Sicily to Sardinia

Austins' Travels
Chris & Lynn Austin
Fri 9 Sep 2011 14:07

39:33.93N 02:02.00W

Long passage from Sicily to Sardinia. We left at 0600 on Friday 09/09/2011 and arrived at 1300 on Saturday, motoring into headwinds then no wind. On the way we realised that the engine is not charging the batteries so they had totally discharged due to running gridge, navigation lights and instruments, autohelm, etc. Fortunately we have a secondary diesel generator so we charged the batteries from this, but it takes a few hours. We stopped to refuel at a small marina in Sardinia at Perd’e Sali just southwest of Cagliari and, after fuelling, the engine wouldn’t start! Probably due to ignition problems. But with the generator running to charge the engine battery it produced enough power to start the engine - whew!  Now, the entrance to this marina is very narrow and shallow so we had just enough depth to get onto the fuel pontoon and reverse out (no depth to allow a turn). On the way out I deviated by about a metre from our course (it isn’t always easy to go astern on a sailing yacht) so we ran aground and had to power forwards to tget off and try again. Second time was OK but after all that excitement I did have a big G+T.

Now I wasn’t keen on stopping the engine in a remote anchorage for the night  (our original plan) so we decided to press on non-stop for Palma, Majorca where we know a really good engine specialist and can get spares and supplies, etc – unlike most of Italy it seems. The trip to Palma is about another 48 hours.