We returned to Hygeia on 21.04.04 and found her in good condition - not too surprising as my brother David and I had been on board for a fortnight in March, getting a lot of jobs done (including hauling and antifouling, and fitting a new bow thruster) and I was on board for a couple of days the previous week getting the radar fixed. Matteo, the marinero, has been going on board regularly over the last few months, to open the hatches and keep the batteries topped-up.

Our departure was delayed when Dot on Neliandrah asked me to have a look at her husband Vic, who had fallen off his bike the day before and hit his head. It was rapidly apparent that he was far from well, so the advice to Dot was to get him into hospital post-haste. We heard today (a week later) that he is still in hospital, but getting better.
We finally left Ostia on 24.04.04 and had a pretty uneventful crossing to Sardinia until we reached Porto Cervo, by which time the wind had built up into the upper 20s and we had something of a white-knuckle ride into the narrow entrance on enormous rolling waves.

Porto Cervo was a surprise: normally home to the beautiful people, it was completely empty and dead. Only 4 yachts, all about our size, and a few medium sized motor-boats - ie 70 - 80 ft, small for Porto Cervo. The town was undoubtedly discreet and stylish, but more the Hollywood impression of what an Italian port should be rather than the real thing. It was so dead, that after a few hours we decided to risk life and limb with another bashing in the sea outside, though things quietened down once we got into the shelter of the Maddalena islands, and we found welcome shelter in Palau, a pretty little harbour on the mainland.

24 hours later we had another weather window, and we decided to set off on the 240 mile crossing to Mahon in Menorca. So we headed through the Straits of Bonifacio before dusk with two nights at sea ahead of us. The wind was SSE, so at last we were able to turn the key off and get the sails up. Bliss. We had an uneventful crossing, with several visits from dolphins, and entered the beautifully sheltered port of Mahon, on the SE coast of Menorca, shortly after dawn. Mahon has an interesting history involving the Spanish, the French, the Moors, the Phonoecians, and needless to say the Brits. At one stage in the 18th C the garrison was led by poor old Admiral Byng, and it was he who had the misfortune to be in charge when he had to surrender to the invading French in 1756 - he was subsequently found guilty at a courts-martial of cowardice, and executed by firing squad on board HMS Monarque - it was this incident that led Voltaire to his famous aphorism "Dans ce pays-ci,il est bon de tuer de temps en temps, un Amiral, pour encourager les autres." At the subsequent treaty of Paris in 1763, when the island was returned to the Brits, Richlieu, who commanded the French invasion force in 1756, arranged at the celebratory dinner for his Menorcan chef to serve the garlic sauce so widely used in the island - Mahonese, hence Mayonnaise. (At the treaty of Paris the island was returned to us, but we then lost it to a Franco-Spanish force in 1782, until we re-captured it in 1795, but then ceded it to Spain in the Treaty of Amniens in 1802.)

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