Aeolian Isles

The Aeolian islands are really worth a visit. In addition to Stromboli which I have always wanted to see, there are several other large islands – all different and interesting. Unfortunately, the weather was distinctly variable and many of the islands seem to go out of their way to make visiting by yacht difficult and expensive.
We started with a 7 hour passage from St Agata to Vulcano which has one of the two active volcanoes in the islands and the only really good anchorages. The scenery as you approach is spectacular with great red and black cliffs revealing cross sections of old lava and ash flows. We saw a tripper boat go up to a cave and decided to give it a go ourselves.

It was almost large enough for Rosa to get into – mast and all. With deep blue water underneath. Lindsay spotted what looked like rubbish in the water – but it turned out to be floating pumice. We caught few pieces in our net.

The anchorage is spectacular with the volcano brooding and smoking above, black sand all around and huge pillars of basalt rising out of the water. We took the dinghy ashore and found a pleasant though very touristy village. We would have liked to spend longer but Stromboli was a must and was a long way to go with only two days spare before a big storm was due to come through.


We left early the next day planning to go around Stromboli at night. We would need a place to moor afterwards and there is no decent shelter on Stromboli so we spied out Panarea on the way – putting an anchoring site and 2 mooring buoys on the GPS. We also noted that the tiny quay was not viable as it was being repaired and the small remaining space was either used for fishing boats or hydrofoils. We got to NE Stromboli ant 6.00 and anchored in very deep and open water for dinner. As the sun set we went off slowly anticlockwise and got to the site where you can see the fireworks in the dark. It is too dim for photography from a moving boat so it’s all in our hear=d. The mountain obliged with three eruptions throwing glowing rocks and lava high into the air which then tumbled down the side of the crater. Truly worth a visit if you ever get the chance!
We got to Panarea at 2300. The anchorage looked uninviting as a couple of small day boats were now moored close to where we would swing so we picked up one of the buoys and had a lumpy but safe night. Mike went in to see the sights so we settled down to breakfast – only to be accosted by a rude young man in a disreputable blue fishing boat demanding €20.00 He had no identification and would give to receipt so we thought he was probably on-the-take. In the end I decided to pay for a quiet life. Thinking about it, I should have insisted on taking a photo of him accepting the money but at the time, I just handed it over. 10 minutes later there was a shout from the neighbouring power boat and a sleepy naked bloke emerged wrapping a towel around himself. He shouted that it was his mooring and demanded payment! I told him we’d paid the bloke in the blue boat. He wasn't happy and I really kicked myself for not taking that picture. I gave him a cheery wave and cast off and I suspect we came under the category of too much trouble to chase. Not a place we will be going back to though.

With a storm forecast the next day, we headed for Lipari (the capital) and picked up a nice pontoon mooring for two days. It wasn't cheap but the ormegiattore (who is the spitting image of Elton John) was very friendly and helpful and provided water, electricity and even WiFi.

Lipari town is great! Lots of provisions, cafes and everything you would expect in a thriving little town. The graveyard is fascinating and the Citadel is impressive. It houses a beautiful cathedral and an excellent museum which is very informative about the vulcanology and history of the islands. The history is very rich and goes right back to Neolithic times when they were the only source of Obsidian in the Western Med, through Greeks, Romans, Moors, pirates crusaders and others.
Finally we had a very lumpy sail over to Milazzo to drop off Mike & Linda and pick up Hugh and Marion.

Northern Sicily

The trip accross was long and fairly lumpy. We had a nice beam wind most of the way though so we were able to sail and keep the average speed close to 5 Knots most of the way. There were no incidents. There were squalls around but we led a charmed life and got lightly rained on just once and didn’t get punched by any heavy squall winds. I did the shift from midnight till dawn and got all the way through my first Jon Grisham novel on Lindsay’s iPod. A wonderful invention – mad the long boring night pass fairly quickly.
Shortly after dawn we got our first glimpse of the Egadi Islands just to the west of Sicily. It took until 1.00 to get to them. We had intended to moor there but found that the pontoon had been taken up for the winter. Knowing that all the mooring hardware would still be down there, thirsting for our anchor, we decided to go straight on to Trapani on the mainland and got there at 5.00.
As we motored down to the marina in the deepest part of the harbour, a man on a pontoon waved us in. I thought the layout must have changed and in we went. It subsequently turned out that it was a new marina and the original one is still there further down. It was a happy occurrence though. They are both teh same price (€50 for us) but the new one, called Cantiere Navale, was one of the best places we have stayed. It has all facilities – including excellent security, friendly staff, a free washing machine, free electricity, free WiFi and potable water. There is even a nice little seating area with coke & coffee machines and chairs. We stayed two days.
From Trapani, we had only 4 days to get close to the Aeolian islands and pick up Mike and Linda so it was days of long passages and short stops. The forecast was fairly rainy and unsettled and the north coast of Sicily is very mountainous and steep-to so there are not many places to stop anyway. We decided to put as many miles behind us as quickly as possible in case of bad weather later.


We stopped at Femina, Cefalu and St. Agata Militello. As we approached Femina from the West, we went between the island and the mainland over an area charted as 5M. A fisherman shouted at us that it was only 2 Meters and I had some difficulty explaining that we draw less than one. In the event, the depth got down to only 1.5M in one place with rocks below – so if you’re following us and not in a Southerly – round the island would be much more sensible!
Femina was a nice little fishing port. The pilot says that mooring is from the quay – but this isn’t true. It is completely choked with fishing boats. There is a pontoon round to the right run by an Ormegiatore. No English spoken and no receipts given despite a great deal of form filling and bureaucracy.




Cefalu was lovely – a real Gem. We were sorry not to be able to spend a day or so there. It has winding medieval streets which seem to be perfectly preserved and the Cathedral is stunning.A huge, very plain nave with a huge ancient freso behind the alter. The walk from the port to the town takes about 20 minutes but very pleasant. There is a well hidden footpath that goes right down by the sea.
St Agata is now providing good shelter as the mole has been extended and hooks around. Helm Yachting (part of Kiriakoulis) runs a charter business from here and provides a really excellent service for their modest fees. At weekends though, the pontoon is likely to be full of charter boats so weekday arrival is a good idea. They provide a free taxi service to a local supermarket and to a local restaurant.
An excellent fish shop lives on the se front on the way from the quay to the town. The lady in there is very friendly and speaks excellent French.
Mike and Linda arrived by train in the afternoon. We stayed overnight and then set off to see the volcanoes in the Aeolian islands.....




.... And back to Milazzo to drop Linda and Mike and pick up Marion and Hugh.
The place is a complete Rip-Off. It was the most expensive marina we've been to anywhere - €60 for a 10 Meter boat in the off season and with pretty much the poorest facilities. It'a just a few pontoons in a corner of a busy commercial port. Ptrovisionas are a real expedition - although the fish when you find it is excellent. The marina has only one combined toilet + shower for each sex and those are dirty and with no thought to how you stow your clothes without them getting soaked. The queues in the morning have to be seen to be believed! Electricity and water are extra and metered (meanly). No intenet of course. We won't be going back there ever!

The journey along the final stretch of the north coast is bland and surprisingly long until you get to the Straights. We were expecting a rough ride but compared to Husrt Narrows it is a pussy-cat. We pulled into Reggio Calabria a couple of hours later poised to tackle the east coast.

Down Eastern Sardinia

Well, here we are again back on passage. We relaxed in the Bonefaccio strait with Rob & Maggie for a couple of weeks visiting places old and places new.

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...

L's Diary

Saturday 16th - 27th August
Today was our Corsica crossing ! Very uncomfortable ride although it did ease up somewhat on the Corsican side. Arrived at 7 am and after trying to rouse Calvi harbourmaster decided to attached ourselves to a buoy ourselves. Big mistake !!! Took us several tries and a lot of bad language before we worked out that we had to get the dingy involved. Managed to attach Rosa to the buoy after an hour. Went ashore to suss out Calvi. Small town made over to the tourist industry together with an actual Foreign Legion post up the hill.

My birthday! We had planned to hire a car for the day to explore the island but could not find one available until midday. The mountain roads are hair raising very windy, narrow but with fantastic views

Moved on down the island and after christening the new spinnaker found a lovely cove at Girolate. Decided to go to a local outdoor film show up the hill in the evening. Found out it was a live televised nocturnal dive. OK for the first 1/2 hour but after 2 hours of not much on screen and rapid french commentary I dozed off and Dave slept complete with snoring. After it finally finished at midnight the audience with I suspect relief, departed.

Nice sail stopped for lunch in Ance de Cacali then ended up in Porta Pollo for the night after cadging a mooring in 17 knot winds ! Lovely little harbour stopped for 2 nights Treated ourselves to a Pizza for dinner. Lots of small restaurants, stalls selling fruit and veg and an internet cafe so we could catch up on all those important e-mails. Included in the village was an excellent bakery. Spent the Friday cycling up to Filitosa. An area where menhirs in abundance dating from the stone age times plus small museum. all tastefully done. Managed to cycling 20 km there and back surprisingly well. Dave had to stop on the way back due to “ numb bum syndrome!

Saturday 23rd August
Very rolly sail as big swell due to bad weather up north reaching down to us. Ended up anchoring in Tizzano Not a lot of room as shallow bay mostly taken up with local small boat moorings.
Small yacht tried to moor nearby so Dave shot out to warn them we were moored in only 0.8 metres depth! Never follow a Southerly!
Arrived in Bonifaccio, a busy harbour with a distinct Italian feel to it. Had a fort on the hill with a long climb up to it but the views at the top was worth it!
The following day sailed round to Ile Lavezzi an large bay surrounded by rock, water totally clear with abundant marine life ( for the Med !) put on snorkels and went for a look. The location was so idyllic we stayed for a couple of days just enjoying swimming in warm water and sunbathing before the sail over to Sardinia.

North East sardinia

Sardinia did not start well. We needed to re-fuel, get supplies and get a permit before exploring the National park of La Madelena archipelago. Nearly all the marinas in the area are very expensive – charge band 5. Two (Palau and La Madelena town) stood out as being only 1-3. We chose the second and as expected it was a noisy grubby port with ferries, fishing boats and lambrettas everywhere. What we didn’t expect was a charge of €54 for the night. That’s more than twice the rent on our 3 bedroom house in England and all we get for it is a small patch of grubby diesel-polluted water and a dilapidated 3 yards of pontoon. We have to provide the accommodation ourselves! We felt seriously ripped off which spoiled our whole time in the town.
The town itself is heaving with tourists and tourist shops but also has most shops you could need – fish mongers, butchers, grocers, supermarkets, chandlers, etc. You have to watch the prices – particularly in bars – but by no means everywhere is a rip-off or a tourist trap. We got given the run-around for a permit but in the end a travel agent to the right of the church produced one. Two weeks for our 10.5M boat with 30% discount for a sailing boat was €91. Pretty good value as it allows you to navigate in the park and gives you free mooring buoys or anchorage in all permitted spots.



We were pleased to get away from the port and off into the park. I had a really nice days sailing – winding in and out of bays and channels and not just setting the sails for a continuous long passage. We anchored in Cala Portuese at 1600 to wait until the power boats duly went home and left mooring bouys free. When the park officials came round to collect money, I was able to get clarification on the regulations. If you read them, it implies that you can stay overnight on a buoy but NOT at anchor. The nice man in a rib explained that technically that is true but in practice the regulations are interpreted ‘reasonably’ so if you can’t take a buoy because they’re all full or there aren’t any, you can stay overnight at anchor.
We liked it so much that we stayed all next day and set off on Sunday morning. The only slight fly in teh ointment was an extremely noisy Italian family in a 50ft yacht next to us. They had a little monster called Favio (about 6 years old) who had a huge voice and spent all day either wailing, summoning Mama or prancing on the deck shouting gibberish at the seagulls for no apparent reason. If it wasn’t him, they were either playing loud music or running the engine. Great neighbours!

Forget about all those spam e-mails you get. How’s this for a pεnιs extender!

On Sunday we set off at 10.00 after breakfast and had a really nice sail in 7 to 9 Knot wind to Porto Cervo. The scenery on the way, particularly Capo Ferro is beautiful.

This is the “Costa Smeralda” – the haunt of the rich and famous. Even a mooring buoy costs €250 and if you have to ask how much a pontoon mooring is, you can’t afford it.

Rod Heikel's excellent Pilot talks of a large free anchoring area but sadly this is no more. There are now serried ranks of laid visitors moorings at extortionate prices filling most of the space. There is still room for a few shallower draft yachts inshore of the laid moorings and also to the west. Once anchored, you can take the dinghy to outside the root of the mole by the yacht club or over the harbour to Porto Veccio where the inside end of the west side of the pontoon is free dinghy mooring. Nobody bothers you as you dump your rubbish in their bins ar use their free ferry between Porto Veccio and the yacht club.

After Porto Chervo we stopped at Cala di Volpe - a beautiful bay with great anchoring and swimming but marred by high speed tenders and water skiers who rush about from morning to night.

We then anchored just behind Cape Figari in a lovely little spot. I finally saw a mother and baby dolphin and got some good photos.

And then to Olbia. It was surprisingly difficult and expensive to moor at the yacht club - although it was very friendly after you got past the rather power crased dock manager. We picked up Robin and Maggie from the airport and are going two take a 2 week holiday back through the straight (and also a two week holiday from blogging).

See you all when we resume our trip from Olbia down Sardinia in the second half of September.

Porto Pollo to Bonefaccio (including Filitosa)

Porto Pollo is lovely. It has good shelter, plenty of reasonably priced mooring buoys, most supplies from small and very reasonable shops and a really nice cafe with free internet called ‘les Oliviers’. We spent a happy two night here and will come back again if we’re in this neck of the woods again.


We took our bikes out and cycled to Filitosa 15Km away – flat all but the last 2 K. It was really worth seeing! The site has been used from at least 4000BC until well into the second millennium. The menhirs aren’t huge like Stonehenge (they mostly weigh just under a ton) but they are sculptured with clearly recognisable faces and anatomical features. They are some of the earliest sculptures in the world. The site is beautifully preserved, uncrowded and with lovely atmospheric music composed especially for them. There is an excellent English commentary and guide book to explain it.
The bike ride back was hot sweaty and tiring – showing us how unfit we are. A cold beer in a cafe overlooking the beach in Porto Pollo was nectar.
All the way down western Corsica we had been very lucky with the weather and we didn’t want to push our luck in this tricky bit of sea. Bad winds weren’t forecast for us, but a storm to the west was kicking up a big 3M swell so we cracked on round the corner onto the south facing coast the next day so that the bays would shelter us from the westerly swell.
The first place we stopped at was a tiny and very shallow inlet called Tizzano. Shelter and holding in the outer harbour were mediocre at best so we put up our keel and went in past the mole into the inner harbour – just charted as <1M. There were mixed reefs and sand but nothing less than 0.8M so we anchored and settled down to enjoy the evening. Half an hour later, a small Juneau came in with six young people on board, and seeing us assumed they could anchor too and bowled in. As soon as I realised what they were doing, I shouted in halting French to tell them we only draw 0.7M. I’m not sure they understood but they slowed down to see what all the shouting was about – and hit one of the reefs gently. Luckily they were able to retrace their path and anchor in the bay. Just goes to prove the well known saying “Never follow a Southerly”.


It just shows how jaded you get: The next anchorage “Cala Roccapina” was in a rocky cove with a white beach and warm turquoise water and we just thought of it as “OK”. In England it would have been completely stunning! It was a bit lumpy with the strong SW swell still with us and just creeping round the corner. With the wind not being of the cause of the swell it was in a different direction so we were often sideways to the swell and got rolled around a bit. A second anchor to keep us head on to it would have contributed a lot to our comfort overnight. Another lesson learned!
Next day the swell had gone and we had a gentle tail wind down to Boneffacio. We broke out the Spinaker again which drove us along at 4Knots with a 7 Knot tail wind. Very satisfying!


Bonefaccio is lovely. Set in heavily weathered chalk cliffs (the only place in Corsica we saw that wasn’t granite). The harbour is in a deep ravine and completely safe if you don’t count the continuous stream of high speed tripper boats and the huge super yachts going in and out. The charges were very reasonable (€25 per night for us). There are loads of restaurants, launderettes, supermarkets and a few other shops on the East side of the quay and an excellent chandler and sailmaker on the other side (easy to miss if you don’t know he’s there).
The old town is high up on the headland surrounded by the huge walls and bastions of the Citadel. Well worth toiling up the hill to see. Restaurant prices and other prices are also better up there than by the harbour.



Next day we set off for Isle Lavezzi. This is a completely uninhabited island at the south eastern tip of Corsica. We got a place in the best anchorage and once the ribs and power boats went in the evening, moved and set the stern anchor to keep us pointed towards the entrance in case of swell or wash. The surroundings are stunning. Completely clear blue water surrounded by rocks sculpted and smoothed into amazing shapes. Despite being right in the straights of Bonefaccio, we had lovely calm weather. It was so glorious that we stayed a second night.
And then it was off to La Madelena in Sardinia.....

West Corsica

We sailed down the western side of Corsica from Calvi to Porto Pollo. There are very few places on this coast that provide shelter from severe weather and don’t cost an arm and a leg to moor. All the marinas are charge band 5 or 6 (over €50 per night for us) and in any case seem to be booked solid days in advance in August. We had the good luck to get a weeks window of calm weather so we have moved fairly quickly – doing about 30 Miles per day. We took a buoy at Calvi (€25), fore-and-aft moored at Girolata (€16), anchored at Sagone (free) and moored at Porto Pollo (€13). So it is possible to sail this coast at reasonable cost. If a strong Westerly or South Westerly (libeccio) had come in, things would have been different and we could have been in considerable difficulty.


The scenery is spectacular! We hired a car for a day after arriving at Calvi and drove to Corte via spectacular mountain roads. Corte was the capital of Corsica in its only short period of independence in the 18th Century after throwing out the Genoese and before the French and the British got stuck in. Evidence of the Corsican struggle for independence is still visible as most road signs are bi-lingual with French first and Corsican underneath. Many of the French parts have bullet holes in them!




The first leg of the voyage was to Girolata via the La Scandola National Park. The coastal scenery is stunning with red and grey cliffs falling into the clear blue water. There are lots of lunch time anchorages but in the park itself, over-nighting, fishing and even swimming are forbidden – not that the locals seem to take much notice of the ban on swimming! With the mountains so close, there is a probability of katabatic winds so we decided to play safe and moor rather than anchor at Girolata.

Girolata is only accessible by sea. The fore-and-aft mooring worked very well and the staff come out in ribs to take the lines so it was also stress free. It was a very pretty and friendly place with surprisingly good restarants, bars and even shops right by the harbour.
The national park put on a ‘diving projection’ in the evening. We didn’t know what it was so we decided to go see. In the event, it was a live projection of people diving – with a rapid commentary (in French of course) on what they were showing us. An amazing piece of technology. I found it very interesting as I could just catch the gist of what he was saying. Poor Lindsay didn’t have a hope though so was rapidly bored out of her mind! Before the show started they showed some quirky cartoons about aliens called Shadocks – very amusing – a bit reminiscent of the clangers but with no soup dragon.
Next day we sailed around to Sagone. The wind was really kind so at last we tried our new Spinnaker. And it worked! The Rollgen makes handing really easy and it pushed us along at 3 Knots with 6 Knots of wind. Very impressive! Sagone turned out to be a bit disappointing. It’s mostly concrete hotels with hundreds of small local moorings making it impossible to tuck into shelter. There are hundreds of water skis, Jet Skis and other high-speed thrill seekers rushing around past the anchored boats making massive wakes until it was almost dark – and they started again at 9.30 in the morning.
The following day we had thought of going to Ajaccio, the capital of Corsica. In the event we decided that we weren’t that interested in big city life and anyway it looked very expensive. Having plenty of supplies still on board, we changed our mind and went to Porto Pollo. We haven’t regretted it!

On the way, after all these years sailing, I saw my first school of Dolphins! We've been to places where they say you can walk across the sea on their backs - but never a sniff! L has seen them everyone else I know has seen them but until now, they've boycotted me!

Porto Pollo is a pretty little village set in rolling hills. It has friendly staff, plentiful supplies and even a free Internet Cafe. The swinging moorings are easy to grab, well sheltered and only €16 per night. We’re off to see an megalithic site called Filitosa today. Apparently the Menhirs have faces carved into them.