Sardinia

Sardinia has more than 7,000 nuraghi standing on the island. They are bronze-age stone towers, built between roughly 1900 and 730 BC, and the original count was over 10,000 before two thousand years of agriculture took some of them down. Nothing else like them exists in the Mediterranean, and they give the inland a different feel from the coast: a sense that this island has been worked, fortified and lived on for a very long time.

The coast is the Sardinia most charters know. The Costa Smeralda was founded in 1962 by a consortium led by the Aga Khan IV, who bought about 1,800 hectares of north-east coastline, and Porto Cervo, the harbour town the consortium built from scratch, is still where the boats you would expect to see dock through August. North of the Costa, the La Maddalena Archipelago is a national park: 62 islands and islets, with Caprera and Spargi for the swims, and Budelli, where the pink-quartz beach is now closed to landings for conservation but where you can still anchor offshore. The eastern Orosei coast then has the calas, the small narrow coves only a yacht reaches: Cala Goloritzé, Cala Mariolu and Cala Luna, all approached only by boat.

The season runs May to October, with August the busiest stretch by some distance and June and September the quietest of the working months. The Bouches de Bonifacio, the strait between Sardinia and Corsica, is short and sheltered, which is why a Sardinia charter and a Corsica charter often combine into a single week. Most Sardinian charters pick up in Olbia or Porto Cervo, both on the north-east coast and within easy reach of the Costa Smeralda.