Having heard many stories about the beauty of Sardinia and her coastline Jeremy and I decided that our first European adventure after Covid would have to include a yacht charter in Sardinia.
We chose Noah, a newly built 43ft Dufour. Noah has 4 cabins, a fixed 3 blade propeller, and was very comfortable. We were joined for the week by my Dutch cousin, Sonja and her partner Jos. Neither had any yachting experience so we thought picking a yacht that was only slightly longer than our Kai Rani, (42ft) was a good idea. Sonja and Jos’s enthusiasm to learn made up for their lack of experience, this was going to be a bucket list experience for them. Jos was so excited that he spent a few weeks prior practicing his swimming.
We planned to sail up to the Maddalena Archipelago. This National Park, located between Sardinia and Corsica, covers over 20,000 hectares of land and sea, embraces 180 kilometers of coastline and includes over 60 islands. We wanted to avoid more popular coastal areas, like the incredibly touristy Porto Cervo and Costa Smelda. This meant we needed to provision the boat for a full week for 4 people as most of this Archipelago has no towns or services. It was very handy to access an online grocery store that delivered to the boat, so all we needed to do was pick up a few extra items before we set sail. The Dutchies brought plenty of hard cheese from the Netherlands.
After a couple of days sailing around some incredibly picturesque coastlines and visiting a few of the Maddalena islands, Santa Maria, Isola Spargi, Caprera we headed further north up to the French island of Corsica, only around 11 nautical miles away. We started up the east coast and stopped at the spectacular beach of Rondinara, in a shell shaped, sheltered bay with fine white sand and crystal clear turquoise water.
Here were yachts displaying flags from many different parts of Europe, including Greenland, Latvia, Switzerland, Germany. This was the perfect spot for paddle boarding. The local bar on the beach was popular for sun-downers and also surprised us with a couple of wandering cows. One of them became tired of the beach goers and started to push the tourists around to our amusement.
One of the highlights of our sailing week was visiting Bonifacio (founded 830AD). This medieval town is right at the southern tip of Corsica. The approach to Bonifacio has very high limestone cliffs, dotted with sea caves and a 187step staircase carved into the limestone. The Bonifacio marina is located in a deep inlet and is sheltered from all winds. It must have been a formidable fortress in centuries past with the old town sitting up high on the clifftop.
We had one calamity corner on our way back to Sardinia. Hugging the coastline a little too close we managed to touch and got stuck. Luckily it didn’t take too long to free the boat with a little help from a passing speed boat which pulled us out backwards. No damage just a little antifoul missing on bottom of the keel. We were very lucky not to cause any real damage. Continuing on to Cala Corsara Bay on the island of Spargi we joined about 20 other yachts and cats for the night. After an early yoga practise on the beach we were joined by a warthog and her piglet fossicking for food. Then hoards of day trippers were dropped off by ferries so we made our escape.
The last full day saw the best sailing conditions with winds up to 25knots. By now the cousins had a little sailing experience and were thrilled to be sailing along at 8.5knots. We had a really fun week together.
Having chartered a yacht in both Sardinia and Croatia (2016) we can pass on a few observations that may help others. Firstly, always do a thorough inspection before you take possession of the boat. We encountered a broken and mismatched dinghy oar, wrong fin for one of the paddle boards, one virtually empty gas bottle, and no bucket! A few safety items were overlooked. On our return we were told that we could have requested wine glasses as these are not automatically included. In Croatia we discovered that the speakers for the sound system had dried out and had to be replaced during our charter together with the house batteries. With predominantly light winds for much of the week we were pleased that we added a furling code zero to the standard sails that come with the boat.
Kristin and Jeremy
SV Kai Rani
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