We're continuing our way up the east coast of Sardinia, we're keen to get to Costa Smerelda as soon as possible, partly because we hear it's stunning and we want to spend lots of time there and partly because there are not so many marinas or anchorages on this side of the island so we want to make sure we get the long journeys out the way while we have more certainty about the weather (I still haven't lost my misplaced faith in September sun despite all the rain preceding and immediately following our wedding day).

Our first stop from Villasimius was Porto Corallo, a nice sheltered marina about 30nm away (after taking into account one big tack to get around the Capo Carbonara marine reserve). There wasn't a lot going on there but we did get a shower which was much appreciated. We have one on board but it's compact and what estate agents would no doubt describe as a wet room (in the sense that everything in the room would get wet if we used it - including the toilet). On the subject of getting wet, I realised yesterday that despite having been living on a boat in the Med for over a week now, neither of us has actually been in the sea. In our defence, you wouldn't want to swim in a marina and we've been too busy to go to the beach so we haven't had too many opportunities… There's also an abundance of jellyfish here which puts us off a bit, they're literally everywhere! Big brown ones - next task when we find a decent wifi signal will be to try and figure out if they're nasty or not.

The next day (yesterday) we managed to drag ourselves out of bed early for a change and sailed up to Arbatax, again tacking so all in all we did about 40nm - meaning we breached the 100nm mark in only 4 days! And also meaning we move onto a new chart already - enter North Sardinia! We anchored in a bay on the south side of Capo Bellavista which is very pretty (as the name suggests) but also very wobbly. The sea's been pretty lumpy the last couple of days and there wasn't much protection from the swell in the bay so not much sleep either. Also disturbing our sleep was the Guardia di Finanza who came to check on us at 10.30pm when I was already half-pyjama'd. This was our first visit from the authorities so there was some initial alarm about having a massive unidentified searchlight trained on us late at night - my first thought was that it might be a ferry about to mow through us (which in hindsight would have been odd unless said ferry was subsequently intending to ground itself on the beach); Gerard's first thought was smugglers (he's a boy). It all went very smoothly though, apparently our documents are all in order, which is good to know, and they went away again after 10mins or so.

Today we set off early again with an initial plan to reach La Caletta, about 50nm away, which was ridiculously ambitious. For that reason we'd already earmarked a backup marina (Cala Gonone - about halfway) just in case the wind wasn't playing ball… Which of course it didn't. After several hours of getting nowhere fast we were forced to accept the detour to Cala Gonone and arrived here about 4pm. On the plus side, arriving earlier than usual allowed us a bit of time to explore so we finally managed to pop our sea-swimming cherries (it was cold!) followed by a shower (even colder and governed by a dictator in the form of a little old Italian lady), a glass of prosecco, and stocking up on supplies of fresh stuff (can't get enough of the tomatoes here at the moment!) Busy making homemade pizza in our tiny oven from a 'just add water' dough mix - looking good so far! So on that note…