Fri 17 Aug and Sat 18 Aug

Today was to be our last in Sardinia. We were planning originally on being here for a few weeks, but we enjoyed it so much it’s been closer to five! It was a quiet, uneventful day. In the morning we went to fill up with diesel and water, and by chance timed our arrival perfectly docking just seconds before four other boats. They were most unimpressed at having to hang around whilst we filled up two empty water tanks, a full tank of diesel and also for Tom to convince the marina to take our old oil from the engine service. We undocked Bini (I swear I could hear clapping coming from the waiting boats) and made our way back to the town quay. We were ready for the off tomorrow.

We had a terrible nights sleep as being Friday night Olbia was unbelievably busy and so so loud. The worst was the karaoke; hours and hours of dreadfully out of tune “singing” sounding like it was being played out in our cockpit. When the alarm went off at 06:00 we contemplated staying one more day, but decided to get up and get out. With Bob (the dinghy) up and tied down on deck we left sleepy Olbia behind and set off for Cala di Paragnanu, dodging some huge ferries in the channel on the way out. The trip was due to take us about 6 hours.

We motored through the straight between the mainland and La Maddalena, getting bashed every few minutes by the wake of motor boats roaring by. Our middle fingers got plenty of exercise in those few hours. We finally got into the clear water of the Bonafacio Straight where the wind picked up enough for us to have a lovely sail across to Corsica.

The anchorage we’d picked was about a mile past Bonafacio. We’d read that the cliffs with the houses perched on top were impressive, but we were blown away. The cliffs were enormous, and dwarfed the massive super yachts waiting to be allowed down the channel into the very well hidden marina.

We were pleased to find the anchorage had plenty of space, and we re-anchored three times until we found a spot we were happy with. In the evening we just couldn’t resist having a first play with the paddleboards. We attached a line to the boat (it’s like having stabilisers on a bike) and both had a go at standing up. Wasn’t actually too difficult so with renewed hope that we might not be completely useless we looked forward to giving it a proper go in the morning. #overconfidencebias