Porto Cervo, SARDINIA
After a busy 6 plus months travelling between home on the Mornington Peninsula and the Gold Coast, where our business was rolling out the signage program for the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, it was time to reconnect as a family and take some time out of the busy pace of the last season.
Sardinia had been on our bucket list for some years and the opportunity to sail in the Solaris Cup at Porto Rotondo sealed the deal for us to book tickets for Liane, Kye, Kalani and myself. Hannah was mid way through her own adventure travelling the east coast of Australia in her minivan and so would sit this trip out.
We arrived in Sardinia with only a few nights accommodation booked for the Solaris Cup wanting the balance of our time to be an opportunity to be spontaneous and for Liane and I to discern and be led to where we would stay next… this proved to be a winning decision!
With only a couple of nights before our booking ran out we found ourselves “people watching” while having a glass of overpriced bubbles in the streets of Porto Cervo. Porto Cervo is crazy oppulent and is the haven of the rich and famous with super yachts, Lamborghinis and 8 digit real estate prices the norm.
Literally sipping champagne on a beer budget I felt a prompt to go talk to the local real estate agent about their available rental properties. Dressed in my best pair of board shorts and thongs I strolled into the high end real estate establishment and was appropriately given the “skank eye” by the staff who could see I had perhaps lost my bearings and mistakenly entered the wrong shop….and possibly the wrong town!
Not deterred and armed with a “Holy Spirit” confidence of an appropriate amount I was willing to spend on a villa for a two week stay, I proceeded to navigate the hostility of said staff and win them over with my pathetic attempts at the Italian language. My rationale was that there may be some last minute discounts on bookings given I needed the property in a couple of days time ….hmmm - we don’t discount in Porto Cervo was the reply. Ok - perhaps I am in the wrong spot!
To make a very long story, very short - we narrowed down the available properties to two , which the agent kindly drove us to inspect. Both properties looked incredible but one stood out head and shoulders above the other but of course it was priced at 50% more than the already very large number that God dropped in while sipping champagne moments earlier. The other problem was Liane had fallen in love with this villa the moment we walked through the door….actually she was completely overwhelmed and broke into tears… now I was screwed!
Our beautiful villa
The lovely Italian owner of the property was there while we inspected and Liane proceeded to win him over with her Italian speaking charm - I’m pretty sure the old bloke was fully chatting up my wife but the end result was that the owner spoke to the agent while on our way to the next property (which was far inferior but much cheaper) and offered a special rate for us - which just happened to be the exact amount God had dropped in earlier that day….unbelievable….now I was the overwhelmed one in tears!
We spent the next two weeks just soaking up the area and hardly leaving the villa - which btw came with gardener, pool boy and housekeeper - very tough! It was here, as we dreamt about the future and what life might hold for us in this next season, that we began considering more seriously the idea of selling our current boat and purchasing a catamaran.
The idea began to gather momentum, in particular for me - for more information on the boats on the consideration list see here: https://semicircle-mushroom-2djd.squarespace.com/config/pages/5d056f5029384800014b785b
One of the boats on our list was a Seawind 1600 - the only challenge is there was currently only one of these in the world as they were a brand new design. I contacted the Australian agent who put me in contact with the owners of this boat who he knew to be cruising somewhere in the Med. I made contact via WhatsApp and received an immediate response from the owner who informed me that they had pulled in for one night only that day to Olbia, Sardinia …. unbelievable! Olbia was just a 20 min drive for where we were located and so the next day we drove down to inspect the Seawind 1600.
We decided that while this was a beautiful boat, it was a bit small for what we hoped to use the boat for - you can read more about this in the link above.
