Where have all the free wi-fi connections gone? Last year it was pretty easy to get connections almost everywhere but this year – even the free connection in a bar seems to be drying up and the ones that want payment are either pay pal (no chance!) or don’t work. This evening we arrived in Carloforte (out of Spain at last!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and just about have a connection. It is even slower that the speed one registers their boat when entering a port in Portugal (can anything be that slow?).
.......anyway, back to the plot. Mahon was a nice place except for two things. Firstly the marina pricing. 53 Euros per night including free wi-fi which didn’t work and lecky and water which did – and the water was very drinkable unlike what we had to put up with in Majorca. The second thing that put me off was the cars being driven up and down the promenade and up and down again beeping their horns until the week hours. And then just in case everyone had gone deaf, they drove up and down again at least 20 times to make sure someone heard. I have it on good authority that Barca had won a game of footy against some minion side and this was the fans celebrating. I mean, Menorca is 300 miles from Barcelona – don’t this lot support their local side?
So a final 6 out of 10 for Sunseeker. There are hundreds of visitor moorings here so worth a visit but then it is a dinghy trip into town.
The lack of internet made it difficult to get the detailed weather we needed but we persuaded the Sunseeker office to give us free run of their machine and downloaded what we needed. Not a lot of wind for Thursday but building to 20knts North West Friday for a good 30knts on Saturday. One of these “Mistral” that we used to get in France. It was 200 miles from Mahon to the north or south of Sardinia so we decided to leave at 6.30am Thursday for the crossing to the south. No real plan of where we would make landfall - a case of see how fast we go and were we get to.
The passage across was pretty boring. That is an understatement. Probably the most boring passage ever made. Apart from the last 3 hours when the wind got up to 19knts, it didn’t get above 10knts and was below 5knts for 80% of the time. We motored for 36 hours. Pam started worrying about not having enough fuel and that almost got me worried!! I tried fishing for Tuna (ie dragging a thing with a hook behind us at 5-6knts) but to no avail. I think there are as many Tuna in the sea between Menorca and Sardinia as woolly mammoths and we all know that woolly mammoths can’t swim so there won’t be many of them around – but I am still looking. So we didn’t catch anything and had spaghetti for tea. There were however millions (and I wouldn’t lie to you) of small jelly fish – shaped like little ocean going yachts with a small sail above the surface (only much much smaller you understand – about 1cm across – that’s about half an inch for those of you metrically challenged) – floating along to get to the places no other jelly fish could get to – unless they were directly up wind of that place. No lets not go there. After all the jelly fish are going there. Why can’t we eat jelly fish? It would end world hunger at a stroke.
...where was I? Oh yes,Thursday night was pretty black. No moon until it rose around 3 ish and then it only deemed fit to show half of it. Friday turned out to be rather grey and it rained a few times – Pam even took a picture of me in my olies (Yes – I put them on to keep out the rain!!!).
As we got closer to Sardinia, we decided we wouldn’t make the way point at the Southern tip in time for a day time entry to whatever port we were supposed to be going to. Instead therefore we decided to head for Carloforte on the Isloa Di San Petro, just off the south west tip of Sardinia. There is a marina (no anchorages) but dire warnings in the pilot book about lack of depth, bad marks etc etc. If one believed these books, you would never go anywhere. As we approached the cliffs of the island, we saw a bird of prey (which I identified as Eleonora’s Faclon) flying low and fast offshore and then attacking a small bird. After it’s first strike on the small bird, the small bird started “fluttering” but it still took another 6 attempts before the falcon succeeded in catching it’s prey. Fascinating. There – it wasn’t that boring was it!! Only the previous 34 hours! Rob had seen Eleonora’s Falcon on Cabrera but this was a good close up.
We arrived in Carloforte around 5 ish, called up the marina, got the last space (I am sure there were many more) and had a beer or two. It had been a tiring trip. As we got in the wind got up to 20knts giving us a tricky berthing and it is now blowing a hoolly – a “Mistral” is expected tomorrow. No sign of anything “difficult” trying to get into this place. The “doom and gloom” book has now been consigned to the bookshelf.
Seems a nice place. Very friendly marina staff, speaking reasonable English (my Italian is zero)..... Good showers and I think it is less than 40 Euros a night!! Plan is to ride out the storm here tomorrow and then decide whether to stay a few more nights to look around the island. We need to be in Sicily (one 200 mile sail) in 9 days so plenty of time to slow down.
We heard from Tony and Margaret who are now in Cartagena with Jacky and Rob who have now done 450 miles in less than a week (that’s even faster than we went!!!). Talking of distances we must now be over half way to Turkey with almost 1000 miles under our belt since we left Lagos. Did I tell you how good it felt to be out of Spain? Liverpool would have beaten Barca if they had had the chance.
More from Carloforte tomorrow.
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