Eviction! Anchoring banned at Porto Cervo
17 July 2010
At Porto Cervo, the pilot books (even new ones) show a decent anchoring field on the north side of the calanque. This is now taken up with buoys, leaving a small area at the western end where you can anchor, taking care of shoal patches.
We found our friend Marina there, and maximised space by anchoring next to her and rafting our boats together. We had a quiet night and in the morning wandered ashore. This picture is taken from the inner end of the harbour and you can see Roaring Girl, with Lila on the far side.
Porto Cervo was built by the consortium founded by the Aga Khan in the late '50's to develop this coast for very high-end tourism. Strangely, despite the quality of this harbour, there seems to have been very little here before. The town is therefore a sort of picture-plate idea of a fishing village, with quaint corners and exposed brickwork amongst artfully faded plaster walls and manicured shrubbery. The boats in the marina are astonishing in their size and variety. Many are very serious motor cruisers, but the PC yacht club is also a keen racing base so you see a lot of fast sailing boats too.
We had some expensive ice-cream and didn't see anyone rich and famous. We didn't fill jerry-cans, make our needed trip to the supermarket or dispose of our recycling. We planned all that for later. We rowed back to the boats, us in Bridgit, and Marina with her dog Ross in her dinghy, commenting that it was great that so many disparate water craft shared this small area, apparently in harmony.
About 1530 we were on Roaring Girl, while Marina filled a jerry-can ashore. A port boat went over to the smart French motor yacht anchored nearby, and a long conversation ensued. We thought the French might be being told they were too close to the bouys, and prepared ourselves to be told we were too close to one of them, now the wind was in the north-west.
Oh no! Up zooms the launch, with one very stiff and angry young man in a white polo-shirt and a more laid back individual in a red one. Who's your commander? white-shirt barks, in Italian. Sarah (lacking authority in her swimming costume) identifies herself, adding she doesn't speak Italian, but French and English. This doesn't stop white-shirt backing at her in Italian while red-shirt translates into French.
We're being kicked out of the anchorage, with immediate effect. Why? Because he's the police, the authority here and he says so. Since when? Now. White-shirt gets very agitated at being questioned and starts demanding our papers. We refuse to get them, saying we're not giving anyone our papers, though he can see them. If he takes our boat registration, we are hostages till they are released, at whatever rate the port chooses to impose. Red-shirt is amazed at our resistance, insisting that this is the authority here and we must do as he says.
We point out that the captain of the boat to which we are rafted is not aboard, so we can't leave. This makes them even crosser, and they shout that we must leave in ten minutes. Not more. We start making obvious, though slow preparations and they zoom off to the next boat. Clearly, this is clean up the anchorage time and kick-out the riff-raff.
We put everything away safely, washed up the lunch dishes and got sorted. It took about another 20 minutes just to get both anchors up; our chain was on top of Lila's, so we dropped extra chain and then motored forward slowly, allowing us to swing round her bows and into clear water on the other side of her.
As we did so, our racing friends from yesterday came in, and their skipper, on realising who we were, doffed his hat to us - for sheer persistence we suspect! It was sad to be going as they turned out to be British and we would have liked a chat!
We moved around to Golfo Pero, the large bay just south of Porto Cervo, where we anchored. This was Marina's first time anchoring Lila totally single-handed, and we were ready to be a pontoon, if she needed us. But she did it like a pro. Overnight (this is written on Sunday morning, 18th) the northwesterly blew strongly and we put out 45m of chain for our 7.9m anchoring spot. But we have stayed very solidly where we want to be (as has Lila), and now we're staying here while this blows out (so long as it doesn't swing north) and hope to see a little less wind to get towards Olbia tomorrow. There we can find a sheltered anchorage for Lila where Marina can wait for her friend to join her, and we will keep on down the east coast.
Either way, Costa Smeralda has lost any attractions for us! Pip now calls this Costa Smell-da, and puts a big finger up to the port police and fat cats in fat boats - they don't follow even decent seamanship as they kicked 5 smallish yachts out into this unpleasant weather. (No mention was made of taking a mooring buoy!) Everywhere else we've met lovely Italian folks, and we hope the books which say Costa Smeralda is a fiefdom apart will prove to be true.