Sun 5 Aug

We had a surprisingly decent nights sleep as the violent rocking subsided when the motor yachts all went in for the night. It wasn’t to last however as by 09:00 we were swinging rail-to-rail again. Time to go! We picked up anchor and set off for an anchorage on the west side of La Maddalena. We needed water so the plan was to park up and walk into town. We arrived (with two boats hot on our heels) and found what we thought was a good spot. The depth sensor however read 15m which is do-able but not ideal as should the anchor get fouled we’ve no chance of being able to get – and stay – down there. We decided to go in search of an alternative.

Further up the coast we found a large bay set about 500m from a quiet beach off of which about 10 small ribs where anchored. No yachts though, a little suspicious. Zooming in on the chart we saw a number of rocks scattered around, most of which were just cm’s underwater. The surrounding water was deep enough through, so with careful navigation we should be OK. I stood at the bow while Tom edged us in slowly. As we got further in the rocks became evident as small waves were breaking over them on the surface of the water. We we turned a corner and there tucked in behind a rocky outcrop was a very inviting looking sandy patch, which looked perfect! We dropped the anchor in 7m of water and put ourselves smack bang in the middle. This was to be our home for the next 24 hours.

We went for a snorkel and went to investigate the rocks. You definitely would never ever want to get close to those. Underwater they rise up gradually to their peaks so even if you managed to avoid what you could see, you’d still run aground. Scary! In the afternoon I thrashed Tom at a Backgammon marathon and it was while we were having dinner at around 20:00 we realised we weren’t actually sure whether we were allowed to anchor on the islands over night. On re-reading the rules we discovered anchoring after 22:00 was prohibited. Crap. Well, by now it was getting dark so we didn’t fancy moving so took our chances and stayed. By 23:00 when no-one had come we called it a night and hit the hay, all alone in a beautiful bay. We’d have to get water tomorrow 🙂