A prompt start today as we had to prepare the tender and then ferry Mary, Gerry and their luggage to the shore.  We had extracted the tender from its usual resting place in the sail locker last night, but we still had to inflate it and then fit the outboard, all of which takes time. We researched taxi companies to take M & G to the station in Orisano and found one who spoke little English, but said to send them a pin drop message showing where we wanted the pickup, they would be there in 20 minutes. Having done this, I made the first journey to the shore with Gerry and some of the bags. When you are on the boat and have been monitoring the depth carefully, it seems as if you are practically on the beach. In reality, it was half a mile away and into the wind.  We went slowly to avoid getting wet en route, as there would be little opportunity to change clothes for those travelling. Gerry was deposited on the beach and I returned to Equinox, rather quicker, to collect Mary an...

The best laid plans…. We have to get Gerry and Mary to a place where they can return to Cagliari for their flight on Saturday. Our target was to get to Oristano, a reasonably large town half way up the western side of Sardinia.   There is a rail service direct from there to Cagliari, and it seems to run fairly regularly.   Their flight   is in the evening, so there is plenty of time during the day to make the journey. However, we were aware that the marina there is too shallow for us. The guide book, current edition, but published in 2015, says that it is possible to berth in an inner section of the commercial harbour, and our verification using Google Earth did indeed show boats where we expected them to be.   However, we had also read some things that put doubts in our minds, so we checked further yesterday, eventually phoning a number that we had located, and we found ourselves talking to the Coast Guard, who did not speak any more English than we do Itali...

We were up promptly to get to the municipal market and bakery, before making an early start. Steve also wanted to buy some wine from the vats in the supermarket, where you take your own bottle, for the sheer novelty value, if nothing else. On arrival back at the boat, loaded with our supplies, we checked the latest weather forecast and decided we would not leave. Although we could have made it to an anchorage only ten miles north, it would probably be an uncomfortable afternoon. We have to be cautious, because the west coast of Sardinia has a reputation for heavy seas, which pound the coastline, especially in the prevailing north-westerly winds. We had bought the local version of croissants for breakfast. These were more like small pastries with either crema or chocolate filling - delicious. We set off to walk up to the church, the Torre and explore the coast north of the town centre. The church was beautifully decorated with dark red roses. It is the celebration of San...

It had been a peaceful night, but the boat rolled a little while at anchor, slightly disturbing our sleep. The plan was to leave the anchorage as soon as we were ready, but not to rush.   As our target departure time arrived, so did a boat from the Carabinieri, who asked to see our papers.   Their boat nudged up towards the side of ours and after they had explained what they wanted, they held out a sort of fishing net that we had to put both the boat’s papers and our passports into.   They backed way while they checked through everything, and eventually closed up again and returned all of the documents by the same method. It was a little disconcerting to give them our passports, but all was well in the end. A s urreptitious   shot of our Carabinieri visitors, while they checked another boat There was no wind and we knew that we would have to motor all day, but other than that the weather was beautiful. We headed off around the south end of the Isola di S...