GETTING INTO THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT - Young Debs up the mast sorting Santa out.

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 14:14:09 -0600

WINTERING IN SARDINIA (Continued...)

Sardinia Oct 2009

Mick, Young Debs and Jonboy during his visit. Great weekend had by all. — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 03:32:53 -0500

We arrived in Sardinia after a night sail and went straight to a marina in Calsetta called Porto Turistico, the reason we went straight to the marina instead of anchoring is that throughout the trip gale force warnings were being announced on the VFH radio, however although the winds did get fairly strong they never reached gale force until we were safely tucked away in the marina. The trip over was quite good, at best the winds got up to 15 knots over our beam and the worst was they got as low as 5 knots but all in all we had a fairly good trip. When we arrived at the marina it was a bit of a nightmare, at first we were unable to contact then on either the VHF or by mobile phone, so we were just going round and round the marina until eventually a member of staff turned up in a rib to assist. After we were safely moored up we made our way to the office to carry out the formalities, another nightmare, they hardly spoke any English and our Italian is limited to the word Chou. The marina is supposed to be one of the cheapest in this area, but it was still very expensive and on top of the marina fees we had to pay for our electricity, water and Wi Fi. After three weeks at anchor we were so much looking forward to a nice long shower but this small luxury cost us 2 euros for 5 minutes of running water. Throughout our stay here we found it hard to communicate with others due to the language barrier but we did meet a Belgium chap that had his boat moored close by and we decided we would join him the following day and anchor close by within the same bay. The following day just as we were leaving the marina a British yacht pulled in beside us with two English men and their Italian wives and children on board. We got chatting and mentioned that we were going to anchor close by and he advised us not to anchor there due to it where they discharge all the sewage and gave us a couple of alternatives. We took his advice and anchored just off the island of San Pietro in the South West corner, it was a lovely spot but a bit exposed to anything but northerly winds, that's ok because this time of year and in this area the winds come mainly from the north West. Well the winds have been from every direction but the North West and the two nights we stayed at this anchorage it was so rolly that we hardly slept, so we were forced to move on and try to find somewhere more suitable. We left the anchorage on the 2nd Sept to very light winds and calm seas, by lunchtime the wind was up to 20 knots and the sea was very rough, we tried a couple of spots to anchor but there was nothing that gave us suitable protection in these conditions, eventually we found a very nice spot called Malfatano Bay. This was a lovely bay but the wind just kept blowing, we stayed there for three nights but this would have been longer if the winds had calmed down, we were quite secure where we were but due to the conditions we were restricted to the boat. (Continued...)

The Balearic Islands

The beach at El Espalmador and you can just make out the pink sand. — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 06:31:21 -0500

We left our anchorage on Friday 7th August about 7-15pm for a night sail to the Balearic Islands. We had no definite plans for these islands our intentions were to find somewhere to anchor if it was nice we would stay and if it was not that nice we were prepared to carry on. We had to motor all the way as there wasn't much wind and what wind we did have was directly on our nose. We arrived at 9am at Puerto el Espalmador where we were able to pick up a mooring buoy, we must of arrived just at the right time because within a few minutes all the mooring buoys were taken and what space there was for anchoring was very quickly filled. (Continued...)

Ashby Girl: SailBlogs

GETTING INTO THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT - Young Debs up the mast sorting Santa out.

Sardinia Oct 2009

The Balearic Islands