Alghero and the North West Tip of Sardinia

by Chantal & David · Published September 10, 2023 · Updated January 5, 2024

On the 20th August, we left Bosa, passing the Torre de Bosa with its surrounding white beaches as we left the port, and motored due to a complete lack of wind, for 21 NM’s to Alghero.

The Approach to Alghero

Anchoring off wasn’t really an option for us because strong winds were coming, and we really needed to try to get to the bottom of our battery issue, so we grabbed a space on one of the outer “marinas”, well 1 of 2 pontoons that made up this marina, run by a very charismatic old Italian called Frederico who was very helpful. It was a bit of a walk around the harbour, through the fun fair and touristy bars to get to the Old Town, but we needed the exercise and the quietness at night!

Having arranged for an electrician to come and see us in the morning, we walked up into the old Town to soak up the early evening atmosphere and work out where to eat the following night, to book a table! It was so charming, we ended up staying, partaking in just a liquid supper, before heading back to Seaclusion.

Alghero Old Town

Alghero’s historic center is one of the most interesting and fascinating of Sardinia with the four centuries of Spanish domination (Catalan-Aragonese) still persisting in its culture, architecture and spoken language, Inside its impressive city walls, the refined historic buildings, the old churches – along with the small restaurants, shops and the many bars make it a very vibrant place to be.

The following morning, I (Chantal) wandered off back into town in search of a Chandlers for some parts we needed for the boat, camera in hand, whilst David waited on board for the electrician. No luck at the chandlers, but never no luck with my camera…

Whilst walking in the streets of the old town, I couldn’t help but notice that many shops were selling coral jewellery. According to my research on the internet, the area around Alghero is known as the “Coral Riviera”. based on the corals from the underwater caves around this town. Apparently they have been famous for their beautiful colour and hardness since ancient times and used to be called “Blood of Medusa”, first appearing in documents as far back as 700 AD.

Even now they are precious, not only due to over-harvesting but also because changes in water temperature and the increase in pollution affect the health of the coral colonies. For the coral to survive and grow, the salt concentration in the sea is very important; it has to stay between 28 – 40% apparently, which means that in the future the scarcity of Sardinian coral will increase as well as the price. Even now, the price is shockingly high, so window shopping was all I did 🥴.

I finally got back to the boat, camera card full, but otherwise empty handed to find the electrician still there, with no proper answers… except he thought our bow thruster battery was drawing continually from our new service batteries and told us to simply turn the relay switch off when we didn’t need it, and that should fix the issue. 🤞 he was right!

So our next job was some provisioning and laundry, we then walked back into town, again, boy did my feet wish we had chosen a marina closer to the old town, for supper, and the infamous Porceddu, a simple yet a complex recipe made from roasted suckling piglet. This traditional dish of Sardinian cuisine is based on very simple ingredients where the body of piglet is cleaned and stuffed with meat, rosemary, herbs, fennel and others. Later, they are roasted conventionally over juniper or myrtle wood to produce a soft, moist and tangy boneless pork roast. Scrummy but not too dissimilar to the Spanish suckling pig we love!

Finally ready to move on, we set sail on the 22nd August further up the coast, with some stunning scenery…

… stopping at a tiny bay called Porto Ferro, squeezing in to get the best shelter, a little close to other boats for our liking, or so we thought until we were joined by 3 other yachts. Happily no incidents to report through the night.

The next day we set sail for the almost northern tip of Sardinia, the island and national park of Asinara in a healthy NW3. 25 miles later we had the nerve wracking experience of motoring, (far too scary to sail it), between Sardinia and Asinara, in a very narrow and extremely shallow pass, taking a transit between 2 points before making a right angle turn and following another 2 transit points, at times with nothing more than 1/2 meter under our keel. Why you might ask, well if we didn’t, it was another 20NM’s to go around the top and come back down, 20NM seems nothing, but for us that is like another 4 hours! We did cheat a bit to hang back to follow 2 yachts going through ahead of us, hoping of course they knew where they were going!

And then we were through to the most beautifully clear and turquoise waters we have seen, where we dropped anchor for 2 nights, chilling, paddleboarding, feeding the fish and watching the sunsets!

The only challenge was taking the dinghy into the local port to clear out from Italy, no mean feet when it was about 2 miles and the engine kept cutting out on us! Perhaps we should have taken Seaclusion instead, hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Sadly all fabulous things have to come to an end, and watching the forecasts, we knew we had to start moving northwards…

So on the 25th, we headed to the tip of Asinara, stopping in another beautiful bay called Cala del Bianco, with nothing but the sound of donkeys around us, and braving the dinghy to go ashore again, oh so we wish we hadn’t!…