Passage Log Archive
3 entries from this stretch of the passage.
We have now been here in Cagliari for two months at Marina Del Sole. We could not have picked a better place to winter over, the marina has a real charm and city has something going on every day. There are only a few live aboard folks here, this year there are only 7 boats, but I understand that most years there are many more. We have made good friends with a few of the folks and spend many evenings out on the town or on their or our boat having a great time.
La Maddalena to Cagliari We left the La Maddalena archipelago and the island of Caprera for the day hop to La Caletta where we stayed for two nights. Not much going on here, the town was deserted as it is offseason. After a day of pouring rain we left from La Caletta to our next stop Arbatax.
We left Menorca with a small weather window to get to Sardinia. We had a 190 mile trip that we figured would take us about 30 hours. It was a miserable trip as there was little wind but a significant swell on the beam. This makes the boat rock back and forth and very uncomfortable. We motor sailed the majority of the way. Our first stop was Alghero, on the North West Coast. The city not long ago was run by the Spanish and apparently some people here still speak the language from Catalan Spain. The port is at the base of the walled city which has the medieval narrow streets of cobblestone and an assortment of little restaurants and cafes. After an attempt at trying to have free dock space at the visitors quay, we decided that either they were pretending to not understand our intentions, or they just thought we were out of our minds. I think it was the latter. We ended up getting a spot for 40 euros a night at the far end of the marina. We stayed for three days and then made our way further north going around to the top of the island. We went through a passage called the Fornelli passage to save ourselves 20 miles or so of going around a little island at the top of Sardinia. This passage was real cheek squeezer. You had to line up a couple of masonry objects on shore, that were the range and make your way in, and there was enough swell to create breaking waves over a reef to both port and starboard, and the sun close to setting. Yikes. We made it through and anchored up under a little island in water that was the clearest I have ever seen. Protected from wind and swell made for a nice nights sleep.
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