I believe I ended my last post on a morning ball at Port Cervo, harbor of the rich and famous. That was just before we got run off the mooring ball. Even thou there were 8 mooring balls there was only one taker at 175€ per night. Hello it was not Plankton. We politely unhooked and picked a bay another hour and a half south for the evening.

Okay I need to backtrack now. We left Arzachena Bay late in the morning after a last visit with our new friends, Max and Piña and also with our old friend from MdR, Paul, on Bellanova and his sweet dog, Linda. I flipped on the hockeypuck to activate the boat wifi and nothing happened. It would not even turn on! So no Internet aboard Plankton! Also Doug commented that the alternator was not charging the batteries. No worries he can change out the alternator at our next port. We have two spares. I will have to wait two days to go into Olbia and find out what's wrong with the hockey puck. Minor stuff. Kicked out of millionaire row, more small stuff.

We head down to Cugnara Bay. Our friends on Maltese Falcon anchored there. Doug even has their anchorage coordinates. If its good enough for MF, it's good enough for Plankton. We have followed Mario into more than one good anchorage. It's a long bay. We motor past a marina. It's also a shallow bay. We pick a spot between a fishing boat and a trawler, very close to Mario's coordinate. I swing wide into 8 foot water to make a 180 into the wind. Doug is yelling "hey it's shallow here!". Yeh, well 8 feet is shallow in the Med.

Plankton stops. Uh oh. I am still in forward. Whoops we're aground. I throw it into reverse and power up, swiffling our 7 turn wheel to back out. Oops, not going anywhere. Power up hard this time in forward. I am going to make my own channel. Not!! A few more times of forward and back. Now we drag out a big anchor and Doug hauls it in the dinghy out to 15' of water. We crank and pull and crank and pull some more. I did try to tell Doug the water between the anchor and Plankton was only 3.5 feet deep. Finally he takes our pole and stabs it around the boat from the dinghy. Okay anchor up! Poor Doug, a 45 pound anchor weighs a WHOLE lot more when you have to disengage it from the bottom and lift thru the weight of the water. We select a new spot, over by where we pulled ourselves into this mess. We cranked and pulled and pulled and cranked. Progress was made. 4.8 feet of water instead of 4.2 feet. Our draft is 5.5 feet. We called the Coast Guard since there is no Boat US to call and continued to struggle and crank. Eventually a little tug shows up headed straight for us. Doug goes out to retreive our anchor again. Don't want to have to come back for it. I am pulling in our 100 foot 1" line and telling the tug where the mudbank is located so they don't try to pull us over it. They want 'our' line. Oh boy. Doug detaches the anchor in the dinghy and I rerun the line thru the lifelines for them.
They call Doug over in the dinghy. Only one person allowed aboard. Coast Guard rules. I have to be moved to their tug. They start pulling on Plankton. Doug yells " take the boat out of gear". I move to the helm. Heck we are free! 6.2 feet of water. We're afloat!!!. I go to the back of the boat and dutifully get in the dinghy and move onto the tug. Doug goes back to Plankton as the tug tows us out into deeper water. The captain asks me if we want to go in the marina. Are you kidding? The last place wanted 175€ for a buoy. I tell him we will anchor. He says okay, then you come to the office in the marina. Okay. The tug pulls alongside Plankton and I hop aboard. The tug heads back to the marina.

Whew! We anchor, first on a submarine cable. We're tired. I tell Doug we have to pull up and reset. He' s not happy. We get anchored and, while he is in the shower, the tug guys return in a dinghy to tell us we need to see the captain Pronto! He is ready to go home for the day. They wait while we grab our our boat papers and wallet. This is going to hurt the wallet. We ride to the Capitainarie in their hi speed dinghy. We are surprised, upon arrival, to find that the Capitan (harbor master in Italy) was driving the tug that freed us. He takes us into his air conditioned office. He shows us the rate sheet for pulling us free. 150€ per meter of boat. We are 13.8 meters. 13.8 times 150€. Not good. Then he looks at us and says, well it was not too hard to pull you off so we will only charge our rate for putting a boat in the slip. Phew! Only about 200€! Nice guy. I am sure he could see the relief in my face. We go to the front counter to pay. He says arrevederci and domani to the staff and shakes our hands. We are taken back to the boat in the hi speed dinghy by a guy that speaks 6 languages fluently! We fell asleep right after dinner.

Well it had been a long time since I had driven Plankton aground. Later when we discussed it, I commented to Doug that Mario must have been lucky not to have gone aground. Btw did you recheck that LatLong? Doug sez he took the yellow magic marker dot off the cruising guide and created the LatLong himself! Wwwwhhhaattt! I thought Mario gave you the LatLong! That magic marker just indicated they anchored in that bay, not EXACTLY where they dropped the hook!
Oh boy. A little miscommunication aboard Plankton. Usually I carefully select my anchoring spot but this time we had a LatLong from a trusted source. Well not exactly......now Mario, if you are reading, you are still a trusted source of information. This wasn't your fault. The left hand had no idea what the right hand was doing!!!

Today's update: since all this occurred while we had no Internet! I took the bus to Olbia and got the hockey puck fixed (and a nice haircut). Doug determined the alternator was okay. We had just sucked down the batteries with too much electronics running. We are now in a beautiful bay. All is well aboard S/V Plankton again.