On a Mooring in Sardinia

We are now moored off Santa Maria, in the  - Maddalena archipelago in Sardinia. You read this right:

as an exception, we found ourselves moored to a mooring buoy, giving Excalibur a well deserved break. As we were moored in a nature reserve, using the buoys causes less damage to the sea-weed and the see critters below. Nonetheless, mooring buoys are worse than your own anchor. For starters, you don't know what is below, and whether some numnut decided to rub their propeller on the mooring line. This unknown is quickly sorted out with a snorkel. Secondly, if there is no wind, you drift against the mooring buoy. And we fell in the next category of reasons why not to like a mooring bouy: the mooring buoys are spaced with a certain size of boat out there, and if your boat is bigger, well tough luck, you will be bumping into other buoys, and / or boats.

We did need to pay for this location, but for the nature reserve is was worth it. For starters, when we went snorkeling, we actually saw fish. We saw some small flounders, schools of fish that shall forever be unnamed, but quite colorful, and best of all we unexpectedly saw coral. We did have to look very carefully for it, because it was close to the rocks and seaweed, but it was there. Also there were some sea-cucumbers. This was a stark constant with Greece, where we did snorkel, but most of the time, the only thing left to admire where the rocks. Perhaps if we left the Mediterranean alone for a few years¹, these hot spots of life would be the seed to repopulate the rest of the Med. And yes you, the fisherman fishing right at the back of the island: This is a nature reserve! Get away while you can, or we ask the SeaShepherds to sink your boat.

We also took out the kayak, and went for a hike on the island. This was less successful than the snorkel. When we got to the area with the reeds, these started to spear our toes and we had to turn around. The anchorage was stunning, and the rocky outcrops made for spectacular views.

1And with this I mean: No Fishing, spear fishing, netting, buoying, lobsterpotting or any other means of trapping and or taking sealife.