🙂 Sailing! Family! Food! Wine! Karma!
🙁 NEVER EVER use NSS – North Sardinia Sail – Skipper who could not park yacht and crashed into another boat / Rude Staff / Paid for Early Departure which never happened – in fact we left late! Absolute Dreadful company whose CEO does not care about customer care. At least Sailogy (who we had booked through) offered us a voucher equivalent to the early departure…but we have not put it to use so we are essentially still out of pocket. Deposit for boat was supposed to be credited immediately to our card but took over a month of correspondence before finally clearing!
Saturday 18 September 2021 – Sardinia / Corsica Sailing Trip
Our taxi arrived at 03h00 to transfer us to Gatwick North for our EasyJet flight at 06h30 to Sardinia which takes 2hrs30mins. On arrival we passed a guy with a sniffer dog and we commented how cute it was…the next minute it sat down and stared at Charlotte! They took her off for processing! After about 30mins we started to get worried … I went to check on her and the police had gone through absolutely everything and were insisting that they wanted to do an internal examination. I stepped in and asked specifically what it was that they were looking for – she had told them several times that she does not do drugs and started to look tearful… I think they took pity on her and released her back to us – quite a shock… we then saw the same dog sit at an old lady coming out of passport control – they stopped her and questioned for less than a minute and let her go …. maybe it was a dud dog?! We had to show our Covid vaccinations and headed outside where our taxi was waiting to transport us to the Vineyard where we had booked a wine tasting lunch. An eventful start!
We arrived at Tenute Olbios where we were greeted by a very friendly lady. We had the light lunch & tasted 3 delicious wines alongside our mixed platter, bruschetta and mini pork pie. The setting was beautiful & although the package we booked didn’t include going into the vineyard, we had beautiful views.
Our taxi then transferred us to Portisco where we were boarding our yacht. On arrival we went to check in with NSS – NorthSardinia Sales but they were not ready for us. We went to the bar and had a drink while we waited. The hostess then arrived and said she needed to go to the shop with Paul – I was furious as we had already agreed the full shopping list and this was an unnecessary waste of time…Paul basically followed around the supermarket for 10mins while she bought the stuff that I had already send on the list! Aaargh. He got back and we boarded the boat but there appeared to be no movement and we’d said we wanted to leave at 15h00. Paul found our Captain called Marcelo and said that we were were ready to leave. We waited and waited and finally at 18h00 we left, which as the original charter and we had paid EUR350 to leave at 15h00 – we were not happy but decided to pick this up at the end of the trip rather than waste negative energy at the start. We cracked open a bottle of Champagne to celebrate the start of our trip.
It was great to be on board and we chatted and enjoyed the sunset.
It is so magical …
Fantastic family time.
We had a fun dinner and an early night. The next morning was breakfast in a little cove where we relaxed on the lilos.
Lots of fun in the sun as we sailed towards Corsica.
That evening it was a game of X Factor – hilarious!
There was an incredible sunset – which I slept through and no one woke me… still pained by this today!
We moored up the next morning and had a meal on shore.
It was a bit cooler – we ate and drank some more and played cards.
The sunset was stunning so we had to pose for photos!
In the translucent seas of the La Maddalena archipelago, you’re in another world. It doesn’t feel like the Mediterranean here. It feels like a more rugged version of the Caribbean. Suspended between Sardinia and Corsica, this scatter of seven large islands and 55 tiny isolotti has some of the most spectacular beaches in Italy, and some of the cleanest and clearest water. We chilled and relaxed as this was our last full day at sea.
That evening we went for a lovely farewell dinner.
In the morning we did a little shop in the market before heading back to port.
When we got back to port Paul went to raise the issue of the early departure which actually resulted in a late departure – we were told that we would receive the EUR350 back. When I followed up on this and our deposit which had not been credited NSS simply refused to provide the credit and they became very hostile in their e-mail exchanges. We escalated to their CEO who supported them! Unbelievable – BIG Mistake – we have had three groups of families of 10 people who we recommended to sail in Croatia instead (which they did) – they had however specifically enquired about this Sardinia trip after seeing our pics on Facebook – so for the sake of a few hundred pounds they have lost tens of thousands of pounds – love a little bit of karma. 🙂
We bade farewell to Trent and Katie who stayed on board and had another day in port … we left to take our ferry for the remainder of our Italian trip. What a great start with quality family time.
Go to: Corsica
Go to: Italy Roadtrip
Go Back to: Italy
