Our trip to Sardinia was horrible! I’d picked a good weather window in that the wind was good – but I didn’t realize we had wind against current – so we had lumpy seas all the way. Just to add to the mix, we suddenly smelled smoke! Initially I thought something awful was happening with the new Lithium battery bank, but in the end it turned out to be a cabin fan! (4 months later, the cabin fan is working fine and hasn’t given us any further frights.

We’ve been looking forward to Sardinia for nearly 20 years when we first laid plans for a hiking holiday there – unfortunately various things conspired against us and we were left rather deflated by our visit. Most notably, we found that the Italian welcome to boats was somewhat lacking – in that there were strict restrictions as to where you can anchor and where you can land a dinghy – sometimes having to carry it up the beach and into a carpark! The Italian anchorages were full of both boats and swimmers – but that didn’t stop idiots from powering through the crowded anchorage at full speed making huge wakes. I wonder how many swimmers get killed or maimed each year? It was also frustrating that the Italians just don’t follow the navigational rules – motoring through marine parks designated as “sailing only” – or even “no boats at all”… Granted we had timed our visit poorly – the height of the season and height of temperature! It wasn’t just the Italians – it was all sorts of nationalities, all in chartered boats.

We spent nearly 3 weeks in Sardinia – on the northern and then the north west coast. There are many islands on the Smerelda coastline, making for interesting sailing and anchoring possibilities.

The first of the Magdelena islands we visited had a lovely anchorage – but crowded. Never-the-less, we enjoyed staying there for a couple of nights and even braved the heat for an early morning walk. (Our exercise these days is pretty much restricted to swimming.)

When we arrived in the larger town of Olbia, we were able to rent a car to visit the interior – towards the high mountains.

And to a very interesting village (Orgosolo) with all sorts of political and humorous street paintings.

Olbia, a nice town with interesting center (including carousel) also allows yachts to tie up to the town quay for free for up to 2 nights which was a bonus – and allowed us to haul out the old spinnaker and start cutting it up in order to make a much needed sun shade for the boat.

We met with friends Otti and Rossi on Enya – a lovely German couple who we’d met in Lagos. We cruised around with them for a few days which was fun and attempted to paddle-board with them.

We’ll come back to Sardinia (to the southern end) when we come out of the Med next year – hopefully we’ll be able to come at a better time of year (when perhaps there aren’t as many mad boaters around!)…

Our next chosen location was to be the Aeolian Islands – I wanted to see the lava flowing off the active volcano of Stromboli – but the wind was constantly against, so we changed our plan and headed for an island neither of us had heard of before – Ponsa – just off the coast of Italy, opposite Naples.