Carloforte and Marina Sifredi

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From the blog:

Return to Sardinia

View of Sabbatical III tied to the seawall in Carloforte

At the end of April we returned to Sabbatical III berthed safely in the Marine Sifredi in Carloforte. Â Our 250 pounds of baggage also made the journey safely. Â We have been busy getting the boat ready for another sailing season. Â The first order of business was a trip to the Sardinian capital of Cagliari to meet with the Immigration Police (Questura) to finalize our application for a visa renewal. Â We had received a registered letter with a list of all of the documentation that we were required to bring, and we made sure that we had it all in quadruplicate. Â Things seemed to go well until the Immigration official asked for another document that we had never heard of. Â We showed him our letter with the list of documents and he said that there was a new document required and we had ten days to get it. Â Turns out it is not so easy to get this document when one lives on a boat and not in a house or flat. Â After a few days of trying to work this out, we came to believe that we would not get our visa renewed. Â We then had a friend make some phone calls to explain our situation and our prospects now look reasonably good but not certain. Â But we cannot make plans until this gets resolved.

When the mistral did not blow too hard, we walked to the end of the seawall to watch the ferry come and go.

The second major task is to get Sabbatical III hauled out and have anti-fouling paint applied to her hull, plus perform some maintenance to the bottom of the boat. Â The small boatyard associated with the marina is well behind schedule hauling and painting boats, in part due to the high frequency of days with mistral winds. Â The mistral isÂ a strong, cold, northwesterly wind that blows from southern France into the northern Mediterranean and on to Sardinia, with sustained winds often exceeding 66 km/h (41 mph), sometimes reaching 185 km/h (115 mph). Â It is most common in the winter and spring, and strongest in the transition between the two seasons.

The Delcomar ferry from Portovesme, Sardinia makes its way to Carloforte

Navigational aid at the end of the seawall, Carloforte

Sabbatical III tied to the seawall with her newly purchased anchor chain waiting to be installed (Thanks Francesco!)

Marine Sifredi with the fishing harbor in the background on the other side of the seawall

Looking down the length of the starboard seawall towards Marine Sifredi and the town of Carloforte

The second major task is

Itâ€™s been four weeks now since we left Carloforte, Sardinia. We are currently at â€œBase Nautica Flavio Gioiaâ€, a lovely little marina in the small city of Gaeta on the west coast of mainland Italy, about halfway between Rome and Naples. The town is quite a bit bigger than Carloforte, roughly 20,000 residents as opposed to Carloforteâ€™s 5,000, but it is still small and charming and we are enjoying it so much that we have delayed our departure.

We left Carloforte on June 3 to anchor at the southern end of Isola San Pietro, the island where Carloforte is located. The next day (June 4) we sailed east along the southern part of Sardinia, and met up with our sailing friends Hajo and Julia from S/V Serafine, another Amel Super Maramu, in Porto Pino, one of our favorite anchorages in Sardinia. Porto Pino is great, but can be very uncomfortable if there is any swell coming from the south or southeast. After we arrived we had enough time there to enjoy a beautiful walk along the white sand beach with our friends, and to have dinner at a great seafood restaurant that we had enjoyed many times in the previous year, the Blue Marlin. Unfortunately, on our second night there, a very strong swell came into the anchorage just after sunset and after rocking and rolling uncomfortably at anchor all night, we decided we had to move on.

Mark closely watches the weather forecasts and he could see that a big easterly was brewing for the coming weekend, and the anchorages in Ponza are totally unprotected from that direction. On Friday, June 16th we left Ponza and sailed to Gaeta (about 35 nm). Since there are no anchorages with protection from the east in this part of Italy, we thought it would be better to be at a marina. Plus we needed to get a new halyard. That easterly turned out to be an unusually late and powerful winter storm and Sabbatical III came close to suffering serious damage even while berthed in a marina. More on that later.

Hauling out in Carloforte

Giuseppe Sifredi runs the crane at the Sifredi Boatyard

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In our last posting, we were still uncertain about our visa status in Italy because we had been asked for a new form proving that we are officially residents of Carloforte.Â As far as Carloforte is concerned, if you live on a boat in the marina you are not a â€œresident.â€ Â So it was impossible for us to provide the required form. That has all been resolved thanks to a friend who â€œknows a guyâ€ and made a telephone call on our behalf and explained our situation.Â After 3 weeks we received a message from the Questura (immigration police) asking us to return to Cagliari.Â There we were presented with cards granting us two years of elective residence in Italy.

Also, in our last blog posting, we had been waiting for Sabbatical III to get hauled and have her bottom painted.Â Our time finally arrived and on Thursday, May 25 we made our way to the Sifredi boatyard to get hauled.Â We knew exactly what was required of us for the haul because the week before we were on hand to watch Serafine, an identical boat to ours (an Amel Super Maramu) get hauled.Â There is very little water depth and room in the place of our haul.Â Giuseppe Sifredi had me steer a slow zig-zag course in the unmarked â€œchannelâ€ and turn sideways with a very strong dose of the bowthruster, with a dock at my stern and a power boat just a few feet off my bow.Â The depth sounder showed that we were touching bottom.Â The backstay of the main mast was slacked and the crane leaned over and Giuseppe and his assistants attached four large shackles to the chain plates of Sabbatical III.Â Boatyard workers held on with lines to keep the boat from swaying uncontrollably in the wind as Aldo Sifredi, Guiseppeâ€™s father, slowly lifted Sabbatical III out of the water with a 90 metric ton crane and then turned and squeezed her into a small space next to the work shed.

Squeezed in and touching bottom, Sabbatical III waits to be hauled

Giuseppe Sifredi and worker prepare the boat

Out of the water

Guiding her down

Marine growth

Prop is covered with growth

Laura and Julia (of Serafine) watch the action

The bottom was covered in marine growth as was the prop. Plus there was a gash in the keel from my unfortunate interaction with an underwater and unmarked rock off of Lavezzi Island, Corsica last fall. The boatyard workers went right to work scraping the bottom and then power washing. Laura and I were able to sleep on the boat which had great views towards both the straits separating Carloforte from Sardinia (looking forward) and the salt pond (saline) looking aft. There is also a nice bathroom with shower in the yard so we were reasonably comfortable.

View across the salt pond to the Sifredi Boatyard with its crane holding Sabbatical III

The next day they started painting the hull with the Joton Nonstop ablative paint that I had ordered. I had a worrisome repair task that I had just became aware of the week before. I had checked the rudder stock and quadrant as I always do every Spring but this time I found evidence that sea water was coming up the rudder packing into the aft section of the boat and had made the steel quadrant rusty. The quadrant turns the rudder in response to turning the wheel. The rudder compartment was dry when I looked but water must have been pushed up past the rudder packing while sailing in large seas in the previous season. Hajo (Hans Joachim) of Serafine came over to help and together we set to work on the rudder. We needed to get the quadrant off of the rudder but it was rusted in place. We were able to borrow a mechanical puller and even with generous applications of PBBlaster, it took a lot of force to finally get the quadrant off of the rudder post. After wire brushing and painting, it looks like new. Instead of replacing the packing, we just tightened the packing nut that compresses it. So far no more water has entered, even after we had an extremely rough sail 10 days ago. (More on that in a subsequent blog post).

The famous headless flamingos of CarloforteÂ

View across the salt pond to the town of Carloforte

Salt pond, Carloforte

Besides the usual maintenance tasks that need to be done when the boat is out of the water, we also needed to get our old washing machine off of the boat and the new one we had purchased (from Amazon Italy) on the boat. This is not that easy a task. Fortunately, once we were back in the water on Tuesday, May 30, the boatyard used their 90 metric ton crane to do the swap. When I went to install the new washer, I was a bit annoyed that it was a tiny bit wider and taller than the dimensions that were advertised. It has to fit into a beautiful teak cabinet and it was one-half inch too deep and one-half inch too tall. I broke off a plastic protrusion at the rear and cut a small slat inside the cabinet to deal with the extra width, and then reset the top lid of the teak cabinet so that it just fit.

What a difference a paint job makes. Â The boatyard did a great job.

New washing machine is lifted aboard

Our friends Hajo and Julia on Serafine were waiting five weeks for their new dinghy to arrive, and we were waiting for our bottom paint job and for some replacement items to arrive from SVB in Germany (a new liferaft, autopilot motor, and assorted other parts). One thing we could not get was propane for our stove. It was impossible to get our American gas bottles refilled. Italy is the first place where this has been an issue. I bought a little two-burner electric cooking top, but that is only good in a marina where there is shore power. We enjoyed walking around charming Carloforte and dining with Hajo and Julia numerous times. Serafineâ€™s dinghy and our liferaft and autopilot arrived on the same day, and two days later we both left Carloforte for the sailing season. They were heading for Corsica and we for mainland Italy. More on that in the next blog post.

Giuseppe Sifredi in front of the Sifredi Marina office

Left to right: Hajo (Serafine), Giuseppe, Julia (Serafine), Laura, Carmela (much loved marina office manager), Mark

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