Cruising progress 2016 (Click to enlarge)
Current location using Vessel Finder
30th September 2016
We continued on our way down Corsica to Bonifacio, and then across to Sardinia to check out a possible winter berth in Bosa, stopping at some lovely anchorages en route. We spent one night in the Asinara Nature Reserve before motoring through the Fornelli Passage to cut twenty miles off our trip. Our next anchorage was in another nature reserve at Porto Conte before we headed down to Bosa and confirmed that this would be where we'd winter Mistroma.
We checked on the whereabouts of our Swedish friends, Peter & Elizabeth on Ananda and discovered that they had already passed us going in the opposite direction. After contacting Peter we arranged to meet up, so we retraced our steps and headed for the Maddelana Islands, with several extended stops on the way. We visited our fist marina in quite a while at Castelsardo. The town is situated at the top of a very high hill, but it was well worth the effort to make the climb to the old walled town, which had spectacular views out to sea and over the countryside. We walked the bikes all the way up to the top, which was a bit of a grind, but coming down was a breeze!
We stayed in the marina for two nights as strong winds had been forecast, along with thunder storms. Thankfully during each day the weather behaved, but overnight the wind was gusting 30kts, with spectacular lightning and torrential rain. It was nice to be safe and secure in the harbour. Although it was still pretty breezy the next morning, we decided to make a break for it and had an excellent downwind sail under main alone and then switched to genoa alone cruising along at over 7kts. The next few days continued very windy, wet and cool - 23°c is not what we have been used to!
The north east coast of Sardinia has many sheltered bays and is a lovely area to sail, with lots of flat water even if it's windy. We finally met up with Peter & Elizabeth and spent a couple of very enjoyable days with them before we each headed off in opposite directions once again, with the intention of meeting up again next year.
We decided to venture south down the Costa Smeralda where the ultra-rich visit in the summer and where even the huge super yachts think twice about the marina fees. A small mooring buoy could cost €80-€90 for 12 hours and twice that for up to 24 hours, with no facilities whatsoever. Needless to say we anchored. Our last stop before turning north again was Golfo Aranci, which was a nice little town and not particularly touristy. From there we motored up to Porto-Vecchio in Corsica and anchored in the bay for a couple of nights. One of the reasons we wanted to go to Porto-Vecchio was because there is a huge hypermarket within easy walking distance of the shore, where one can buy all manner of provisions that don't seem to be available on Sardinia. I had stupidly assumed that everything we could buy in Spain we would be able to buy in France & Italy. France and Corsica weren't too bad but Sardinia seems bereft of most of the things we normally buy (even the simplest of items such as muesli are exceedingly difficult to find and ridiculously expensive if they can be found). We are now well stocked up and hopefully some will last until we pay another visit next year.
After leaving Porto-Vecchio we sailed back to Sardinia and visited some of the sheltered bays in the Maddalena Islands where the scenery is truly spectacular. Many have turquoise water bounded by brilliant white sand and amazing rock formations. Now that we're at the end of September all the anchorages are much quieter, very often we are the only boat in the bay and presumably this will continue as we go into October.
