Caught in the middle of a town festival
39° 56′ 16.2384” N 9° 42′ 15.714” E
July 13 to July 18th
I do not know what it is with us and town festivals. Ever since we lived in Elsinore 20 years ago and sailed up and down the Swedish coast, we have had the accidental misfortune, that we often go inadvertently to the quay in small towns, just as they are starting their annual town festival – you know, that kind of festival, that goes on until two o’clock in the night, and after that the party goes on in the neighbouring boat, where party-participants continue to the bright morning with more and more snuffling voices.
We know the signals: Colourful swings, carousels, radio cars, flashing lights and from early evening high music from six-seven rides at the same time.
Nevertheless, we go to the dock in Arbatax. It is the only harbour in within miles that has a diesel station, and as we enter the harbour we recognise radio cars with the glimpse of an eye, but it’s too late to retreat. We have another 34 miles to the next port.
Next day we have dinner with two former colleagues from Odense, and then follows two days of strong wind. We are caught in the middle of a harbour festival. Sigh.
Three days of radio cars and dazzling disco rhythms. I desperately try to recall the time when the arrival of a Tivoli to the show area of my childhood town in Denmark gave me palpitations and the hope for beautiful, unknown experiences. But this feeling is lost. I can no longer mobilise enthusiasm for that kind of thing. Diplomatically said.
We had stayed for a couple of days in Santa Maria Navarrese but have now sailed three miles south to fill diesel in our tank and to seek fresh air and new experiences.
Children onboard change your boat in wonderful ways. Small Lego-warriors guard the deck, and we got a young seaman, who loves to scrub the boat
Many sailors prefer Santa Maria Navarrese to Arbatax. Santa Maria Navarrese is surrounded by high mountains and high piers, superbly protected from winds from all directions, a secure harbour with 16 restaurants and beautiful beaches with parasols and sunbeds. It has everything a vacationing heart can ask for.
But the air stands still. It’s a bit like being beaten in the head with a hammer of heat. Nothing moves. Arbatax is an alternative to this. It is less protected, more open, and for that reason, cool air flows constantly from the sea. You do not bathe from a beach in Arbatax but from cliffs, and the range of restaurants are scarce.
Anyway. Arbatax is an alternative. You should just avoid the second weekend in July, where they have a three-day harbour festival with radio cars, horns, drum dance and on sunday a ceremony where a sainted figure sails at the head of an armada of local boats three times around the huge outer pool of the harbour, while presumable 10,000 spectators are watching from land.
But then again. Who in this world would enter the port of Arbatax in the second weekend in July?
Everywhere in the world, when a tall cliff makes it possible to make stunning jumps into the sea, there will be youth to take up the challenge
Bonus info: If you are in Santa Maria Navarrese and want to eat out, try Mec Puddu’s. It is Sardinian fast food in good quality and at reasonable prices. If you are in Arbatax then try the marina’s restaurant. Pretty good with amazing views. At the local ship chandler you can have a meter of rope for your newly purchased fender with a tailor-made tackle for two just euros. We like that.
Enchantment Under the Sea
40° 7′ 26.2344” N 9° 40′ 35.346” E
July 12th
Guest blogger: Lasse Folkersen, guest crew member
Ronja-round-the-world is about water and anything related to water. This blog post is about what happens under the sea. As guest-crew on Ronja, along the eastern coast of Sardinia, we had already experienced the majestic cliffs and fantastic beaches offered by the island. But a stay-over day in a harbour with a dive-shop gave the opportunity to expand this into scuba-diving. I have most of my dive-experience from the warm colourful waters of South East Asia and I was unsure what to expect from Mediterranean diving.
I was not disappointed; everything is different, and in some ways less ‘saturated’ – but not at all in a bad way. Of course there are colourful fish here as well, but what I find most attractive is the synergy between the odd-shaped rock formations and the pure white sand. The white beaches of Sardinia in fact continues below the waves, as sandy paths into a maze of underwater tunnels with colorful plants all set in the ever-present Mediterranean azure-blue light from above.
Left: Colourful underwater plants. mail me if you know their exact name. Right: Sandy white beaches. The name of this place was Cala Mariolu.
Bonus info for sailors: If you are sailing in the area north of Arbatax I recommend taking the time for one or more short visits at the beautiful but road-inaccessible beaches. They are not well suited for night-time anchoring, particularly not with strong winds. This is probably the reason why they are not shown in anchor-guide books. But for good reason the beaches are popular destinations for local land-based tourists, using chartered inflatable boats. So many people do this that the beaches are overcrowded in times between arrival and departure times. This, however, is the freedom of having your own boat – and so my best advice is to contact a local tour-agency and ask for their destinations and times; and then go to that place, at some other time than them. At Cala Mariolu, between 1pm and 2pm seemed fairly empty. On arrival, then anchor and swim or row in. That’ll give you pristine, beautiful, secluded and non-crowded beaches.
Well controlled bouyancy in narrow underwater tunnel. Clearly an experienced diver.
Bonus info for scuba divers: I can highly recommend “Diving Cala Mariolu”, which is a tiny diving-operation consisting mainly of three umbrellas, a solar power array, and a few diving guides with a stock of pre-filled air-tanks. All in a very ad-hoc and accessible manner set up directly on the beach. Very straightforward, and actually nicer than some of the larger operations seen elsewhere. I was particularly impressed by dive-instructor Andreas: he managed to be both guide and photographer at the same time, while seemingly also having the overview of the above-water operation. One dive, including all equipment and photos: 60 €. It’s a little colder than South East Asia. Already at 12 m, a short sleeve 3 mm wet suit definitely felt too cold. I also had a booking with Aquatica in Santa Maria Navarrese, but due to a miscommunication I went to a wrong boat from that company, and so I never had the opportunity to see if they were recommendable dive guides.`
Most of all a thumbs up to photographer/instructor/guide Andreas who managed to have everything under control while taking fantastic photos all within a budget of only 60 €
You hardly find better environment for water entertainment than here
40° 51′ 39.9384” N 9° 39′ 23.1012” E
July 9 to July 10th
The weather forecasts of the Mediterranean countries are, as the wind blows, somewhat uncertain. We usually check three weather forecasts: Meteo Consult Marine (which is French), Wind and Sea (which is part of the Italian Lamma weather service) and Windfinder. When two out of the three seem to agree, we believe in it.
However, we should not have done that, when we – with our newly arrived son and granddaughter – sailed out in the seven mile long Golfo di Olbia to round Capo Ceraso and head south to find an adventurous anchorage.
Weatherforecasts predicted 5-6 meters pr second. It turned out to be double up. And even more, as we rounded the “horn”, Capo Ceraso. It felt a little Cape Horn-like, mostly because it was in total contradiction to our desire to give five years old Nellie a great experience of how safe it is to sail in grandma and grandfather’s boat. Clouds pulled up, waves flushed over the forehead of the ship and all the way down to the cockpit. Sometimes we made a speed of less than two knots, because current and wind were working directly against us.
Waterworld. An anchor. A dingy. Googles for swimming. And a beach. What can you possibly demand beyond this?
As long as the adults are not afraid, children are not afraid, and we got an okay trip despite the weatherforecasts, and after a little more than four hours of sailing, we could throw our anchor in the southeastern part of Porto della Taverna, on five meters deep azurean blue water, with good shelter and straight in front of an enchanting beach.
Toys for kids when the tablet was left back in Denmark. Stones in different colours can be used for lots of games, and the bucket will secure a certain coolness
A wonderful anchor bay indeed. Indescribably beautiful and totally suitable for all kinds of playing in the water with our inflatable boat, bathing-ring, swimming wings and snorkeling equipment.
Bonus info: We believe that the bay of Cala Coda Cavallo, three miles further eastsoutheast, may be even better as anchorage, when the wind is blowing from the southeast.
Back to reality: Olbia. A charming mishmash of a city
40° 55′ 21.7992” N 9° 30′ 28.188” E
July 5 to July 9th
After five hours of sailing, we set foot in Circolo Nautic Olbia, a small harbour in the center of Olbia. After 24 hours in the paradise of the super rich, Porto Cervo, we are again 100 percent back in reality. In Olbia we find life and energy, noise and quarrels, ugly houses and beautiful houses. Palms and port industry. A mishmash of a city. Wonderful.
Most guidebooks do not have anything nice to say about Olbia. It has nothing to offer, they claim. We liked the city. It has an active environment around the small city ports, it has a good supermarket, several ship chandlers and an excellent archaeological museum right next to our harbour. A young archeologist guides us into the Nuraghi civilization which laid the foundation for Sardinia from 2000 BC. To 700 BC, when it gradually became absorbed in the culture of the Roman Empire. Simply interesting.
What is this? A kindergarten for buoys growing bigger? An unorthodox signal saying, that here you will find many rocks under sea-level? Buoys by the thousands are marking the route to Olbia.
However, the very best about Olbia is, that the city has an airport. Our son, Lasse, and five years old granddaughter, Nellie, have just announced that their scheduled trip to Geneva has been canceled, and we are eagerly pointing out, that we have an alternative suggestion, while we right now are moored close to an airport with direct exit to five days of unbeatable cruising on board Ronja in the wonderful eastcoast of Sardinia.
Bonusinfo: Try the restaurant Officina de Gusto in Olbia. We found it good value for money. The archaeological museum costs eight euros per person, and for that price you have your very own English speaking guide for an hour. Try it. Some of the small ports of Olbia are private and usually not open to guests. We arrived during the siesta, and when the port people came back to work, they let us stay. You can also lie along the old commercial dock. Maybe it’s free. There is neither electricity nor water.
A beautiful night close to being in company with Bruce Willis and Mick Jagger
41° 8′ 6.072” N 9° 31′ 39.144” E
July 4th to July 5th
Phew! Now we tried that too. We are heading away from the Sardinian port of Porto Cervo after a day in the paradise of the thruly rich – where Bruce Willis and Mick Jagger are said to hang out with the royal and the top of the international jet set. And where the rest of us, are paying the world’s highest harbour fee – even without any certainty, that Bruce Willis and Mick Jagger are or have been nearby.
Offer of the day: Brand new, royal blue Rolls Royce. For sale in the habour of Porto Cervo
Porto Cervo is Costa Smeralda’s navel. The jewel of Sardinia’s emerald coast.
Actually, it is a fantastic story, which began in 1962, when the Arab prince and multi-millionaire Aga Khan bought 55 kilometers of coastline in northeastern Sardinia. He collected a group of other investors, and together they started developing the coast. Their demands to the architects were sky high. All buildings should subordinate to nature, they should – if possible – add to, but never subtract from nature’s own overwhelming, clean beauty.
And that is remarkable.
Even the church – Stella Maris – fit in with the special invented italian architechture
All buildings are held in an almost demonstrative, adventure-like mediterranean style with rounded arches and colors held in tones, that do not exaggerate nature. Throughout it is exclusive. No bumpy high-rise buildings. No individual extensions. No worn out aftermaths from the past.
It is a large area, and the city center is the most discrete city center, we have ever experienced. Here are lots of shops and restaurants, but they appear discreetly, one after the other, on multi-level alleys without significant signage. You never really notice, that you are in a shopping mall.
If you are looking for a baker, a butcher or a grocery store, then forget it. Here we deal in Gucchi bags, Rolex watches, jewelry and branded clothing.
A single supermarket is all, that is meant for those of us with elementary, primitive needs.
It certainly look beautiful. Very tasteful. Maybe also a bit like Hollywood?
It has been a great vision. Beautifully executed. Sustainable respect for nature. Whauu, that’s excellent. Nevertheless we leave Porto Cervo with the feeling, that it is all artificial and made scenic. Especially we leave Porto Cervo with a disapointment not having met with Bruce Willis, Mich Jagger, Boris Becker and the other celebrities. Maybe they only appear in the area’s sales brochures?
Bonusinfo: Several sailing blogs claim, that the price for one nights stay in Porto Cervo in July is more than 200 € for a boat of 10 meters. That is not correct. We paid 152.50 €, equivalent to 1135 kroner for one night in Porto Cervo. It is more than we have ever paid elsewhere in the world. And we sailors are – as you know – very much concerned about prices in the harbours. Our collegues only travelling by land ocassionaly pay thousands of kroner for a double room in a hotel. But we sailors like it the best, when we can have it for 30-euro-like. Less will be OK.
Phew! Now we tryed that too.
Skipper has his birthday and are woken with singing and a brand new italian t-shirt
What a sailing life: Palma one night, Tahiti the next
41° 12′ 40.1724” N 9° 24′ 15.7428” E
June 30th to 4th of July
Porto Palma is a large open cove with ample space for anchorage, and during the daytime you can even be part of an exciting sailing competition. Two sailing schools use the bay to practice racing for youngsters and sailing for beginners. 30 boats are on the water. We have thrown our anchor in the middle of the race course and, as afternoon entertainment, we can follow every tactical maneuver, every piece of fine sportsmanship and every failure, when a boat ends top down.
Palma Bay houses two sailing schools, and the students provide top entertainment all day long – except for during siestas.
Cale Coticcio is another, somewhat smaller, anchorage cove. It is called Tahiti Bay by the locals, perhaps because of the popularity, the many day-sailors who come from nearby cities and spend the day in the azure-blue waters.
In this part of the world Palma and Tahiti have in common, that they are both part of the La Maddalena archipelago. We have reached Italian Sardinia. The two bays are located on the island of Caprera, which, together with the main island of Maddalena and 12 other islands, form a large and tightly regulated natural park.
You buy permission to be in the area. The price is 60 € per week for a sailing yacht. Nature prefers sailingboats, so we get a discount. The license gives you the right to sail and anchor in the area, when following a detailed set of rules.
The rules say, that you cannot pick flowers here and you cannot collect stones. They say do not go ashore here, unless you are accompanied by a nature-guide. Do not go fishing here. Do not snorkel here. Do not deep dive. Do not pump out water from dishwashing and showers. Do not be here at all. It all varies from bay to bay.
The rules are so complex, that we give up figuring them out. We stay aboard Ronja, enjoy the bathing life, and show our permission when asked by park officials in inflatable boats.
Especially Tahiti Bay is in the daytime a circus of whining children, shouting parents, rustling anchor chains, loud outboard motors and sailing ice cream sellers, who manage to get 5 € for an ice cream, that costs 1,65 € in the local supermarket.
At about 19 o’clock, peace settles over Tahiti Bay. The locals sail back to their home ports, and from being 70 boats we are only 7, when darkness and an remarkably clear sky with stars descend upon Tahiti. On Sardinia, that is.
Thahiti Bay is beautiful like a gigant sculpture created through centuries by the combined efforts of wind and water.
The islands are absolutely beautiful, but hardly more beautiful than so many other places in the area. And we do not understand the logic of the natural park. Why do they use so many resources to check if we have paid? Why do they not use the resources to put out permanent anchor buoys in the bays, so we don’t have to damage the Possidonia grass on the seabed, every time we throw out the anchor.
One might think – probably wrongly – that all the talk about a nature park is mostly about getting even more people to understand, that these 14 islands are something quite special, in an area, where numerous beautiful destinations fight for the favour of sailors.
Bonus info: Cala Gavetta on the Maddalena island is a positive surprise. Charming town, lively in the daytime, peaceful at night. We stayed two days in the harbour. The first day cost 27 € for a berth. The next day the same berth cost 56 €. Why? Because it was July 1st, and the price list changes to high season price, which is double the price the day before.
In the wake of Odysseus we sail into the world’s most spectacular natural harbour
only 41° 23′ 17.754” N 9° 9′ 44.3304” E
Sunday 25 June to Friday 30 June
A dream of a sailing day. Again. We hoist the sails, as we leave Propriano, and only take them down again eight hours later, when we arrive in Bonifacio, the southernmost of Corsica’s major cities. A whole day by sail. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Bonifacio is one of the most spectacular and extraordinary harbours, we have ever sailed into. You sail through a small opening in the rocks of the coast, turning immediately to the right and suddenly you find yourself at the beginning of a 1.8 kilometer long calanque or fjord, that runs parallel to the coast but without being visible from the sea, as there are massive rocks between the sea and the harbour.
A miracle of a natural harbour. It’s big, lively, dramatic – something is happening at all times.
It is a natural harbour as if cut by supernatural forces right through the chalk cliffs. It’s hard to describe. It has to be seen. Vertical chalk cliffs on each side of the harbour entrance. Half of the calanque is used as a port, it seems Bonifacio is a favorite springboard for sailors heading from Italy, Sardinia and to the north. And from mainland France through Corsica and to the south.
Historians have identified Bonifacio as the port, that Homer mentions as the port of Laestrygonies in the Odyssey. The port where Odysseus anchored with his his fleet and only barely escaped with enormous losses, when the Laestrygonies set off to drive Odysseus and his people away.
We did not let them drive us away. We stayed for five days. Partly due to weather reports of severe winds from west. But also because we liked the city and its surroundings. There are hiking trails inland and along the sea. Beautiful, healthy and moderately challenging.
Spectacular? Old Bonifacio looks like a village constantly at the risk of falling down into the ocean. It has looked like this for centuries.
Bonifacio is admitted to UNESCO’s conservation list, so it’s not a city you have to yourself. It’s crowded with tourists, there is a light show on the walls of the fortress, and in the early night disco rhythms are pounding throughout the harbour, and may make some sailors grab for their ear plugs.
Every day a new armada of holiday-loving Italian sailors arrive. Their summer vacation has started. They have rented a sailing boat. Now it is time for action. Many of them have a practice where, when they have picked up the mooring lines from the bottom of the harbour, they fix it to their boat, put the engine at full power back, in order to get their mooring lines maximum tight, and then they make the boat firm to the quay.
This is certainly good for the boat in question, but on either side two to three other boats hammer their stern into the quay, because their lines have become too loose, after the newly arrived boat has pulled the common anchor chain on the bottom of the harbour closer to the dock. Damn it! They think it’s their own personal anchor. It’s not. We are all collectively linked to the same key anchor chain!
The skipper’s wife happily enters the cabin and declares that the new neighbors are VERY noble and considerate, and that they have told her, that if she can’t wake up the skipper from his siesta, they will be happy to come over and assist, if we have failed to tighten our own moorings properly. Sigh!
Bonus info: Bonifacio has two supermarkets directly on the quayside. Helpful people at the harbour office. Beware of strong westerly winds. The natural harbour intensify the wind as in a funnel, which can make it difficult to maneuver.
The graveyard at the old Bonifacio on top of the cliff. It gives you an insight into the differences between the southern european catholic culture, and the more pragmatic culture of the northerns, when it comes to the attitude towards the dead.