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Hi allThis is the tale of a bumpy ride and a sicky mum leaning over the side,a mountainous sea, running out diesel, a botched attempt at reefing, a rip in the mainsail…!!Well that's about it for the crossing! We left Pollenca in Mallorca on the Monday afternoon, with about 20 knots of wind behind us, and the forecast was that it would stay behind us, getting less, for a couple of days. Imagine our surprise when we strarted to get 25 knots on the beam, moving forwards (for those that don't do boats, this wasn't too good). The waves came from every direction and some were pretty big, and with a ripped main and not a huge amount of diesel it took us till Wednesday afternoon, travelling on just our foresail (the wind did die off and came from behind, but only about 7 knots of it) to reach Sardinia - well actually an island off Sardinia called Islo di San Pietro, a town called Carloforte.We ended up tied up at a marina that is still being built, where we arranged that they would attempt to lift the boat for us with their big crane, after the cous cous festival had finished. Yes, the cous cous was lovely and we have really fallen for the town of Carloforte. It is the first place we have been to that doesn't cater to the English, or German tourist markets in a big way. Most tourists who come here are Italian, and we are starting from a point of about 3 Italian words, but we have nevertheless found everyone to be very friendly. The weather has warmed up nicely and it getting to the time of year where we have to stay out of the sun in the early afternoon.We have met some people on a boat called 'oor maggie' who live in Ayr, also another boat couple, one of whom comes from Newton Stewart. Small world!The boat was lifted out on Monday (traumatising Anna in the process), the guys at the yard are very professional and incredibly helpful which is good as we don't really know what we are doing. The bottom of the boat was absolutely covered in barnacles, and there was very little antifoul left - back to the fiber glass in places, but no other nasty surprises. We have a long haul of sanding and painting ahead of us over the next few days! We'll have to buy some paper masks as the dust is horrible.
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