Tue 17 Jul

Our night of doing anchor watch shifts ended at 05:00 as the wind dropped and the splice held, so we finally managed to get some sleep, interrupted only briefly when the voltage alarm for the batteries went off. First order of the day was to reinstate the solar panels, and to run some tests on the engine alternator (the thing which charges the batteries) to see whether that could be causing our troubles. With those completed we got Bob, the dinghy ready. After the previous days of strong winds we felt very confident the boat was holding so our plan was to venture into town, our first visit to land since Friday. Before going we had a swim and checked out what the anchor was doing. The water although very clean was very murky (due to all the weed) and with the sun not shining it was really difficult to see the bottom until you were about 1m from the seabed. We followed the chain as best we could – all 60m of it – and eventually found the anchor. On closer inspection it became immediately aparent why it refused to budge yesterday. The tip and much of the scoop was dug in underneath a very solid looking rock. On one hand we were happy, on the other hand though we started to wonder how the hell we were going to free it.

Showered and changed we took the dinghy into the marina and found the “public mole” where we could park it. We wandered around the gorgeous old town of Alghero with its narrow cobbled streets adorned with colourful lantern lights overhead and quintessentially Italian boutiques on every corner. We found a nice pizzeria and had the most amazing pizza and red wine and afterwards we set off to find the chandler, to start the hunt for new batteries. It was scoring hot and I’d made the fatal mistake of putting on linen trousers after feeling cold from the swim, so I spent the rest of the afternoon roasting. We returned to the town quay and as we were getting back in the dinghy we bumped into Christopher. Christopher is a helpful soul who we’d read and had been told by friends can often be found there helping our visiting yotties. He informed us that if we wanted to moor up for free for a few days, then this was our spot and he was helpful enough to also tell us where we could get free water. Great stuff, we’d head in there tomorrow.

Back on the boat we made the most of being unemployed and had a little afternoon nap, then as the sun was out I could charge the laptop, and catch up with the Captain’s Logs 🙂