To Porto Cervo, 13 May 2023

The plan was to head south as far as possible today. We departed early, under the rain, as expected. Initially, we had a good back wind pushing us at 7 knots. However, as soon as we passed the Cap Ferro, at the north-east of Sardegna, it started raining like cats and dogs, the wind dropped and started veering in all directions before stabilising right in our nose. We decided to take shelter in the closest marina available, which happened to be Porto Cervo. The resident population is around 420 inhabitants, but it has a particularity: "Porto Cervo has been named one of the most expensive resorts in the world, along as being a luxury yacht magnet and billionaires' playground" as stated on Wikipedia

The Yatch Club Marina of Porto Cervo

So, let's have a look...

To Isola Bureli, 9-12 May 2023

I finished the previous post with the forecast for the area with gusts of up to 40 knots. This very windy weather lasted for 3 days and forced us to stay in the port of La Maddalena. La Maddalena is the capital of the island of La Maddalena, one of the seven islands in the La Maddalena archipelago.

The harbour of La Malladena, very decent a relatively cheap (35€ per night in May for Belisama, 100€ in July)

But being stranded in La Maddalena was not painful, because the town has a lot to offer...

To La Maddalena, 7-8 May 2023

From Propriano we had planned to make a stopover on the way to Bonifacio. However, after a very sunny first week with calm winds, the forecast for the next few days was stormy. We decided to sail through the Strait of Bonifacio on the 7th of May to find a good shelter for the coming stormy days without delaying our journey to the south...

But things turned out quite differently. The wind came much stronger than the forecast, from the east, forcing us to tack against the current and the waves in winds of around 25 knots. As we were not progressing as expected and would not reach Sardegna before nightfall, we decided to anchor in a sheltered bay on the way to Bonifacio. We found good shelter, soon joined by two other boats, in a small Corsican paradise, the bay of Arbitru.

To Propriano, 5-7 May 2023

We left the anchorage at the Sanguinaires Islands with some difficulty to head for Ajaccio, where we had to fill up our fuel tanks after crossing from Toulon almost entirely on engine power. We had to use the engine again as there was no wind.

Anchorage on "Les Sanguinaires"

To Ajaccio, 3-5 May

Everything was ready for the 10am departure on 3 May. Almost everything, in fact, as I discovered at the last minute that the batteries for the bow thruster were dead! It took 6 hours to get a new set and we finally got underway at 18:00. After an uneventful night, we saw the Corsican coast line just before dawn.

By then, the wind had disappeared and we started the engine. This is when the problems started...

What influences the tides in Croatia? - 14 April 2023

Skip if you are allergic to mathematics :-)

In the previous post, I presented the tide chart for Rovinj for the 17 days starting from 17 April as shown on previous post.

 

In an attempt to better understand the interactions that result in such an interesting mixed tidal pattern (semi-diurnal and diurnal periods alternating), I digitized the 17 day series in Excel so as to study it further...

Digitised tide level forecast in Rovinj, 17 days from 17 April 2023

So what factors were found to contribute to the pattern?

Tides and currents in the Adriatic sea - 9 April 2023

Continuing our preparation for sailing in the Adriatic, let's look at the tides and currents there.

In my sailing experience, the tides can be summarised as either huge amplitude in the Atlantic and the English Channel, particularly around the Bay of Mont Saint-Michel where the tidal amplitude can reach 12 metres, or no tide at all in the Baltic due to the very shallow and narrow opening to the northern sea!

What about the Adriatic?

Below is the tide chart for Rovinj (near Pula) for the next 17 days.

Tide-forecast.com

Anything unfamiliar? Let's have a look!