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Pretty tired from the nightly ferry crossing we headed east in the quest to reach Porto Pollo as soon as possible. The wind had gone down and when we passed Castelsardo we noticed a pretty solid swell with very little wind. It looked good but we both didn´t surf at the time and so we watched it, thinking to observe an extremely rare occasion of surfable swell on the island.
This was our first trip in plain winter. And this meant for the first time we had to deal with temperatures below 10 degree while living in the van. The van had a heating, so at least inside this was easy to handle. More difficult was the task of dealing with the short days. It got dark at about 5 in the afternoon. The campgrounds and holiday villages in the area were closed. And so were the bars and restaurants that during summer offer a wide variety of options to go out. Even in Palau, the nearest larger town everything was closed. All that meant very long evenings in the very limited space inside the van. Good thing we were young and our love was fresh and we managed to handle the long dark hours pretty well.
A few days after our arrival we heard that a ship sank in the street of Bonifacio while we had that rough ferry ride. And the Mistral did not really back off. During our 10 days stay we only had two days without wind. The rest of the time it was hauling with minimum force 7, often up to force 8 with the occasional period of flying water. One day a small ship was seeking shelter in the bay west of the Isola de Gabbiani. This bay only has an entrance facing northeast so all the swell from the west is blocked off. But the pull of the wind was still strong enough to break the ships anchor. It barely avoided being stranded on our peninsula
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