As I start this we are about 5 hours into the expected 30 hour passage from Sardinia to Sicily. The outline of Sardinia’s spectacular mountainous East Coast is still faintly visible behind us; after it disappears, the next land we see will be the Egadi Islands off the West of Sicily. Corsica and Sardinia were gorgeous and difficult, full of highs and some lows with us always learning and slowly getting better at what we’re doing (or trying to…).

Our engine mishap in Ajaccio ended up keeping us there for three extra days, though the repair was solved with a part that Volvo magically got to us within hours of a support phone call. At some point, we realized it was Bastille Day in France and we sat on the deck of the boat watching a spectacular fireworks show with a crowd of locals gathered on the docks around us – the mortars were set off from a raft uncomfortably close to us and we had ashes and firework parts raining down on us, necessitating a full boat scrub down the next morning. We finally left Ajaccio the next day, shockingly without having significantly added to our Napoleon knowledge.

We spent the next several nights in some beautiful Corsican anchorages but after seeing some predictions for a storm and high winds, we decided to indulge in two nights in Bonifacio to get a safe harbor and enjoy the ancient town. We had a dream sail before rounding up outside of the harbor entrance to take the sails down. Except….the big mainsail wouldn’t come down. With the winds rising, it was stuck all the way up and no amount of pulling would move it. We set a course taking us away from land to get us some room and kept working but finally decided to drop anchor and take a closer look. Up high we could see the main halyard (line for raising the sail) had shredded and the ‘Hook’ that holds the sail was stuck way at the top of the mast. We realized that the only way to fix it was to send someone 65 feet up to the top. This is done using a bo’sun’s chair – a small chair that attaches to a line and which can used to hoist someone using a winch. We have never done this – it’s been on the todo list, but it’s a full list and we were content to procrastinate on a frankly scary new chore. We decided that we wouldn’t try this at anchor but would go into the harbor and figure out what to do after the boat was safely docked. All of this culminated in our most tense docking experience yet – in a packed harbor, we had to jam ourselves into a narrow berth between two other boats fighting a 15 knot crosswind with the sail stuck up and pushing us around.

But, there we were – in a safer position but still with the sail stuck up and with some risk as long as it stayed that way. We checked into the marina, managed to get a contact for a sail rigger and left some messages. Then, with the boat stable and still not ready to put one of us into the chair for the first time, we decided to sit tight and take a walk. The old city is high up on a cliff and from up top we could see the marina and Arcadia way down below, with her sail forlornly up.

As we walked back to the boat we could hear beautiful singing coming from a sailboat two down from us. It took us a minute to realize it wasn’t a recording, but the crew of the boat singing in the cockpit. We had briefly noticed them before, several young teenagers speaking Italian. We turned our attention to the boat – the storm which had driven us into port was approaching and we stared up at the sail trying to think about what we could do to make sure it got through the night safely. Suddenly, from the dock we heard someone calling us – we turned and saw some of the young people from the neighboring boat. They shocked us by offering to come aboard and help us get the sail down. The group turned out to be a summer sailing team with their coach and they had seen our distress. The coach came over along with the rest of the team and suddenly they were all on Arcadia, looking up the mast with us. It was dark and the storm was coming in, the winds were rising and lightning was in the distance and then, with a young English speaking team member translating between the coach, the team and us, they rigged up a chair and sent one of the team members up. We watched as the chair took the young man aloft and as he scrambled around the support structures of the mast. He reached the sail and quickly cleared the snarl at the sail and we cheered as it tumbled down into the sailbag. He told us that he could see the line was blocked up high still but we all agreed that his efforts were plenty for one night and he came down. It’s difficult to describe how thankful we were – we were at a low, not knowing what to do and the team appeared out of nowhere to help us in a time when we really needed it. The next morning, in the spirit of our Irish friend from Soller, who bought us pastries after accidentally lifting our anchor, we delivered croissants to the team along with a Google Translated thank you note in Italian. The next day, our repairman came to the boat and while he fearlessly went up the mast three times to fix the breakage and rig a new halyard, it didn’t have quite the same emotional impact as the ascent the night before.

We left Bonifacio early the next morning with the skies still grey, the winds still on the high side and with the waves tossing Arcadia around. We reached Sardinia and suddenly it looked like Italy everywhere. Our Italy entrance was more complicated than most EU border crossings since we needed to officially check in at a major port (for some uninteresting customs reasons) which we don’t usually do. We headed for Olbia, a town on the East coast where we were guaranteed to find the Customs officials we needed. We dodged huge ferries and the largest mussels farm in Europe to tie up on a public dock right outside of Olbia center. I got off into the blazing sun – suddenly it seemed at least 10 degrees hotter than it had been in Corsica. What followed was an ordeal of bureaucracy that took me almost three hours and 5 miles of walking between Coast Guard stations and tobacconists to finally get our required transit log (Constituto) for the remainder of our time in Italy.

We spent two surprisingly nice nights at the industrial dock in Olbia, then detoured to a couple of more scenic spots before settling to where we needed to be to meet my nephew Felix and his friends Orion and Andrew who joined us as the last leg of their summer backpacking trip. Over the next few days, the guys traveled with us back to La Maddalena, swam and scouted out our superyacht neighbors. It was great having them with us.

We spent a day doing chores before setting out to see more of Eastern Sardinia. July and August are the busiest seasons for all the parts of the Mediterranean that we are now in and the anchorages are very full. Usually, though, the majority of boats clear out around 6 PM leaving the anchorage mostly quiet for the night. We’ve been enjoying getting up early before the crowds come back and enjoying the anchorage. Sarah gets out on the paddleboard most days while I usually take a swim, often we’ll both go to shore and meet up for a quick hike before getting back to the boat. We stayed a couple of nights in the Golfo di Orosei area, known for its sheer, jagged cliffs. We saw sea caves, goats on the beach, a beautiful canyon along with incredible blue waters.

The days have been getting hot and we’re spending more and more time in our swimsuits and in the water. The evenings and early mornings remain beautiful and we are staying thankful to be doing what we’re doing, even while starting to miss home and all the people there.