My dreams of exploring the Gulf of Orosei were dashed by the weather – the combination of an easterly wind, an easterly swell, and no land protection would make this anchorage untenable, so we had to push on. Several miles south, I had Arbatax listed on the chart as having good protection from both swell and wind from the east/south, so we decided to rest there for the night. Unfortunately the winds shifted to the northeast and we were forced to drop anchor in the messiest chop (along with 12 other boats that read the weather wrong). Fortunately the weather lay down within a couple of hours and we got a decent rest that night. The reviews of Arbatax are not kind, but we decided to head ashore for the morning anyway.
We found the Coast Guard station right away and had them stamp our constituto. These papers, which are only required for non EU-flagged vessels, always seem to confound the authorities. We are supposed to get them stamped whenever we are in a harbor where there is a Coast Guard presence. However, we hadn’t had ours stamped in weeks. The islands didn’t have a Coast Guard, and towns that did usually had no office open. Luckily these officials didn’t think it strange that we hadn’t gotten a stamp recently and happily stamped it for us. Then they argued amongst themselves about whether or not the next port even had a Coast Guard. It was all done in a good natured way, so we weren’t too worried.
We walked along the red rocks that line the edges of the harbor, stopped at a supermarket stand to stock up on provisions, and treated ourselves to lunch at a local butcher/chop house. I savored a local Sardinian red wine along with a local Sardinian steak (that only cost $20!) and the creamiest roast potatoes. The reviews of Arbatax might not be generous, but we were thrilled with the small town and would definitely come back.
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