Shamballa Cruising Yacht Club: Back to Sardinia and the Festival of Saint Efisio

We are back on Songster living on the hard in a rather basic boat yard in Cagliari, Sardinia, slowly doing the few maintenance jobs before launching and starting the sailing season.

View from the boat yard

The trip back to Europe was quite gruelling as we came directly and did not do our usual break in Southeast Asia. So after 40 hours of straight travel (Thanks Wendy for getting us to the airport in plenty of time.), saying a sad but special goodbye to Ray, we arrived at Pam and Nicole’s flat in London bearing nearly 80 kg of luggage. We spent a day at the V & A Museum and did some window shopping in South Kensington and Sloane Square and another day catching up with our friend, Tazeena, at her flat in Trinity Church Square. It was a short but nice visit. I do like London.

Pam and Bob at the V&A

Sadly by this time I had come down with the dreaded Airline Lurgy, the scourge of long distance travel. I dragged myself through the flight from London to Cagliari and went straight to bed for several days, coughing and sneezing. Fortunately we had decided to spend a few days in a B&B while we got Songster back to rights. Just as we were ready to get into the major project on Songster, taking off the propeller and changing the cutlass bearing, we discovered Cagliari was in the middle of their major 4 day festival of Saint Efisio (Ephysius).

Saint Efisio was a 4^th Century Christian martyr. In 1656 he was petitioned upon to stop a 4 year plague epidemic which had killed 10,000 Sardinians. The people made a solemn promised to take the statue of the Saint in procession from the place where Saint Efisio was imprisoned, now the Church of St Efisio in the Stampace district of Cagliari, to the beach of Nora, Sout West of the city, where he was beheaded in 305 AD. Then the statue is returned to Stampace – A journey of about 65 km done over 4 days. Approximately 3500 people participate from all over Sardinia. They dress in their traditional costumes. About 200 also parade on horseback. We were so lucky to stumble upon this tradition that has been celebrated for over 360 years.

The city centre was packed. The spectators clapped as the different village/church groups passed solemnly by in their beautiful traditional dress.

After watching the procession for an hour or so we explored some of the old town around the fortress. We had not been to this area last year and it opened up a whole new view of Cagliari.