Katy and Irvin come to stay

September 11th 2017

Katy and Irvin had been to a friend's wedding near Florence so flew from Pisa to Alghero on Sardinia. We hired a car and went to meet them at the airport.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KATY & HARRY (who is enjoying the weekend at a festival in UK)

Back to the hidden away restaurant at Nuraghe Majori for a birthday lunch. After the cold meats and cheese platter for starters, the main meal of barbecued meats was served in a piece of local cork bark.

Happy diners!

Another visit to the ancient dwelling and Horseshoe bats.

Unfortunately when Katy and Irvin first arrived the weather was not good with more strong winds forecast so we stayed on the pontoon in Olbia for a couple of days. This gave us time to explore the town a bit and stock up on food and drink.

As soon as the weather improved we headed north, past these very imposing cliffs, to Cala di Volpe where we anchored in the bay.

Time to relax and find time to read!

Happy sailing!

The bay at Cala di Volpe with the hotel in the background where, on his previous visit with Chris and Desi, Dave had paid 12€ for a coffee!

And.............relax!

Wonderful snorkelling with so many fish

 Blue, blue and blue!

A good sail back from Cala di Volpe to Porto San Paolo 

Time for tea en route......... 

...........and gin and tonic when we arrive!

A well earned drink after shopping trip.

Serenity can just be seen anchored in the top left hand corner. 

This view is looking across to Isola Tavolare - a very high, impressive island.

Not a bad place to watch the football!

Dinner on the BBQ.

Katy on the small island of Isola Cavelli having swum across from the boat.

Sardines on the BBQ.

A fairly rough sail round to Liscia delle Saline but fabulous skies.

Back to Olbia for the BEST pizzas! 

Serenity moored alongside on the old commercial quay.......

.........from where we could wave goodbye to Katy and Irvin.

(you can just about see the Easyjet plane centre left)

What a great week!!

Olbia, Sardinia

When I flew to Sardinia, Chris and Desi stayed for a day and so we used the hire car to go and explore inland Sardinia. 

Our first stop was a walk around Tempio Pausana to the north west of Olbia for coffee and to visit the cathedral.

There is a lot of cork oak grown around here and many of the trees have had their lower bark completely stripped off in large sheets.

The extraction of the cork is carefully regulated by law and can only be done once in a decade. The first extraction is done when the plant is at least 60cms in diameter and this first lot is known as "male" cork which is used in construction for insulation and sound proofing. After that comes the "friendly" or "female" cork which is used for other products

This was a shop in Tempio that sold just about everything made of cork. Really not sure about a cork dress but lovely designs!

Next stop was just north of Tempio at Nuraghe Majori for a real meat feast lunch at a very hidden away restaurant.

This cold meats and cheese platter was just for starters!

Nuraghe Majori is a dwelling that is an incredible 3500 years old!

The Nuragic civilisation developed during the Middle Bronze Age (1600BC) and they built about 7000 of these nuraghes on Sardinia. 

Inside the nuraghe is a colony of Lesser Horseshoe bats - one of the world's smallest bats weighing only 5-9 grams.

A piece of cork oak bark as it has been removed from the tree. 

After Chris and Desi left, Dave and I went to explore the area south of Olbia while we waited for Katy and Irvin to arrive. We first anchored in Liscia delle Saline, just outside Olbia and were treated to a fabulous spectacle of very accomplished windsurfers. The winds were strong in the afternoon and they raced along at great speed, some doing jump turns. This girl in particular was amazing.

Like a flock of butterfly wings fluttering in the sunshine.

 

A good opportunity to practise with my camera!

From Liscia delle Saline we sailed further south to Porto San Paolo.

We had a message from Peter on Rocko One to say that he had seen on "No Foreign Land" website that we were not far from him. Catherine was away playing violin in an orchestra in Salzburg and Lyon so we went round to join him. We anchored in the bay outside the small harbour and Peter came over for dinner and then a BBQ. We took the dinghy ashore and found a lovely, pretty town with very useful shopping.

Back to the boat to strip down the outboard and resolve the problem of the oil leak (or so we thought but actually it took several attempts as the epoxy was inferior and didn't set properly. Having bought a new tin in Olbia and redone the rocker cover we hope it will last until we can get a new part)

Not always blue skies and sunshine!

While we were there we had 40 knots of wind which put the Rocna anchor to the test but luckily it held. The sea looks flat in this photo but when Catherine returned and we were invited over for dinner we had to postpone as we didn't want to leave the boat in case she dragged and didn't fancy going in the dinghy in such choppy waters. We did, however, have a lovely meal with them the next day.

We sailed back in to Olbia along the channel for commercial ships. All of the Moby passenger ferries were decorated with similar cartoons.

Fetovaia, Elba to Porto Vecchio, Corsica

 Fetovaia 12/08/17

We had a four hour hard sail against the wind, and arrived in this beautiful bay. If you look at the rock lit by the sun, you can see it looks like a chess piece. 

From here we decided to sail to Padulu Tortu on Corsica. We left the bay at 03:00am for the 75NM sail, and what a night, we were treated to an amazing meteor shower. The weather was kind to us, the swell had reduced to something almost comfortable but the wind wasn't quite strong enough for us to sail, so we motor sailed the whole way.

Padulu Tortu 13/08/17 

 Chris and Desi 

Views over Porto Vecchio 14/08/2017

Having arrived by dinghy on the beach, I discovered that I had forgotten my flip flops, oops! Too far to return to the boat, so decided to buy a cheap pair in town, which was fine, but a bit of a walk.

We went to the town, would have been a very long walk, had it not been for the tourist train. As Corsica is French, I found it difficult as I kept coming out with various different Italian phrases, very embarrassing!

On our way back to the boat we were stopped by armed police, Desi was trying to tell them that we were from a sailing boat and had a dinghy, and NO we didn't have tickets, we weren't going on the ferry, and when she started making outboard noises, to describe our method of transport, I'm sure I saw the policeman smile, just before he let us go. 

We still have no idea why there were so many police around, we wondered if it was because of a girl being shot in the leg two days before, by a local for being naked on the wrong beach.

 Isola Lavezzi 15/08/17

 This was more like a car park for boats, than an anchorage. Getting in wasn't easy either, weaving our way into the inner basin passed rocks, underwater reefs and other boats, but well worth the effort, it was very calm and peaceful. The entertainment of other boats coming and going, once at anchor went on all day. There were many day tripper boats with tourists, but the largest was at least 70ft long and got through the melee using a rib to push yachts out of the way! (grey hulled boat behind the yacht)

Snorkelling is amazing here, the waters are so clear and it is a nature reserve, so a lot of fish. 

Chris and I went to the memorial of the wreck of the frigate La Semillante 1855, 400 marines and 373 seamen were on board and over 500 perished. This island of rocks is in the middle of the Bonifacio straights, a very dangerous place!

We did pass through the Maddelena islands, anchoring in Cala di Villamarina, a lovely place, but because it is national park we had to pay €37 per night, I phoned the park authority to find out why the 40% reduction for yachts was not available? It would seem that they only give the discount if you go into one of their offices! I was then told that only locals can anchor after 22:00hrs, so we had to move to Porto Palma and find a mooring buoy, we were lucky and found one free. The experience of Maddelena was not what we had expected from the hype, it was far better outside the national park on the Costa Smeralda (Emerald Coast), with clearer water and many more fish.

We stopped in Cala di Volpé, which in the sailing pilot was less than 2 metres deep, a problem for us as we draw 2 metres. Hmmmmmm! So when we arrived we found some very big super yachts and a few yachts of our size in the bay. We went in very slowly and found 3.5 metres of water, and very good protection from the weather. We spent the day watching the mega yachts come and go and came up with the pseudonym... PPs ( Pension Palaces) i.e. Phillip Green's dreadful BHS saga. Desi and I thought it would be fun to go for an iced cappuccino at the hotel Cala di Volpe, a very posh hotel which had it's own harbour for the PP tenders. We walked in, me with my very salty shorts and Dark Side of the Moon T-shirt. I'm sure we must have been mistaken for people in the music business, as we were shown through to the terrace and served with three very nice but expensive cold cappuccinos, €12 each, ouch!!!!

Golfo Aranci

So pleased to be meeting Annie in two days!