Carloforte

Akibbon
Richard & Helen Morris
Tue 4 Sep 2007 16:07

We set off for Sardinia in perfect conditions waving goodbye to a couple of boats anchored in the harbour who Richard had been talking to, well not just talking to they had handed him a 6 month old baby to nurse! Richard is not good with babies but apparently it survived!

 

 Sadly I was a bit late with the camera!

 

We left Mahon in very different conditions to when we arrived and were at least able to take a couple of piccies.

 

 Next stop Sardinia

 

Our first day sailing to Sardinia was perfect and we made good progress.  However during the night the wind started to pick up as did the sea and by the time daylight came it was really pretty rough with 4 metre waves.  Then came the weather forecast on the VHF, gales everywhere!  They had definitely not been forecast before we left.  The port we were aiming for was Carloforte on a St Pietro little island off the coast of Italy. The theory was that it was in the lee of the wind and swell however the pilot book wasn’t very comforting and indicated that the seas could be quite confused. That wouldn’t have been so bad but it is very shallow so we weren’t sure if it was safe to attempt to go in. Anyway to cut a long story short and in spite of various contingency plans (which we fortunately didn’t need) we were able to get into Carloforte and tie up. It was still very windy in the harbour but at least the sea was flat.

 

We met a young English couple on their yacht who live in Weston super Mare!

 

 Richard and Bethan from Shamrock Rose

 

 They told us about a couple on another pontoon who had just come from Turkey so  we popped round to say hello to them and discovered that they had been in Yacht Marine earlier in the year and met our friends Ray and Carol.

 

 Alan and Doreen from Kiah

 

They all came round for a drink later in the evening before going out for a meal.  We stayed on board listening to music and got chatting to the people on the boat next to us.  They invited us to join them and we were there until nearly three in the morning. Bearing in mind that they were Italian and didn’t speak much  English – well it was on a par with my Italian…We managed pretty well in French!

 

  He’s much too young to be a plastic surgeon (but he is really!)

                       

   We didn’t drink all that lot, did we?

 

    Oh help I think we did!

 

Distance run 183.31nM   Cumulative total  2315.50nM