Cala Villamarina on Isola La Maddalena

We had a good morning in Cala Portese. We both swam to the beach and back, snorkelled for a bit, spent a bit of time scrubbing BV’s bottom and then indulged in lunch before settling sail for Cala Villamarina. This meant sailing west along the southern side of Isola Caprera, into wind, towards Palau. It’s a very picturesque channel, which we thoroughly enjoyed but if we had set out about half an hour earlier we would have been perfectly positioned to watch a superyacht race blasting east with colourful spinnakers flying. There was even a helicopter buzzing around taking photographs of the multimillion pound machines in action so, whilst we enjoyed our sailing relatively close by, we might later find that we feature as a small sail in the distance on the front cover of a yachting magazine.

The scenery was wonderful and the wind, already quite strong, was further accelerated through the narrow channel so that we ended up short-tacking into about 23kts across the deck. With the staysail and a couple of reefs in the mainsail BV was in her element and just heeled a bit before surging forward as the gusts struck. We saw several other sailing yachts choosing to motor into wind rather than sail. In the protected flat waters of the archipelago, we made good speed and as it was only a short passage we were soon laying out the anchor. Cala Villamarina may not be as picturesque as some of our other anchorages in Maddalena but it was surprisingly well sheltered. Though we could still clearly see the wind-driven waves in the channel just a short distance to our south, we sat peacefully at anchor in the cala surrounded by nearly glassy smooth water.

When we have not been lazing around in the sun we have taken the time to experiment with some of the local foods. One of the Sardinian specialities is Bottarga Muggine, which we had managed to get in Alghero. It is dried salted roe of grey mullet and it is traditionally added to pasta dishes. We tried it on top of a prawn and garlic spaghetti dish and found that it added a lovely extra seafood flavour to the meal.