It´s allmost 20 years ago, that I first visited that island west of the italian mainland. At that time Porto Pollo (ital. for chicken harbour) was one of the top windsurf spots, famous for its high wind statistics. In December 1986 we entered the ferry in Genua to visit the island and windsurf that mythic spot, discovered by the even more mythical Robby Naish a couple of years ago.

The ferry was fully loaded with people in the mission to spend new year and three kings holidays on the island. We booked the “poltrones” class, which meant that we had to spend the nightly crossing in a room full of chairs and full of people. To our surprise we found out, that the ferry would pass Corsica at the east which meant three additional hours of crossing. Heavy seas caused by a massive storm where the reason the captain choose to extend the working hours of the crew.

And indeed, after a while it got a bit rocky and passengers started to sacrify Neptun by throwing overboard their dinner in the hope to soothe the raging god and make him spare their lives. We didn´t sleep much in those poltrone chairs. Instead we tried to sleep on those wooden banks at the outside deck but without sleeping bags - we had left them in the van - this was not too comfortable. Still much better than inside though.....

Anyhow, we reached Porto Torres without any significant losses and for a while were happy to feel firm land again.

But as the road to the northeast followed the coast for a while, we felt the need to return to the sea again, as the wind was still blowing hard and some decent waves were pushing in. After a long drive along that very curvy country road we finally reached the area where Porto Pollo was situated. Beeing not an official name for the place at these times, there was no signpost for the “chicken harbour” but after a while we found it and were in the water at no time. What we didn´t know at that time was, that we would have force 8 winds almost every day of the following two weeks. So there was no real need to hurry.

In the days to come we were pushing our custom made windsurf boards - state of the art in the eighties - and the self cut storm sails to their limits. Bumpy conditons at the windward bay and flatwater at the leeward bay were the options to choose from. We didn´t bother too much about the cold and the not really warm wetsuits and were in windsurfers heaven while the seafaring folks had a hard time surviving in the tormented seas around.

During our stay on ship sank in the street of Bonifacio and another one that had seaked shelter in on of our windsurfing bays barely avoided getting blown onto the beach as its anchor broke.

On a side trip to Capo Testa we got more impressions of the power of the med.

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