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.

The procession continuing to the waterfront

The narrow streets of the old town

Quirky

Bastione di Saint Remy

Welcome back to Sardinia – and for dinner tonight delicious Culurgiones.

 

Grateful for the Best of All Worlds

We are nearing the end of our time at our home at Shamballa, Boggy Creek and I am filled with many mixed emotions.  It has been great to reconnect with family and friends and the land around Bellingen.  But it is sad to leave this bit of paradise and all who inhabit her.  Despite all the hard work of slashing back the bush and doing repairs and maintenance over the last 5 months, this time has been very special.  So thank you all Australian family, friends, flora and fauna for reaffirming that no matter how far we roam, we will still call Australia home.

Our humble abode

Spending much too short of time with our wonderful sons, Peter and Patrick

Good times on Shamballa

Wood-fired pizza by chef extraordinaire, Wendy

Remembering those no longer with us

Catching up with Mark at his new home

A great visit with Thea and Dave

 

 

Sprouting mushrooms below the Tallowood tree

Our friendly goanna

Now that we are fortified and comforted by our good fortune of having Bellingen to return to, a very special privilege indeed, we can continue our sailing with renewed purpose.  There will be more hellos and goodbyes with their bittersweet transience, new experiences and challenges, lots of work and lots of fun as we continue learning from life’s unexpected meanderings.

 

The Nasties of the Bush

Bellingen is very beautiful.  Our co-op, Shamballa, is nestled in a lush sub-tropical forest where the water from Boggy Creek is crystal clear and vibrantly plumed birds flit through the massive forest giants.  It is a little bit of paradise.  But this paradise has its Nasties and over the last few weeks we have had a few close encounters with them.

Yellow tailed black cockatoo in the tree tops

Snakes:  I don’t mind snakes.  When growing up, my brother use to constantly catch snakes, bring them home and we would play with them.  I particularly remember a very pretty ring neck snake that we had in a terrarium for a long time.  But I am frightened of poisonous snakes and in Australia that means most snakes.  Pythons are okay.  Tree snakes are very pretty.  But anything else and I want to be as far away as possible.

So in our first weeks here I was quite happy to see a tree snake in the rafters on the veranda.  When a python went in front of our neighbours car it was fun to have a look and urge it back into the bush.  Then when a smaller python took up residence in a cement block in our retaining wall outside the kitchen, I felt as if we had a pet and said hello to it every day.

Python across the driveway

Our 'pet' python in the cement block

I was not feeling so friendly when while I was shovelling wood chips into a wheelbarrow one shovelful contained a red belly black snake.  I let out a shriek and Bob came running.  The snake had buried itself deep under the wood chips in the wheel barrow.  Bob gingerly shovelled through to find it.  It poked it head up trying to slither out of the wheelbarrow coming right for me.  Bob instinctively went whack with the back of the shovel and we instantly had a headless snake.  For Bob, revenge was sweet.  A red belly black snake put Bob in hospital about 29 years ago.  The creepy thing was that the headless body of the snake continued to wiggle and writhe for about 30 minutes.  Yuck!

The black snake in the wheel barrow

The headless snake still wriggling. It was only a small one so yes, I do feel a bit guilty....

Leeches:  These little slimy creatures use to plague us when we lived here before.  Often we would not be aware that one had latched on to our ankle or in between our toes until we had taken off our socks and found them soaked in blood.  Or we would see an engorged body slithering across the floor.  Then we would call out to everyone to check their ankles to see if they were bleeding, or if they had any other of these pests sucking their blood.  

The best way to remove them is to sprinkle them with salt and they instantly fall off.  If there is no salt you have to grab them and pull them off your skin.  They are extremely slimy and it is almost impossible to get a grip plus they are firmly attached.  Pulling them off is not a fun process at all.   When I first moved to Bellingen in the late 1980’s, I was totally repulsed by these creatures.  But, as with anything you get use to them and now I am merely annoyed when they make an appearance.

Fortunately leeches seem to be in the decline here and in the 4 months that we have been back I have only had one encounter.  (It has been very dry here which may account for their scarcity.)  The worse part, besides bleeding for many minutes after the slimy thing is off, is that the bite itches for days.

File photo of an attached leech

Argh Lantana!  We see lantana everywhere in the Mediterranean.  There it is a pretty little flowering shrub adorning front gardens.  Here in the sub-tropics it turns into a monster.  Its scratchy branches tangle and twist taking over whole hillsides.  We spent the first few months here slashing back the lantana and my forearms were covered in scratches.  Then we found a better way to get rid of the large clumps.  We tie rope around the root base (bow lines and clove hitches are not just for boats) and pull huge clumps out of the earth using our trusty Troopie workhorse.  It takes just a few minutes.  Very satisfying!

The pretty flowers of a lantana

A monster clump of lantana

For all the Nasties, I must admit that this beautiful little corner of Australia still comes off as a bit of paradise.

View from our veranda overlooking the dam in a rain storm

What Next?

There were many reasons why we returned to our house in Australia, unpacked and settled in.  Primarily we wanted to see our sons and renew friendships.  We also needed to take care of various bureaucratic and medical issues and after renting our house for four years, the house was due for some maintenance.  We have also been taking advantage of now having a residential address and stocking up on all those items we can get cheaply on eBay – not something we could do when we had no fixed address.

Visiting the boys in Canberra

 

But niggling away in the back of our minds was the big question of what next?  We have been travelling on land and sea for nearly 5 years.  We have sailed in the Mediterranean for 4 years, mainly in Greece and Turkey, and loved it.  Is it time now to put down roots again at Shamballa and embrace the tree change life?  Or should we continue sailing in the Mediterranean, going back to Greece and Turkey after we explore Sardinia, Spain and Portugal this year?  Or should we continue sailing west and make the big leap across the Atlantic to the Caribbean?  

This?

Or this?

Or across the pond?

There was no eureka moment but gradually the answer sneaked up on us and one day we found ourselves signing up for the ARC+ Rally for this November.  The Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) is a well established rally run by the World Cruising Club.  The rally was first organised by the sailing great, Jimmy Cornell, in 1986.  The rally concept has expanded and the World Cruising Club now organises rallies around the world, in Europe and the USA.

 

In the main ARC over 200 boats cross the Atlantic in loose convoy leaving from the Canary Islands in mid-November and arriving at Saint Lucia in the Caribbean before Christmas.  The 2700 nautical mile journey generally takes about 20 days.  

We have signed up for the smaller ARC+ Rally.  This rally of about 70 boats flagged from more than 15 nations leaves from the Canary Islands and goes first to the Cape Verde Islands, a sail of about 6 days.  After a few days layover sightseeing and socialising, the convoy continues across the Atlantic to St Vincent in the Caribbean which usually takes about 14 days.  The route is slightly longer than the main ARC, about 3000 nm, but is broken up into a shorter time period continuously at sea.  Plus it goes to Cape Verde, an appealing destination off the beaten track.

The start of the ARC+ a few years ago

Destination St Vincent

We are only on the waiting list for the rally but are hopeful that we will get a place as some tend to sign up early, just in case, and then drop out.  We also still need 2 more crew to help with the watches.  Anyone interested??  

So in between the maintenance chores and socialising while at Bellingen, we are buying pilot guides and spare parts off eBay and thinking about getting back to our westward sailing in April/May.