The Yacht Week Sardinia Day 7 – Poltu Quatu to “Olbia” Good Time

by | Sep 10, 2021 | Italy, Sardinia, September 2021: The Tyrrhenian Sea | 0 comments

 

Pulling off an all nighter along the rainy docks of Porto Cervo to watch the sunrise, we then slept in through the subsequently stormy waves while returning to our base marinas in Olbia. Those of us who stayed up may have gotten really moody and therefore apologies were made.

As some of us struggled with our land-sickness all day as we headed back into and returned from Olbia to regain our bearings, we dressed up for one last time for our beachfront closing party at Mama Beach Club:

 

 

Taking black cabs to the venue, we kicked off those shoes with a “Can’t Hardly Wait” / “She’s All That / 10 Things I Hate About You / Superbad / Booksmart / Mallrats” kinda night as we danced outside under the rain to the conclusion of a rollercoaster week of adventure with new friends. I took awhile to get back on my feet, but once I let go of all expectations for the night it felt as if all the narrative threads and variables generated in the past week converged into a singularity: This night is one for the books.

 

 

So much happened tonight I really can’t think of any other way to describe it other than the aforementioned perfect 90s teen prom movies, or the entire music video plot line for Martin Jensen’s “Solo Dance.” I just wish we got to dance.

And for the record, the final after-after afterparty took place on our very own OG “The Kraken” yacht as we threw down the final beats before another storm came our way. I think a few people liked me as the DJ.

 

 

Ahhhhh, who am I kidding here: That night there was best DJ session I had since my college days… and I won’t forget us running out into the rain, walking our final lap around Olbia, staying up afterwards to watch the sunrise together afterwards on a second attempt, and fully appreciating how the best sunrises come after rainstorms.

The sweet is never as sweet without the sour.

 

 

After all, we’re a culmination of the tiniest of random decisions that neither seem to matter or add up at the time, until they do.

 

 

…The hangover and withdrawal begins. So however delirious I am after two all nighters in a row, I still want to write this thank you.

Thank you to each and every one of you for placing your trust in, and taking a leap of faith with me for nearly all of our first Yacht Week experiences, especially as we emerge from a pandemic. This is my gratitude to your seemingly bottomless supply of patience and energy. This is a thank you for embracing that big giant question mark with me. A thank you to your courage in flying out of old storms and sailing into new storms, figuratively or literally.

I know the many of you who have traveled with me before had expressed concerns about how opposite from monsooning Yacht Week could be. It has now been made very clear after our week together that Yacht Week definitely does not appear to be monsooning … and yet the more I think about it that statement lies only at the surface level. No matter what expectations we had to manage the highs and lows, from our disappointments to the thrill of the unexpected as the week went on, I think we all realized what we had was unique and special.

The irony is not lost on me that traveling in a completely opposite style can evoke the spirit of an original style even more. When you dare yourself to throw yourself into something so big with open hearts and minds, you more appreciate how the spirit of “monsooning” isn’t just a spontaneous style of traveling, but also the act of leaping into the unknown with the type of kindred souls most people spend lifetimes looking for. This is the act of following through; a quality many of us have learned is hard to come by in so many. We now leave knowing so many good people who actually follow through; while other boats still had plenty of their diamonds in the rough, our 3 catamarans didn’t have to look very far to know our entire family was still the prize of the party. As if we were a special group of souls hand-picked to collide with one another on the crossroads of the Tyrrhenian Sea, this trip reminded me that a monsoon is who you share it with.. and happiness is best shared.

I’m overwhelmed by the joy of learning how many of you took this week to dig deeper into yourselves, establish profound connections with complete strangers, and nourish intimate spaces for the renewed sense of promise of “what could have been” many of us craved and were denied during the pandemic. And while this week may be over and the 34 of us will never be together all at once at the same time again, these memories and relationships will persist long after that last dance and goodbye embrace under the rain. That last sunrise. Our final laugh together. Nobody but us will truly understand what we just went through the past 8 days. That’s something special. That’s a monsoon.

So maybe you are or will be on your flight home enjoying the first alone time you’ve had in a week, feeling overwhelmed by …something, or maybe you’re already home, noticing everything familiar feeling a tiny bit different. Maybe something is stirring inside you as if you were still land-sick, emotions washing over you in wave-like undulations as if you were back at sea. Or maybe you’re beginning to realize what just transpired was as real as anything back home, and these wonderful extraordinary memories are actually yours to keep, and you are not alone. For I am also thinking of you, giving you a hug and sending you love from afar to reassure you that you’re not by yourself in suspecting that perhaps a needle really has been shifted. So perhaps monsooning is also suspecting — even if it’s for a fraction of a second — that millions of small random decisions ripple and add up to create happenstances that are not so random after all.

Wherever you are in the world, or whatever someone you become, we will see each other again. And knowing this, may you return home with clearer eyes and fuller hearts. Because right now my heart is full. I would never have wanted to do Yacht Week any other way, or with anyone else.

yours to the end,

Calvin

 

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- At time of posting in Olbia, it was 23 °C - Humidity: 70% | Wind Speed: 23km/hr | Cloud Cover: clear

 

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