Alghero to Porto San Paolo

After Bosa we travelled north towards Alghero. This town is remarkable in that Catalan has equal legal status with Italian and a quarter of the population have Algherese Catalan as a mother tongue. My musician friends will probably find it more interesting that Claudio Abbado had a home here and his neighbours were Luigi Nono and Maurizio Pollini. We decided to anchor at Porto Conte though, as it is an excellent spot and ideal for visiting Alghero by bus, leaving the boat safely in the bay and the dinghy at the local pontoon near the bus stop. Alghero is reminiscent of Gallipoli in the bay of Taranto, aside from the fact that Paella is on all the menus and it is heaving with tourists, of course.

The cliffs at Capo Caccia with Neptune's Cave

We enjoyed the sights, sounds and food of the town, but were glad to avoid the hustle and bustle of the harbour at night and be able to return to our anchorage where the water was lovely for swimming and there was only one disco to contend with.

Catapult for warding off Superyachts

Caltagirone tiles again

Bicycle wheels in Alghero

We saw that some weather was coming in, in a number of days and headed on to the north western tip of Sardinia and the island of Asinara. Once a quarantine station for cholera patients and later a maximum security prison island for the Sicilian mafia, it is now a pristine nature reserve. While the exhaustive regulations about anchoring and motoring are not universally adhered to, we are in Italy after all, the result is nevertheless a practically untouched natural setting.

Optimal tourist to beach ratio on Asinara

Our peaceful spot - North Asinara

Deciding that the weather was not best sat out on a buoy though, we made our way to Stintino and found a place in a quaint marina, at the mouth of a river, within delivery distance of a supermarket and with potable water that didn't smell of chlorine. This is another one of those towns that survives to an extent on the Tunny business and all the local delis carry eyewateringly expensive tinned tuna.

No, really! It is that colour.

We had seen an anchorage on our way down to Stintino and we returned to its turquoise carribean-like water for an afternoon and night before we left the west and rounded the top of Sardinia into the Strait of Bonifacio.

An ominous welcome to the Strait of Bonifacio awaited

The name of the Strait of 'Bonifacio' is after Boniface II, Margrave of Tuscany who supressed the Saracens of north Africa in 828 - one notes he did not manage to suppress the confused seas in the straits in any sort of lasting fashion, that would have been more impressive I think.  A very visible memorial on the island of Lavezzi to the 750 sailors who lost their lives when the French frigate La Semillante sank in the Strait in 1855 is a gentle reminder that these waters are not to be messed with and more than a little care is needed. Just before we rounded the northeastern tip and headed toward superyacht central, we sailed to the Isle de Piana at the south coast of Corsica to spend a very nice afternoon and evening with our friends Mark and Amanda from Panacea who had just crossed from Rome.

The next day Porto Liscia gave us a taste of the summer frenzy with the expansive beach playing host to such diverse activities as kite/wind-surfers and a band with an electric violin.  I think the women found him more electric than I did. At sunset it returned to calm and we sat down with chart and pizza and plotted our way along the Costa Smeralda past Palau and Liscia di Vacca to Olbia.

School of wind-surfers

Electric Violinist?

Back to calm

In this narrow waterway between France and Italy the only noticeable presence of officialdom is on the VHF Radio when one overhears the French Coast Guard hailing various superyachts and asking for their last port, destination, ETA and number of crew and guests on board. The best we heard was, in response to that last two points, "12 Crew, 2 guests, Over".

Some must work...while some

try to stand on their heads

Our next main stop and my base for the next several weeks as Catherine went to play in the Salzburg Summer Festival and a quick detour to Lyon with Sir John Eliot Gardiner's band, before she returned, was Mark’s golden tip, Porto San Paolo. It is not really a port as such but rather a glorious bay protected by shallow waters north and south, the mainland on the west and the rocky island of Tavolara to the East. Just a short trip by bus to Olbia airport it proved a very convenient stop for the stream of comings and goings the following weeks. I anchored in barely 4 Meters of crystal clear water providing me with my own private swimming pool. Well, not exactly private given all the locals racing to Tavolara on their 'Cento Cavalli'  (100 horsepower RIBs). Anyway who am I to complain, as I casually furled my red ensign, polished my Italian and pretended at least I was still very much part of Europe.

Porto San Paolo near Olbia