38:58.647N 8:48.702E Sun 8^th Oct 2017

Just a quick entry to say we are underway again.  We had a great few days getting to know Cagliari again and reversing our previous poor impression of the town.  We like it – even enough to be researching whether to over-winter there one year.  Being in the centre of the town makes all the difference, especially as it really has been improved.  We visited the extensive botanic gardens one afternoon which also contained a Carthaginian quarry and several ancient cisterns amongst the greenery.

Today’s trip to this rather nice anchorage on the southern tip of Sardinia was not great.  We started in the wind shadow and had to motor for the first few hours.  Then the winds suddenly came up and we were close hauled, hand steering as the gusts and variable wind direction were too much for the autopilot.  We forgot to close a valve in the aft sink so had another small flood as we tacked – oops.

Today’s notable event was passing the world’s largest sailing yacht called just “A”.  It claims the world’s tallest masts (100m high) and is 143m long.  It’s reputed to have cost it’s Russian oligarch owner $400m to build, yet it’s really ugly! 

We’ve spent some time considering our options for getting to Cartagena (Murcia) for the winter.  We had planned to hop over via the Balearics but the wind forecasts for the next week don’t look at all promising, and starting later than that gives us a timing problem for getting back to the UK.  So we’ve decided to head straight to Spain.  It looks like sailable winds will get us there in 4 days or so with the route taking us roughly parallel with the north African coast for much of the way – but no closer than 20-30 miles.  We’re going to set off at first light tomorrow (Monday 9^th) and see how we go.

Malfatano: