Category: Sardinia 2007/8

From Santa Maria di Gallura via Capo Testa to Vignole Mare

Our good Venetian friend Marco Ballarin has been awarded the title of ‘Maestro di Canoa da Mare’. We know that Marco has worked hard for a long time to achieve this level of certification, so here’s a toast to Maestro Ballarin.

From Cala di Trana (Palau) to Santa Maria di Gallura.

We in Città della Maddalena now. We’ve had a nice day paddling up the east coast of Isola Caprera and back down between that and the Isola della Maddalena. We expect to find a camp site somewhere to the west of here on the mainland. The Isola Caprera has a magnificent rocky coast, sculpted into…

If there is on theme to today it must be the many types of weird waves we’ve met. We started from Cala Morescoe near Golfo Aranci and headed straight into some extremely choppy waters off Capo Figaro. Waves apparently came in from two different directions and bounced off the vertical rocks, giving us quite a…

We passed the Isola di Tavolara yesterday. Tavolara has a quite extraordinary history. It is not that often you get to eat in a royal restaurant. The waitress was pretty too 🙂 We’re just a couple of day from the northern tip of Sardinia now.

I guess we’ve only been pizza blogging recently, so today we had sandwiches 🙂 Thursday morning we woke up in Cala Gonone to a dark sky. We were ready to go but up north it was thundering, just where we were supposed to go. We made everything ready and went for a cappuccino. It started…

We’re having lunch at Peppes Bar on the beach near the Marina of Orosei. The pizzas were of quite dubious quality, so we won’t stay longer that it takes the GPS to recharge. We’ll be off in a minute.

We have had two spectacular days in the Golfo di Orosei. Most of time we have paddled in the Natural Reserve of Golfo di Orosei and Gennargentu. Tuesday we started on a calm and sunny morning from Torre di Bari, and paddled quietly to Arbatax and Santa Maria Navarrese, where the natural reserve begins. The…

Can you find the hidden paddler in the picture?

We had a nice day on the water today. We started in great style with an hours break after an hours paddling, but after that we paddled for five and a half hours almost without break. Initially we had it easy. Tailing swells of 1-2m and a pleasant tailwind gave us good speed, but in…

Right now we’re sitting in a bar at the harbour of Porto Corallo near the village of Villaputzu. We spend the night on a beach called Spiaggia San Giovanni, just behind a fish-farm. We had a brilliant dinner in a local restaurant where we ate pizza. According to Wendy her seafood pizza was “orgasmic” 🙂…

We’re in Sardinia now. Everything went surprisingly well with the ferry and boarding with both kayaks and a motorcycle. We did have a few scares of continued back luck. Just as we were to board my camera died. Just woundn’t turn on, not even with a battery that worked in Wendy’s camera. Bummer! I managed.…

So, we’re finally on the water in Sardinia. We started at 16 o’clock and paddled for two hours. We’re still quite close to Cagliari, but we’ve started and it feels almost like an achievement after all the problems we’ve had in the last weeks. We’re camping on a small beach just besides Cagliari Yacht Club.

Wendy Killoran and René Seindal will circumnavigate the Italian islands of Sardinia and Sicily in the autumn of 2007. Canadian school teacher Wendy Killoran, who has circumnavigated the Canadian islands of Manitoulin Island, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland, will join paddler René Seindal who speaks Italian fluently and is an avid sea kayaker, historian and…