Sailing to Olbia

Our breakfast in Cala Villamarina on the morning of 5 June was disturbed by the arrival of a landing craft delivering a JCB and a truck full of construction materials. Whilst it went off to Palau to get some more, a tripper boat arrived and disgorged a school party. We found ourselves in the middle of an enthusiastic Italian style stand-off when the landing craft returned and found that the tripper boat was blocking its spot. Then, a Guardia Costeiria launch arrived and tied up to the quay as did a RIB so we were very glad that we had anchored well clear in the middle of the cala rather than tying up to the quay as the pilot book had suggested.

We sailed clockwise around Isla San Stefano so that we could take a look at Maddalena town. It was busy with ferries going backwards and forwards to Palau but seemed pretty. One of the ferries that passed us looked very familiar and we chuckled when we saw that it was originally named St Catherine. We had recognised it from our years sailing in the Solent, when it used to provide a service between Lymington and Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight, before being sold off when Wight Link bought larger ferries for that route.

As we sailed away from the Maddalena Islands we got a great view of the superyachts which were out racing again. They really are huge and dwarfed the more normal sized yachts that were sailing near us. Again, a couple of helicopters were buzzing around taking photos and filming the action. We were very flattered that one of the helicopters picked out BV from the 10 or so other ‘normal yachts’, flew over and circled around us a couple of times at very low level filming and photographing us! Maybe we will get to appear on the front cover of a sailing magazine as more than just a speck in the distance.

The rest of the passage was very uneventful in comparison but was still a very pleasant sail and we arrived in Olbia at 1845hrs.

Olbia, Sardinia, Italy