August - in UK!

The boat is moored up in Sardinia, and I'm in blowy, rainy England. Sigh.

Return to Alghero!

Since the world of television was not in a hurry to employ me, and since the rain was falling daily in the UK, I opted to take my phone back to Sardinia in early July and wait for it to ring out here. At least the sun would shine, I’d be on Such Stuff, and I could do some work on the house in Bosa.

And it proved a busy month. Friends were booked to come out at regular intervals, but there was more in store..

Ian was the first to arrive – to do some work on the electrics at the house, but also to enjoy a bit of sailing in the sunshine.

And no sooner had he left on Friday evening than a phone call to Mike and Judy over in San Pantaleo resulted in a call to get Such Stuff to Cannigione by Monday night to do a 3-day charter job. The problem was it was 2-day delivery, I had no crew until the Sunday and my autopilot was up it. Rapid planning and studying of the bus timetables offered a solution. Mike would come over on the Saturday and crew me round to Porto Torres, whence I would get the bus to the airport to meet friends Jules and Richard, then shepherd them back to Porto Torres via convoluted bus connections.

It all went disconcertingly swimmingly until we set off on the Monday, headed for Cannigone in the Maddalena Archiplelago and smack into a NE wind which steadily increased from 2 to 4/5. That’d be right – when we came the other way a month ago we had SW!!

By lunchtime, realising we were going nowhere fast, we opted out to the new marina at Isola Rossa where we spent an afternoon watching the NE wind increasing and being happy with our decision. Given that the wind here always increases in the afternoon, and is always stronger in the Bocca do Bonifacio ir would have been foolhardy to try and continue.
By evening the wind had done its usual trick of dying, so at 9pm, after dinner, we set off into the night for a much easier passage and finally arrived off Cannigione at 3 am after a fascinating night passage with the uniquely Sardinian perfume of maquis wafting in all around.
For the charter trip I was able to take the charming family- Dad, Mum and 2 daughters – back to the places we had so enjoyed so much in June – Bonifacio, Porto Vecchio and Porte de Rondinara, though Bonifaio was a lot fuller and we couldn’t find a berth in the harbour, opting instead for one of the calas opposite, which was actually a much pleasanter, quieter and cheaper option!
We had a mix of light to moderate winds, giving good sailing for most of the three days. Towards the end, as we enjoyed a sail back between Spargi and Maddalena, we had an extra-ordinary encounter with a RIB-ful of Italians who hailed us with the words ‘Dove Sardegna? – ‘Where is Sardinia?’’ Clearly complete novices they had charged off into this archipelago without so much as a road map, much less a chart, a compass or the vaguest notion of how to navigate. I pointed out which bit of land was which and left them to it, in the hope that finding themselves so easily lost might knock some sense into them. The conditions were calm and there were plenty of boats about so they were unlikely to come to much harm.
Having returned my clients to Cannigione I collected Jules and Richard again and we headed off down the Gulf of Arzachena to the delightful anchorage under Tre Monti, ready for the long delivery back to begin next morning.
And a very straightforward return it was. There was not enough wind, but when it did fill in it was, at least, in a favourable direction. That night we anchored off Stintino, and the next day returned to Alghero.

The next visitors were my sister Anne and brother-in-law Bill who arrived on the Tuesday for a week of pottering around the Alghero area, as well as a brisk run down to Bosa. They encountered the full gamut of winds from flat calm to a full force 7 blowing us back to Alghero the next Monday morning after a night at anchor in Cala Bollo. But such is the shelter offered in the Baia de Alghero that it didn’t prevent us sailing, though I did bottle out of getting onto the Mar de Plata mooring until the wind had abated later that evening.

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