One of the key requirements on the list to be able to call yourself a true sailor seems to be to get into fishing, both as a form of entertainment and a source of sustenance. Knowing this, we had already kitted ourselves out with a book on how it's done and bought some gear while gathering supplies in Cagliari. Behaving like a true married couple, Gerard and I had opted for competing setups (mine from a fishing shop, his from a supermarket) and we were eager to see whose equipment would win the race to catch something. Gerard had an unsuccessful attempt trawling with his kit on Friday (which he claims was down to the speed of the boat rather than the equipment…) so when we tried again on Saturday, out of sheer laziness I decided to attach my shiny spinny thing (this is a technical term) and hook to his line rather than setting up my own. In some kind of metaphorical life lesson about compromise, this worked a treat and within about 10 minutes we realised we'd caught something!! Our first thought obviously was that it must be an unlucky jellyfish that'd been snagged as we passed it but as we reeled in the line it turned out to be an actual fish! At which point we realised we hadn't thought this far ahead and neither of us was sure exactly what to do with our haul. After a bit of back and forth about who should touch it (Gerard kindly stepped up to the plate), we got some essentials together - glove, knife, gin. The latter because Gerard had read in the fishing book that pouring alcohol into the gills is a more humane way of killing a fish than whacking it over the head (though in my view it was not a particularly good use of our Bombay Sapphire). Sparing you the gory bits, Gerard valiantly managed to produce a couple of fillets which I went and cooked. Next issue - what kind of fish is this? The fishing book bizarrely omits any kind of information about types of fish and, being city folk, neither of us is particularly up to speed on this subject. It didn't look dangerous - no scary colours or spiky bits - and it did look suspiciously like a mackerel but without stripes on its back (i.e. the usual defining feature of a mackerel). After all our effort and not wanting the poor fish to have given its life in vain, we decided on a clever strategy… Gerard would eat the fish and I would not meaning that if it made him sick, I could get us back to shore. Thankfully 48 hours on he still has no symptoms so I think we're in the clear. And we've now downloaded a fish identification chart for next time (on the basis of which we've agreed Saturday's fish was a mackerel that'd lost its stripes).

Aside from the fishing excitement, we also had a fair bit of sailing excitement. The wind picked up the last few days and reached a force 5 (I'm told) so we were flying along and actually decided to continue past La Caletta (our planned stop for Saturday) and on to Porto Ottiolu. A less convenient side effect of the stronger wind was bigger waves - about 2 metres at their worst. Quite a contrast from the preceding days but good to see how safe Starfire feels in rougher conditions. The marina was lovely and totally sheltered so we had a nice wander and stocked up on fresh food. We also had a look at the weather forecasts and saw that there was some rain expected for Sunday so we decided on a shorter trip up to an anchorage on the north side of Capo Coda Cavallo called Porto della Taverna. The rain came while we were on our way and we got some amazing photos of the downpour heading out to sea from the land. We got a very brief shower but we were outside the worst of it - nonetheless we dropped the sails and put on our foul weather gear, safety first! We spent the night at anchor watching thunderstorms in the distance and hoping they wouldn't come our way - we had the phones and handheld VHF in the oven just in case (apparently that's the safest place for them if you get hit by lightning… Gerard knows some weird stuff). We also discovered we have an anchor alarm on the GPS which beeps at us if our anchor drags - best invention ever, makes for a much better night's sleep!

Having survived the night we set off for Marina di Portisco which we reached in record time early this afternoon. It's a bit of a novelty to arrive somewhere in the afternoon so I was excited about having a justifiable excuse for an ice cream but disappointingly the gelateria is shut… as is everything else. Hoping it's a siesta thing and not the turn of the season!

So it's been an eventful few days, evidenced by the fact that this is probably my longest post yet (although the lack of wifi for a bit might also be a contributor there). The only other thing which is perhaps worth mentioning (though slightly less exciting) is that we've finally picked up a bit of Italian with the help of a game of Monopoly. We decided numbers was as good a place as any to start so every roll of the dice, fine, property price and passing go was conducted in Italian. We're now pretty confident up to 1000 (mille) so looks like it was pretty effective!