Well we made our way up to Alghero without further interventions by the authorities. The authorities did not leave us completely, however, but about that later.

Next stop after the Gulf of Ositano was Bosa, conveniently placed an easy sail North from the Gulf. The town has a marina which for the draft of Kincsem would be risky to approach so we anchored out, protected by a breakwater. Suddenly, summer had arrived and Italians were out everywhere, on the rocks around the little "outside harbor" we were in, on little motor boats with yellow umbrellas, swimming everywhere. We were swimming, too. But our mission was to discover the town, about a mile up river. Yes, a river. So we got in the "dingy", as Siegi is fond of calling it (to the protestations of Barbara), and motored up a real river - in dry Sardinia. If you don't know, every Italian has a little motor boat. And they must be moored somewhere. So you go up a river for one mile, and there's a little motor boat tied up stern-to every 10 meters. Amazing. The town was delightful as well although the restaurant I chose was not. Well, we got some food, some vino rosso and the trip back to the boat was not a problem!

Alghero was next. Nice place, nice "marina" with Frederico but again very touristic. We're so spoiled ....

Some impressions of Alghero.

Chiesa San Michelle

On the board walk with cannons and rock throwers

Abogato - vanilla ice cream with espresso!

There is red coral for sale everywhere

So now came the big question. When would we depart for Barcelona, almost 300 miles due West from Alghero. For those of you who don't know about weather: winds in the Western Med blow mostly from the West and sailboats don't go against the wind. So we needed to find a weather "window" that would permit us to sail - Easterly winds would be great! As the weather gods would have it, we had 2 days to spare to spend in the National Park of Porto Conte, just West of Alghero. But first we needed to check out of the Beautiful Country and return my Constituto - so off I schlepp to the Guardia Costiera to find out whether I could check out and still spend 2 days in Porto Conte, albeit at anchor. In the morning, the duty officers tell me, you have to come back when the Big Boss is here, this is too difficult a question for us to answer. He's here only from 3 to 4 in the afternoon. So we time the sightseeing (ok, some lunch) activities to get me back to the GC building by 3 - alas, there's already a line of others waiting for wisdom. When it's my turn to talk to the Big Boss, he's already stamped numerous documents, scribbled here and there, but he's cheerful, relatively speaking. Hearing about my predicament, he launches into loud criticism of his underlings for missing the obvious solution: go to Porto Conte and check out of the Beautiful Country right at the GC station there. It's a small station, but it will work. Great, some stamps and scribbles later, I'm released to Porte Conte, off I go to the boat. Checking out with Frederico, the marina manager, I tell him the story about my audience with the Big Boss. He laughs and pronounces: "I don't know how to say this in English but the Big Boss isn't every smart. There is no Coast Guard station at Porto Conte. You just leave!"

You guessed it: that's what happened. We found a great grocery store where they offered us coffee and cookies after checkout. We found a nice anchorage and a mooring buoy without payment problems. We found great swimming and beautiful scenery. But no GC station to be found! The harbor captain explained: "This a private harbor, there's no GC station here." So we just left Italy without saying goodbye to our friends at the CG. Well, Kincsem won't be back for a while so when we ever return, the papers will be lost. And no, I won't be sending in a reply brief to the citation we received from the Guardia Finazera or payment for the E334 fine. Basta!

Barbara and Siegi, who grew up in East Germany,s think this is Lenin's last resting place - in Porto Conte ....

It was more than a bit challenging to get to Barcelona. Siegi and Barbara were good sports but we had to leave into the tail end of a low blasting up North between Mallorca and Sardinia and get to Barcelona before a Mistral set in from the North. Well, we missed the latter part by a couple of hours but Kincsem doesn't mind roughing it a little! We also had another episode of the two top batteries overheating while we were under engine for a bit. This time, they did not cool down when we opened the battery compartment and we had to disconnect them. The good news is that Amel, after many weeks of trying, finally diagnosed the issue correctly: the regulator for the 24V alternator on the engine was defective and kept charging the batteries at a good clip when they were full. I've ordered a new one and hope that this is the end of those problems.

We're off to Barcelona

First sights of Barcelona shortly before sunrise

Waiting for the bridge across the harbor to open; the RCMB, where we are moored, is right behind the bridge on the right

And for those of you who know what I'm talking about a little technical info: The GFS grib model and Expedition routing software were great for weather routing. Eerie how well the model would predict every shift, every change in wind speed, several days out. These things have come a long way. I compared it to the German, the European and the French model and GFS was clearly the best. Until next time, of course.