Tom Döhler
Our plan on Monday was to sail from Marina di Campo on Elba to another, even smaller island named Giglio over night. I had a video conference call in the evening at 22:30, so we’d planned was to leave right after that. As seems to happen more often than not, a last look at the forecast revealed no wind. Nothing. Nada. It seemed silly to motor all the way through the night, so we decided to go to bed instead and sail to Giglio the following day. The only highlight really was me racing across the bay to collect Camilla’s paddleboard which had decided to make a break for freedom.
We got up early on Tuesday and set sail towards Giglio, not before sending a little Happy Birthday message to my sister. It was promising to be another beautiful day, the sun was up and no cloud in the sky. To our surprise we actually found a little wind once we made it out of our anchorage. It wasn’t really enough to sail under usual sail plan, but the 8 knots was perfect to get the gennaker out. This is one of my favourite sails – flat seas, a light wind pushing the boat, and the gennaker just flying like a chute in front of the boat. What a treat!
We sailed almost all the way to Giglio, and arrived in the beautiful anchorage in the afternoon. The island is tiny, basically just a little green rock sticking out of the sea, with a small village perched on the side of the mountain around a little marina. The anchorage is just south of the marina, and that’s about it. A quick look on Google Maps reminded us of the event that must have shaken the small community of people living there – this is the little island that took out the Costa Concordia. Crazy!
Making sure we gave the small rock that sliced this big cruise ship open like a tin of sardines a wide berth, we dropped anchor and settled in for the night. Unfortunately we ended up drifting way too close to another boat in the anchorage, and it took us re-anchoring three times until we were finally happy with our spot. Just as we were ready to get comfortable, a bunch of Russians showed up on a charter boat and dropped their anchor so close that I could read the label on their vodka bottles. We fell asleep with one eye open, and luckily heard them pick up anchor and move away from us in the middle of the night.
