René’s old blog

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 ride.

From Capo Morescoe we crossed north towards Piccolo Romanizzo, passing Isola Moratio on the way. We had a very brief stop there, but there was no bar and no reason to linger.

The next stop on our path was Porto Cervo. We had been told on many occasions that there was a fantastic marina there with everything we could possibly need. We had another very choppy ride up to and into Porto Cervo. We landed on a beach just besides the marina, which was full of some very expensive looking boats. We packed up everything we needed for a good and sorely need shower and some laundry, hopefully topped by some delicious food and good coffee.

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 raining, another cappuccino passed our way, and at around 11 the rain almost stopped, the thunder ceased and we went paddling.

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 coastal area of the natural reserve is very mountainous, with tall steep rock walls dropping hundreds of meters into the sea, sloping hill sides and rock gardens, all battered continuously by the waves of a constant NE wind, the Grecale. Scattered throughout all this is a myriad of little inaccessible beaches, caves and deep coves.

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 the middle of the Cala de Murtas the wind changed suddenly from S to W, probably funneled by the mountains. We then had swells from SE and waves from W which was new to me. It caused some interesting wave patterns. Just as we came across the bay for a cherished break, the wind turned to N and the rest of the day was double work at half speed.

We didn’t get as far as we wanted before it got close to sunset and we had to search for a landing spot. We ended up in Melisenda, some 30 km south of Arbatax.

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” 🙂

There’s quite a bit of surf on the beaches here so landing and launching is a bit tricky, but we usually do manage to find good spots.

Yesterday was a quiet paddle from Cala Pira. We had wind and waves in our favour, so we could enjoy the coastline and the sea.

Our plan for today is to get about half-ways to Arbatax, if possible to Marina di Gairo.

Our campsite:

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. to fix it later, though. It was a bad contact in the battery compartment.

In the evening we put Wendy’s Internet Tablet to charge and we both fell asleep. I woke up around 1.30 and the tablet was gone. Stolen, probably. Knowing I wouldn’t get any sleep anyway, I set out to find it. I looked for the reception where two men were chatting, and as I explained the problem, one of them just said: “I took that. It was just left there.” He took it out and wanted an explanation of what it is. Time passed but we got Wendy’s tablet back.

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.