Another Beautiful Day in Rondinara

Part way through the previous day we were discussing our exit plans from Sardinia. As you might expect the 200 miles or so to Sicily are weather dependent so we wanted to make sure that we are well positioned. Given any unforeseen weather patterns, it looks like we'll be leaving for Sicily on Friday morning -- with a planned arrival on Saturday early afternoon. Using the old Air Force saying "the only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire" as a guideline, we're not afraid to power 24 hours to get us somewhere we want to go, so our arrival times are fairly predictable. We carry about 500 liters of fuel and use about 5 liters per hour at 7 knots of cruising speed ... so we can go about 100 hours under power or about 700 miles between fill ups. In Europe where Diesel fuel is $2.25 a liter that's a good thing, because $1000 fill ups for sailboats is a little over the top.



Matt and Marina checking the anchor.

Wait a minute -- get back on track -- this is about Rondinera ... not the upcoming trip to Sicily .... so, as mentioned in an earlier post, we loved Rondinara and we came back to it on Monday night expecting it to be empty and it was jammed full to the rafters. 

Back to Rondinara...we should celebrate...
but actually...any excuse will do.

 Our previous visit the week before had the water quite cold but this time it was much warmer -- around 24 degrees C or 77 on the Fahrenheit scale.


Chelsea and Ross on dinner duty.

 We had a fitful night at anchor only 30-50 feet away from our neighbours. Our Navigator's plan was to head to Porto Cervo on Sicily to get down towards our jumping off-point for Sicily at Arbatax. She reckoned that two 25 milers followed by a 50 would be better than back-to-back 50 mile days. Some of us argued that we can get up early and head to Sardinia, an that a couple of 50 mile days were OK as long as we had some time to play around at Rondinara -- so we stayed another day.


Ross and Hayden discussing...hmmmm...
probably something about Rome Total War.  

  Matt was on a mission to install the new anchor/running lights at the top of the mast and spent about 2 hours up there splicing wires, drilling new holes and installing the light in fairly difficult conditions. Meanwhile the kids were swimming, jumping and diving around the boat.


The beach restaurant at Rondinara was excellent!

At around 6 we all hopped into the dinghy and went ashore to the restaurant and had really great appetizers and drinks .... beef carpaccio, baked chevre, and calimari cevice style -- some of the best food we'd had since we have arrived in Europe.
We piled back into the dinghy -- headed back to the boat where we turned on the generator and let everyone get their technology fix. Matt finished the installation of the new running lights and went out in the dinghy to see how they worked -- awesome -- brighter, more visible, and they use less that 1/10th the power of the old ones. Only took 2 full days, multiple cuts and routing some new wires to complete -- oof.


Matt up the mast for over an hour
working on our running lights.

Jessie prepared a beautiful dinner of a warm chicken salad with gnocchi as the starch dish. Then dishes, an aperitif and off to bed ... repeat tomorrow.

Sunset