Sat 4 Aug

This morning we set off at 10:00 for Palau which is on the north east coast of Sardinia, just opposite the Islands of La Maddalena. We’ve bought a 7 day permit to the national park starting on Sunday so we wanted to get close so we could just hop across. The wind was coming from the east, exactly the direction of our first hours passage but after that we had a fantastic sail in the busy and beautiful waterways between the mainland and the islands.

We dropped sails just outside Palau and anchored next to where other boats were on mooring balls. We managed to sneak in a bit closer ashore and perfectly hit a sandy patch which we were quietly pretty pleased about. Palau itself is best described as a transitory ferry terminal town; it’s where people come to get somewhere else. Huge ferries cross twice an hour to the islands and we counted 15 companies all offering boat tours. The mass movement of boats made the water incredibly rocky which after having over the past few nights quickly made us lose our sense of humour. We got in the dinghy and had a walk. The town was unremarkable but we saw a patch of trees behind the beach which offered some very welcome shade. We walked further up the hill and found some sort of outdoor circuit training / adventure course thing. Great, let’s give it a go! We were starting at #18 (the end) but no matter, how hard could it be? Stupidly hard as it turned out. Huge wooden hurdles, unrealistically high monkey bars, chin ups, 1.5m leap frog posts – you get the idea. Thankfully as we went on they got easier, so we felt a little less useless by the time we finished.

In the evening we came back to the boat to find the anchorage packed, and I mean packed! We can almost see what our neighbours are having for dinner. Still, there’s no wind so we should be OK this evening. We were sitting in the cockpit just now (listening to some live music) and saw a strange configuration of lights pass by. We looked on the chartplotter’s AIS which said it was the one and only Maltese Falcon, which you can charter for a cool $400k per week. We’re hoping to see it in the daylight over the next few weeks!