Rob went for a row in the tinker to get some pictures of Rosa sailing under Spinaker. Very Pretty!
We left them in Olbia at 4.00 after tying up to the old commercial dock all day. It was a good mooring and free – nice to have a solid old-fashioned stone quay to tie up alongside with proper warps and fenders! Unfortunately there is no water or electricity or even rubbish bins. The fuel quay sells water at €5 per 100Litres – which we skipped even though we were pretty low on water.
Olbia is a very busy Ferry port – You are almost bound to meet at least one ferry going up or down the main channel. Fortunately there is plenty of room for a yacht between the channel markers and the mussel beds so it is pretty much stress free. The wonderfully painted Moby line runs form here.
We left to anchor at Cala Condo Cavalo and only just made it before nightfall. Another 15 minutes and we would it would have been too dark to see. The mooring buoys quoted in the pilot are either just bathing area markers or are all broken as there is no way to tie onto them. When we were here two weeks ago and this time, nobody was even trying – everyone had anchored.
Expecting rain later in the day, we got off to a very early start and after a slight dispute as to whether to hoist the Spinaker or not – we did and had a nice sail with fluky winds and arrived at La Caletta at 12.00. It’s a large harbour, well sheltered, very well provisioned with warps and tailed moorings and pretty informal – you just find a space then go off to the yacht club to tell them what you have done. For Rosa it was €30 for the first night and €25 for subsequent ones. Water and electricity that works plus showers and toilet s in the beautiful club house. The only fly in the ointment was the security gate which has a key hole but no key and is just left open. The wind pushed it shut overnight and the only way of getting off the pontoon was by dinghy. It then turned out that the secretary in the clubhouse doesn’t have a key either - so the caretaker was summoned and was there in the promised Italian 20 minutes (i.e. 4 hours). It shut itself again overnight but we set sail early so left it as someone else’s problem.
Current plan is to get as far as we’re going down the east coast on Sunday then set of on the 160 mile leg to Trapani in Sicily at first light on Monday to arrive late on Tuesday.
After waiting a day for the winds to subside, we set off on the 35 mile treck to Santa Maria Navarese with no bolt holes in between. There was a 2M swell from the previous day which bounced us around but there was a nice 12 Knot tail wind pretty much all the way and the Spinnaker pulled us along at a spanking 6 knots.
An hour before we got there, the wind started to rise and we dropped the sails and motored. By the time we got there it was well above 20 Knots. Santa Maria is an excellent huge modern harbour with very nice and friendly staff who came out in a rib to help us in. It was pretty hairy with the wind threatening to flip the bow around so we ended up going into a berth bows-to, down wind.
Next day we set of to Porto Cavalli – our last stop in Sardinia. It was a lovely sail all the way down and the marina is huge with very few boats in it. We moored up side to with proper springs – it felt very secure after the standard Med moorings. The whole place was a ghost town – there is a huge campsite just behind the port which was deserted. A small supermarket which was open but had mostly empty shelves and no fresh produce and a tourist development 2 miles up the coast which reminded L of ‘the Prisoner’ – up market housing with nobody around. All the shops shut. There is no town or village nearby so we were glad we were already well provisioned!
The forecast for the 170 mile passage to Sicily was fairly dire so we stayed 2 nights and then set off by 8.00 on the 36 hour ‘hop’. There were not many highlights – just a long slog. L had laid in some audio books on her IPod which were a godsend – particularly overnight. The highlight was seeing a turtle and two Dolphins.
Next Installment – Sicily...
