Isola Rossa

Our first night in Isola Rossa we spent on a hook. The entrance to Isola Rossa is between a big rock and the mainland. Our lack of a depth-sounder was beginning to wear on us ... but we went through s-l-o-w-l-y easily seeing the bottom ... the pucker factor was high.

We anchored kind of in the entrance to the harbour and went swimming. The water was crystal clear and quite warm.


The old-fashioned depth sounder (Marina throwing a weight down and pulling it up counting the approximate meters) showed about 7 meters of depth -- the kids dove the anchor and said it was in fine. The weather looked great so we went ashore. Marina and I spent an hour getting a new Vodaphone internet stick with 5 gigs of usage -- woo hoo -- we're in business again. We also arranged a car and a night at the marina to go pick up Chelsea at the airport. Later that night we went to the 'Spinnaker' bar and had Italian Pizza -- oh my goodness Italian Pizza -- wine, beer, isn't that the bomb.



OMG...the pizza was sooooo good!

 The next morning we moved the boat into the marina, filled up with water -- nearly 1000 litres as we were down to our last 1/4 tank, washed the boat, vacuumed for the first time and I tore the chart-table apart getting ready to install the new Chartplotter that Chelsea was bringing with her. Did I mention that I woke up the day we were leaving and decided that we needed the Garmin charts that I could download on the internet. I thought it would be a good idea to do it before I went -- but once I started the process it asked for the serial number of the device -- so I unpacked it, put it on the living room table, got the serial number and completed the download. As you might expect in my tired-ness I forgot to repack the chartplotter -- so when we got to France we had the RADAR, the depth-sounder transducer, the two new heads ... but no brain -- kind of like me at 2 in the morning in Vancouver.

Anyway, Chelsea was bringing it and we were sure looking forward to having a depth sounder .... oh yes ... Chelsea too. Her flight arrived at 18:30 and we got the rental car at around 11:00 -- a Fiat 500 that we nicknamed "Luigi".


Luigi getting fuel.

 At around 5pm Jessie and I set off to the Alghero airport -- 140 KMs away (Sardinia is a big island) and about 95 minutes according to the GPS. We went through the twisty bits as fast as little Luigi would go, then onto an Autostrade then to the airport arriving at 18:35 -- fortunately the flight was a bit late so Jess and I shared a piece of pizza and I had a beer. People started coming out ... we were very excited ... more people, then more, then more, then some unescorted kids, some nuns in a wheelchair ... we were getting worried that she wasn't on the flight (maybe she fell asleep in Rome and missed the flight) ... we were getting more and more concerned ... and then she came through the doors -- we burst out with "Chelsea!" and got a great big hug. She said how nice it was to have someone meet her at the airport -- and we were happy to see her.



Chelsea, Jess and Luigi



Jessie and Matt piled into Luigi and started back to Isola Rossa ... stopped along the way for gas (couldn't figure out how to buy it so we left) then stopped again (full service station -- not my problem .. hahahaha) and bought Chelsea a Heineken for her first beer in Italy.

The rest of the trip went pretty quick -- we had arranged to meet the fam at Spinnakers again so we drove up -- the girls hopped out & we had a great dinner of -- Italian Pizza. Marina, Ross and Jessie had the same meals they had the night before -- I made the big change -- pizza with sausage instead of ham .... thrill seeker I am.

We returned to Tara and got ready for our first day out at sea.

The pizza is amazing!