As the last three weeks of our Mediterranean odyssey are coming to a close, we head straight down to the Costa Smerelda in Sardinia, to pick up chris and Wendy Connell, who flew into Olbia from Greece.
Sardinia is about 250 kms long and it is very mountainous and green on the coast, creating great geographical contrasts.
Olbia province is in the northeast of sardinia, it is very sheltered from the strong westerly winds which we are expecting. It has lots of sheltered bays and beautiful sandy beaches. All of the towns, marina's and housing all appear fairly new. It is all low rise and good quality development. We anchor in 'Porto Brandichini' to pick up the Connells, we then head off to 'Cala Capeciolo'. We spend the afternoon on the beach swimming and discussing our various adventures. We learn from Chris that his paternal forebears came from the Pelopponese, where his grandfather and great grandfather were icon painters with many of their works remaining in churches today, which they recently visited. His maternal forebears came from the Island of Ithaca.
Tuesday, we move to 'Porto Istama', where we visit the marina and small town, but have a leisurely day introducing the Connell's to canansta.
Wednesday, we move onto 'Porto Rotondo' anchoring outside the marina. Today is MB's birthday. We take the bikes ashore to look around the town. Most of the holiday makers have left so things are fairly quiet. We are looking for a restaurant to celebrate our birthday boy but most things are closed for Siesta. We look for a longer bike ride and MB suggests half an hour to the next marina. It ends up taking us at least 1.5 hours to reach our destination as we have to ride around a large bay up and down hills to reach 'Marina di Portisco'. This again is a very large marina with new housing.
We arrange by phone dinner that evening at 'Da Giovanino'. This is a family run restaurant and it is excellent. Mum is running the kitchen while her three sons are running the restaurant floor. We have a very good Sardinian meal and local wines. MB is very happy with his beautiful watercolor paintings that JB bought in Malta.
Thursday. These last few days we have not travelled great distances only three to six nautical miles. Today, we visit 'Porto Cervo'. This is on the Costa Smeralda and was established in 1962 by six landwoners headed by the Aga Khan. They set down strict design rules and instructed a panel of the best designers to draw up a master plan. It is well done, after 50 years it looks and functions tastefully. There are very high end shops and bars with low rise housing surrounding a quality marina with many large boats. Obviously this is a destination for the wealthy.
After lunch we move onto 'Porto Liscia' next to 'Pilau' and close to 'Isola di Maddalina'. Maddalina and its archipelago of Islands is a nature reserve. It is difficult to anchor near, but we are able to anchor a little away and visit by tender as they are all very close to each other.
The town of Maddalina is supposed to be very historic, old and interesting. we found it small and with very few exceptions not architecturally significant. Pilau, the main town of the area is even smaller with few old buildings. We did not spend a lot of time at either.
From a nature point of view the area is very attractive with lots of islands, good beaches and nice water. That evening we had an exciting game of 'Bocci' on the beach before we finish off our nightly canasta championship.
Friday, Chris and Wendy are leaving today.We have a pre-breakfast walk on the long sandy beach followed by a swim. Niels, chris and MB take the stand up board for skirfing behind the tender.
Chris is elated at this new experience.
They leave us at mid afternoon at 'Santa Teresa'. We go on to anchor at a beautiful large bay,'La Colba'. We see a lot of boats trolling and the area looks great for fishing. Again, no luck with the fish, but the beers were good.
Tomorrow we leave Italy for Corsica, France.
Arrevedirci Italia.
JB and Mick