La Maddalena again/Liscia/Porto Pozzo
16 September 2016 | Porto Pozzo
C&C

On Sunday morning we returned to La Gavetta and moored on the outside breakwater. You wouldn’t want to stay too long as the wash from the passing vessels bounces you against the concrete sides all the time – strong fenders required.
Shopping completed and rubbish disposed of (there’s a large skip there for this purpose) we motored to Liscia Bay for lunch.
This is a large bay with a corner tucked under a headland giving good protection from the common northerly winds here. Steve produced a great chicken pesto pasta from the left-overs from the previous night’s meal and as this warranted a glass or two of white wine the afternoon was spent snoozing – especially the Captain. Whilst good shelter and pleasant enough Liscia is not the most attractive bay so we decided to ‘go next door’ to Porto Pozzo for the night. This is a long narrow inlet with a small settlement at the bottom and shallow waters throughout. On arrival we found the marked anchorage was now filled with buoys. After trying a couple of places and finding less than a meter of water under the keel and visible rocks on the sea bed we had just concluded we would return to Liscia when a RIB roared out of the marina and two guys with ‘Crew’ t-shirts offered us a buoy for E20 which we decided to take.
There then ensued a pantomime as they insisted we take our lines off the boat, give them to them to tie onto the buoy with bowlines and then pass them back to us as we approached. We got vaguely secured and they took our E20 cash with no receipt (Kath is convinced we were fiddled for their nights beer money). Chris was not happy with the result, the bowlines looked odd and anyway it meant we couldn’t release ourselves from the buoy without help. He started to pull in the starboard line only for the ‘bowline’ to slide all the way down the line and become a messy knot on the ring of the buoy. We called them back and made them give us back the looped line to secure onboard as is our normal practice. They were around again the following morning but if they are official then someone needs to train them properly!!
Chris dived on the buoy to check it and the massive chain attached to the large buoy was attached to the very large block of concrete by a small thin-linked chain that would probably have trouble supporting the buoy in blow let alone a boat. With no wind forecast overnight we weren’t really worried but wouldn’t want to be there in a strong wind. After our large lunch we picked at bread, cheese and cold meats that night and all slept well.
Photo: Kath’s mermaid impression – photographer: Steve