June 23 – July 21, 2023 — We left Barcelona with our friend Charles joining us, and did a 48 hour sail to Bonifacio, Corsica, the capital of the French island off the west coast of Italy. With strong winds forecast we went into the marina there for two nights. We had been there in 2015 so we enjoyed the familiar historical port.
From there we headed across the Bonifacio Strait, a 5 mile stretch of water that separates Corsica from Sardinia which is the second largest island in Italy. After two days of exploring new harbors we found we had to hunker down again due to high winds. There was enough weather warning to allow us to go into Golfo de Aranci, a much protected harbor we thoroughly enjoyed last year and looked forward to returning to. Along the way we celebrated Bob’s birthday.
This turned out to be a weather challenging season and our stop in to Golfo de Aranci turned out to be nine days, with consistent high winds and high seas. Bob and Charles took advantage of the time to do some underwater work on the bow thruster when the waves allowed.
With a few overnight stops along the east coast of Sardinia which has a combination of nice harbors with sandy beaches, and high cliffs that drop off sharply into the sea, we worked our way down to Cagliari, the capital of Sardinia. This was probably our longest spinnaker run in the Mediterranean and it was totally delightful. By then the Mediterranean heat and sun had heated up all of Europe and was making world news. Cagliari was no exception. It was 113 degrees and high humidity. We headed into a marina so we could plug in and run the air conditioning.
Since our time sailing the coast of Sardinia last year, Bob had expressed interest in seeing inland areas of the island so, after exploring ways to see it, we found a day trip on “The Little Green Train”. This was my birthday gift to him. The brochure showed a lovely multi-car train with an older, nice looking engine car. Reality was something different. What we got was a single car that looked like it rolled out of an inner-city sight where it had been covered with graffiti the night before. In addition, it had no air conditioning, and it was over 115 degrees and full sun. Sorry Bob. We made the most of the day and did get to see some of the vast amount of agriculture the island has and several old towns.
Cagliari has a charming old town with narrow walkways and great restaurants and gelato shops. It’s hilltop, medieval walled quarter overlooking the rest of the town includes a 13th century cathedral.
Again we were up against a weather window and needed to get back to Barcelona, so after a few anchor stops on the West coast we cut our circumnavigation of Sardinia short and did the 48 hour run back. After four days back we were off to another adventure – this time by plane, to Ireland.