sand dunes at Porto Pino, Sardinia

This year's sailing season has now come to an end and Flirtie will remain afloat in Cagliari until next spring when we will continue with our adventures.

Our journey this year has been truly amazing... entering the Straits of Gibraltar gave us an incredible feeling and it was here that it dawned on us exactly how far we've travelled since leaving the UK. The Spanish Costas took us by complete surprise. We were expecting high-rise apartment blocks as far as the eye can see, significant numbers of English visitors and expats and a lot of holiday tat but that wasn't the case in the towns we visited. It was early in the season so perhaps we were just lucky? Whilst there are significant numbers of high rise buildings, they typically run only along the waterfront but beyond them is a wonderful mountainous backdrop. Surprisingly marina berthing was also reasonably cheap even in the more upmarket locations.

It came as a pleasant surprise to find that each of the Balearic Islands could be reached in day sails as we hopped from island to island (more or less closest points). For the months of June and July they were extremely busy but we would argue no different to a glorious sunny weekend in the south coast of the UK. Our patience was pushed to the limit on numerous occasions by the way others around us anchored. The culprits were mainly charter boats with undersize ground tackle and lack of care/respect for those around. It was a real eye opener to see yachts deploying their anchor far too close, often with too little chain and putting fenders out for collision protection. This in fact was the norm in many of the calas we visited which gave us cause for concern especially when we wanted to catch local transport inland. With daily and weekly rates at marinas being cost prohibitive during the months of July and August and not wanting to stay for a month in a given location we found both yacht club and port authority mooring buoys' to be a good alternative. In the main we found these to be in better protected areas where anchoring was restricted which allowed us to leave Flirtie without any concerns. Beautiful as the islands are, unfortunately we found booking ahead was necessary which rather tainted our experience.


Isla Cabrera, off the southern coast of Mallorca

It has to be said that the swell was an absolute nightmare! It arrived from nowhere almost without fail as soon as the afternoon wind started to abate and made life uncomfortable. It was so uncomfortable at times we often considered rowing ashore to sleep on the beach or putting to sea for some comfort - we actually lost count of how many sleepless nights we had. As we sailed away from the Balearics and onto pastures new we decided that our favourite islands were Cabrera, Formentera and Menorca which we found to be the least spoilt and most beautiful of all the islands. Not surprisingly they were all relatively quiet compared to Mallorca and Ibiza and in the case of Cabrera visitor numbers are tightly controlled.


Formentera, Espalmador

In complete contrast, Sardinia has provided us with a totally new experience. The Sard's are warm, friendly welcoming people and very proud of their island and heritage. We've only cruised the West and South West coast of the Island so far and the coastline and quiet anchorages are beautiful and unspoilt. We've enjoyed it so much that we're now looking to change our cruising plans for next year and venture up the East coast and across to Corsica. Thereafter we're undecided but we can foresee another winter somewhere in Italy. :-)

So that's it for this season, flights home have now been booked the countdown has commenced and we can't wait to see our family and friends - see you all very soon :-) x