Mon 6 Aug

After a good night sleep we got up and did a workout on a tiny beach on one of the rocky islands nearby. The sky was overcast and we were so grateful for the shade. Back on the boat we had breakfast and decided to head for a bay on the north east side of the island where we could anchor and catch the bus into town.

In blissful ignorance, little did we know how utterly naive we were being. The first bay we pulled into was plastered with mooring balls, with only 3 occupied. Taking our chances we picked one and within seconds a rib came steaming over. The dialogue went something like this.

Him: These buoys are owned by the restaurant.

Us: OK, well can we pick one up if we had dinner there?

Him: No, the restaurant is only open for lunch.

Us: OK, lunch then?

Him: No, fully booked. Come back at 17:30, there might be a free one.

Us: Oh, OK, how much for one night?

Him: Don’t know.

Us: Roughly?

Him: Errr, could be 50, could be 80 EUR.

Us: Will there be space?

Him: Don’t know.

Us: Can we anchor?

Him: Absolutely not.

So off we went to the next bay, and the next one, where we were met with basically the same story. What about a marina then? If you don’t mind paying 209 EUR per night, then yes, we have a space. Aarrrrgh!

After much complaining and swearing we gave up. What’s the point of paying for a park permit if you can’t anchor anywhere?!?! Turned out to be a brilliant decision as we ended up having a fantastic 7 hours sailing clockwise around both La Maddalena and Caprera. All day we had 15-18 knots of wind, sailed on all points of sail, had a few races and it gave me the opportunity to test my nerve sailing close quarters to loads of other yachts. Reminded me of race starts on the Solent!

Late afternoon we were on the south side again and found anchorage outside of The Sacred Zone. We dropped anchor but it was far too windy so we picked up and went to a bay next door to Palau. We found a sandy patch which looked shallow but do-able so we motored around to check it out, listening for the dreaded depth alarm to go off. We dropped anchor but ended up too close to our neighbour. Just as we were about to pick up and reset another boat came in and started sniffing around our patch. Grrrrr. They’d probably go just where we wanted to. All we could do was wait. In the mean time I jumped in the water and swam around to see how shallow it really was – it was fine (probably!). With the Frenchies settled behind us we lifted anchor and dropped 15m further in which put us in a much better spot.

In the evening we went ashore and walked into town for water and a much needed pizza. We found on Google what looked like a large supermarket but when we arrived (2 mins before closing) we found a big shop, with overly loud house music, bare shelves and a 100 year old lady sitting at the till with a calculator. We asked whether we could pay with card, and she gave it a puzzled look. That’s a no then. Tom popped across to the cashpoint and off we went with our 20 litres of water – faced with a 3km walk back to the boat. We had dinner on the way (a much needed break!) and settled in for the night, but not before we’d rowed to shore 3 times to fill up our 30 litre water bladders under the cover of darkness 🙂