Summer Holidays: Sailing in the Med

We are lucky enough to have a very good friend who owns a beautiful yacht which he sails around the med. We have sailed with him in Croatia, Italy and Greece and this year he invited us and some other really good friends to sail from Sardinia to Menorca.

We had arranged some parking for the Beastlet in a parking facility near Milan Malpensa airport and we had flights booked to get to Cagliari in Sardinia from here.

The temperature in the Alps was absolutely lovely but Europe was still in the grip of a heatwave so we knew that the lowlands of Italy would be super hot and uncomfortable. With this in mind we spent our last night in France in the ski resort of Montgenevre, which is right on the Italian border.

Montgenevre was completely closed up with the exception of 1 bar and a small convenience store, the summer season having finished and the winter season being some distance off. France is often like this. In many areas activities are only open for July and August and then shut until the next year which we are finding somewhat bizarre as the weather is still lovely and there are plenty of tourists still knocking around, just less French holidaymakers.

Anyhow, Montgenevre was well placed for us to drive straight to Milan in about five hours, the only downside being that it was a Sunday and the road out of the Alps was thick with bikers enjoying the windy mountain roads, or at least trying to enjoy them until a big, slow motorhome slowed them up. Oops!

Once in Milan – well Malpensa which is actually quite a long way from Milan, we spent the night in the industrial estate where the parking is based to make it easy to drop the camper off early the next morning.

It all went smoothly despite the language barrier and we arrived in Cagliari to meet one of our friends. It was then an hour by taxi across Sardinia and a 30 minute ferry ride to arrive at the harbour where the boat was waiting in Carloforte, San Piedro Island. This is a small island off the west coast of Sardinia.

The boat is absolutely beautiful. It is a Hanse 575, which means its really big with a huge cockpit at the back and loads of room downstairs. It has four cabins including a big double bed in the owner’s suite and air conditioning which is a relief in the Mediterranean summers and a treat for us!  At the back there is a garage for storing the tender. It used to have a jetboat in the back but the British made Williams was so heavy and unreliable that it has been swapped for a small, more reliable RIB.

On arriving at the boat the owner, Matt, was already on board and everything was ready to set off for the 29 hour sail to Menorca. We cast off straight away and were off.

The weather was decent and we motor-sailed at around 7 knots most of the way.

In the night we did 2 hour watches, alternating in pairs with no dramas at all and by the morning were over half way there.

By the afternoon of the second day the wind picked up and we made good time, although it got a bit lumpy and stomach churning for us less experienced sailors.

Menorca Is low slung and we didn’t spy land until strangely late at less than 10 miles from the main town of Mahon but by sunset we were sailing into the harbour to our berth right in the town itself.

After a celebratory drink on board we headed out for a lovely tapas meal on the harbour and got a relatively early night.

From about 11am the next morning the rest of our holiday crew began to arrive, until there were 8 of us in total, 4 couples, which fits the boats four cabins perfectly.

As is often the case with these type of trips we had a welcome drink in the bar opposite the boat – Captain Haddocks ! One drink turned into a few, some tapas for lunch – including the, I am sure unique, cold mussels and ready salted crisps combo – and we didn’t leave the bar until dinner time when we jumped in cabs to the Cales Fonts area. This is a pretty little bay ringed with restaurants and a great place to go for dinner.

The next morning things got off to a slow start as we headed to the supermarket to provision the boat with food and a big pile of beer.

Stocked up, we got going and headed up the coast for 4 hours to the little resort town of Arenal, where a pretty sandy beach is sheltered in a rocky cove. We anchored up, went for a swim and then got ready for dinner out.

After heading to shore in the inflatable tender we went to the Arena beach club where a band called Rumba Pati were playing a crowd friendly mixture of hits.

Dinner was paella all round and really tasty.

The next morning after breakfast on the shore the crew headed off around the coast to the protected harbour of Fornells. Good thing it was protected as a pretty strong squall passed through for a couple of hours.

Fornells is a lovely town where we had an amazing meal. I had stuffed squid and some of the others had suckling pig. It was all excellent and we really enjoyed it.

The next day we headed back towards Mahon, stopping at Arenal Son Saura for beach bar drinks and swims in the beautiful bay.

We had a lovely sail back to Mahon and once in Mahon we went back to Cala Fonts for another really good meal and some drinks. There are some fantastic restaurants in Menorca.

One of us had to head home from here, but the airport is only a ten minute taxi ride away. Everyone was flying home the next day apart from three who were sailing the yacht back to Sardinia.

Sarah and I flew back to Milan from Mahon and jumped straight back in the Beastlet to drive back up into the cool of the mountains. After initially getting back at a very hot motorhome we were grateful to be back in the Briancon area of France for its cool nights.