Weather is fickle, and the 15 to 20 knot breeze never eventuated. It was 8 to 12 knots but with the sea swells making it lumpy, boat speed was slower than hoped. It was a gorgeous day though and we saw 3 turtles, and dodged a few tankers.
Once we were 65 nautical miles off shore, we decided to deploy the fishing gear to give us something to do. It wasn’t even half an hour before we heard the sound of the line clicker and just like that, we had caught our first fish from the Catamaran! Todd reeled it in, and as it got close to the swim step we could see it was a nice Tuna. I was able to lift it onto the boat (easier than hauling it over the high side of our old mono hull!), and then Todd covered the head to calm it before dispatching it. The new fish cleaning station worked out very well and Todd soon had the fillets ready for the freezer.
The moon was up before the sunset, and the wind fizzled so we motor sailed through the night. Mars (very red), Venus, Neptune and Pluto were easily visible, and when the moon set at 330 am, the sky was thick with stars. With the sunrise I could see all the pink and orange clouds which typically indicate land, and we were 40 miles off of Sardinia. Shipping traffic also increased and we had to make a few course changes to avoid cutting it too close. The breeze filled in again at day break so we unfurled the code zero and enjoyed a comfortable sail the rest of the way to the anchorage we had chosen. (It was located on the South Eastern end of Isola di S Pietro and didn’t seem to have a name, but looked to have good Northerly protection and be big enough to hold a few boats if everyone else showed up). We dropped anchor at 3.50 pm and were in the water by 4 pm, cooling down and washing off the travel of the past 2 days. Again, it was unbelievably clear, and just floating on the surface we could see the anchor clearly 25 feet below. It was a wide 2 lobed bay, with a scattering of whitewashed homes with terracotta roof tiles and covered patio’s, The beach was half sand and half rock, and it was shallow pretty far out, judging by people walking waist deep 200 meters from shore. There were a few stone ruins about, and a well-preserved stone tower to our right. It really is fantastic having all these different views to enjoy in all the places we go!
We did a tidy up and then had a pick-up dinner in the cockpit with a victory beer. Most of the boats that were there when we arrived, left, which made us slightly nervous. (What did they know about the weather that we didn’t?). We checked Predict Wind again and didn’t see anything to be concerned about, which was good because we were fast asleep by 8 pm. This pattern of boats leaving continued the next day, and we figured they were just having a day off mid-week but returning to their slip at night. We had a nice lazy recovery day, taking care of some small boat jobs and looking into the water maker to ascertain model numbers etc for ordering membranes and possibly a pump. (There was nothing obvious printed on the unit and we had been having a hard time getting information about it from the factory. Well we had been given a boat manual briefly, off another boat at the end of the first season, but it wasn’t aboard when we returned at the beginning of the second, and hopefully it was back on the original boat). There was still an issue with charging, and the alternators wouldn’t throw enough charge at the battery bank to keep us topped up for a day. At least we were understanding the problem better though, and the solar system was doing a good job the days we were at anchor.
