La Maddalena Archipelago National Park and Marine Reserve (Part 1)

One of the few superyachts we saw in and
around the La Maddalena Archipelago    

We didn’t need an early start on the morning of Tuesday 4 July – we were hardly planning and epic, long-distance voyage. From our anchorage in the Gulf of Arzachena to Porto Palma, a bay on the south coast of the island of Caprera in the La Maddalena Archipelago, is just over 4nm but our reading of the pilot book told us that Porto Palma might be a nice place to start our exploration of the national park so, in a flat calm, we motored across. Compared to our travels slightly further south on the Costa Smerelda, we saw very few superyachts on our short trip. We wondered if this was related to the cost of the permit required to spend time in the La Maddalena Archipelago.

Approaching Porto Palma   

Porto Palma is a large, quite enclosed bay, with lovely blue water and a good sandy bottom. There are 2 sailing schools based here and when we arrived there were loads of dinghies out on the water, doing all sorts of sail training exercises. Happily, there was very little wind so avoiding the learner sailors as we manoeuvred to a suitable anchoring spot was quite straightforward. The dinghies all retired for a long lunch and then re-appeared later in the afternoon when the wind had picked up to come quite briskly from the east. That kept the sailors busy and gave us a fun afternoon’s viewing entertainment too. [Ed: in addition to watching 2 well-crewed motoryachts dragging their anchors gently through the anchorage!].

Porto Palma   

Perhaps it was because it was a Tuesday but, as evening fell, Porto Palma was hardly over-run by yachts. We spent a quiet evening and night anchored amongst half a dozen or so other boats, with good protection from most wind directions – not that we needed that as the wind dropped off to nothing overnight.

Leaving Porto Palma   

The following day, Wednesday 5 July, we planned another enormous passage; this time one of about 10nm. In the hope of getting some sailing in, we left Porto Palma in the middle of the morning, expecting that the wind would have set in a bit by then. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case, so we motored through the fleet of sailing drifting dinghies and headed west along the south coasts of Isola Caprera and Isola San Stefano. Here we really began to appreciate that the islands are all composed of pink granite (the ground around Porto Palma is mostly low-lying and well covered in vegetation so the geology is not clear); much of the scenery is hugely reminiscent of the Côte du Granite Rose in northern of Brittany.

There are also a lot of fortifications around the islands, though not as many as if Nelson had had his way. He had wanted the Admiralty to base the Mediterranean fleet here, rather than in Malta, as he felt that it would be a better placed base from which to fight Napoleon’s forces. Nelson didn’t get his way and Malta became the base for the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet, and remained that way for over 150 years. With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight it is just as well that Their Lordships chose Malta, as the course of WWII would most likely have been entirely different had the Fleet been based in northeastern Sardinia.

Arriving at Dead Man’s Passage anchorage   

We’d picked our next anchorage, just to the south of Dead Man’s Passage, partly because of its name and partly because we’d read that it was a ‘don’t miss’ anchorage. As we approached the area (now gleefully under sail and roaring along), it was clear that we would not be alone here; there were already lots of yachts anchored and a fleet of tripper boats was also inbound to drop off passengers.

Dead Man’s Passage anchorage – after an awful lot of boats have left!   

We found a spot to drop our anchor clear of the Posedonia weed, if hardly clear of the yachts on either side. With so many boats around, it was rather like being in an enormous blue carpark but the sea was such fantastic shades of blue and turquoise that we were determined to stay.

There was plenty to see with boats moving all over the place – yachts anchoring and leaving and tripper boats arriving and disgorging passengers either directly onto the rocky shore or via large RIBs. Inevitably, given the Italian temperament, there were also some emotional exchanges, especially when a tripper boat arrived and picked up its mooring buoy which put it extremely close to a small, anchored yacht. The shouting and body language seemed to suggest an exchange along the lines of:

Small Boat: “I got here first and I’m not bloody moving”
Tripper Boat: “But it’s our mooring buoy and we’re working and have loads of customers on board”
Small Boat: “I don’t care and I don’t care that our boats are touching. I’m not moving and instead I’m going to avoid any eye contact with you and sulk in my cockpit looking at the beach”

By the evening practically everyone had cleared out of our anchorage and we shared it overnight with just a handful of yachts, though the anchorage to the north of Dead Man’s Passage was still filled with boats of all shapes and sizes.

In the morning, it was glassy calm and we felt as if we were anchored in a swimming pool. We swam ashore to see the northern anchorage from the shore (Nicky had already seen it the previous evening when she had gone for a swim and tried to find the path to Cala Rosa, also known as the Pink Beach, which is as its name suggests. Boats are no longer allowed to anchor off Cala Rosa, and swimming off the beach is also prohibited, but it is possible to see it from the shore. However, we could not find the path in amongst the maquis bushes and the granite boulders. So, we had to content ourselves with enjoying some of the other beautiful beaches before swimming back to BV and heading off towards a ‘secret’ bay on Isola Caprera.

La Maddalena Archipelago National Park and Marine Reserve, Sardinia, Italy