Alghero, Sardinia (Italy)

It had been a tiring passage, and we knew officials for the boat and passport wouldn’t be open till Monday, so we stayed in the anchorage north of the town. Saturday we had it all to ourselves, but the winds shifted on Sunday and we were inundated by day trippers on boats. After all that isolation, it was fun to have company again, which included Tim and Lisa, a Canadian couple on holiday who came by in a rented power boat. They invited us ashore to their hotel for drinks, but the dinghy outboard died, so we postponed those plans.

Monday we moved to the town anchorage. It was a 20 minute row into town (outboard still dead), but luckily Trip rows well and the dinghy is designed for it.

Sardinia is absolutely beautiful, but the bureaucracy is insane. Our trip to the Guardian Costiera was a comedy of errors. We talked to five people, whose job it is to clear in boaters like us, but seemed to not know what was going on. I had to ask three times for the ‘constituto’ (boat papers issued by local harbors when traveling in Italy) before it occurred to them to process the paperwork. They told us where the immigration offices were, but insisted they were not allowed to call to check the hours. Of course, we arrived an hour after those offices closed and they are only open 9-12 Mon/Wed/Fri, and we got there at 1pm Monday!

We were hungry and thirsty at this point, so we picked the first decently priced restaurant we could find, and what a pleasant surprise. Trip had a burrata cured ham tomato pizza, and I discovered culurgionis; a local Sardinian pasta where ravioli meets pierogi with a mashed potato and mint filling.

We ran errands for the rest of the afternoon, and then met up with Tim and Lisa for dinner. Sardinians are fiercely proud of their food and wine, and deservedly so. We sampled everything from local Prosecco, smoked fish, beer, wine (canannou grape), veggies, pasta, dessert, and mirto (a digestif). All of it scrumptious, even my overcooked steak in a blue cheese sauce.

Trip spent all day Tuesday fixing the outboard, but it works again! We went into town to drop off a propane tank for refill, get some groceries, and have a tapas dinner at a little corner restaurant. Wednesday was a lesson in frustration. The Coast Guard cleared us out easy enough, but it took a lot of convincing for Trip to get the Immigration officer to stamp our passports, as they insisted we didn’t need to because we were still in the Schengen zone (we want clear stamps indicating entry and exit – we’re counting our allowed days carefully!). Then we found out the propane tank couldn’t be filled, so it was lugging the empty back to the boat. Now it was afternoon, and we had a 38 nautical mile run north. The winds weren’t as cooperative as we would have liked, but we had a great sail tacking back and forth before we settled into a slog of a motorsail north. The passage into our anchorage was not the best to do at night, but the electronic charts brought us in smoothly and safely and we dropped anchor that night.