After a lovely two nights tied to a mooring ball in a very protected location we decided it was time to move on south. Neither of us like staying in one place for an extended period of time, we use Curare as a platform to explore different cultures.
The wind was not perfect so we ended up motoring about 1/2 of the trip but that is usual when cruising in the Mediterranean, most boats motor more than they sail. Our destination was the tiny community of Masua, an old mining town, a distance of 34.1 Nautical miles which took us 6.5 hours.
As we sailed south we were enthralled by the geological landscape of the coast. LE was especially fascinated and, via the magic of the internet, discovered a geologic field trip guide book published in 2004. Reading this she learned that the rocks we were seeing are mainly Cambrian (500 million years ago) so she figured the information written in a guide book published 18 years ago was probably still OK. The first sentence in the guide book reads "In spite of it's relatively small surface area the island of Sardinia was one of the most important mining regions in Europe". We had no idea.
The first location we drifted past were the Piscinas Sand Dunes. These are a relatively recent feature, formed by wind in the Quaternary (2.6 million years ago to present). The dune complex covers an area of almost 20 square kilometers and locally reaches a height of 200 meters. Most of it is stabilized by a vegetative cover but the strip along the coast is a wide sand beach and, where close to a road, it is crowded with sun worshipers. LE kept looking with binoculars, it was an unexpected, spectacular view, so no photos were taken. The one included here is from the official Piscinas Dunes Facebook site - an aerial photo looking south.
Next we floated past beds of what looked like metasediments (sandstone, shales, quartzites...) overlain by a thick sequence of carbonates. It was all wonderfully deformed into fantastic shapes by the Caledonian and Hercynian orogenies ( 490 to 299 million years ago). All fascinating stuff to two geologist who were sailing past, but the best was yet to come.
We rounded the corner to Masua and a tall carbonate island reared up from the sea. This is Pan di Zucchero, an 
Italian National Monument. It rises 133 meters and all sides are sheer cliffs. Comprised of light grey limestone and yellowish dolomite it looks like a sugar loaf, hence it's name.
In the cliffs opposite the Sugarloaf we saw a strange opening, this was Porto Flavia, constructed in 1924. As stated in the guidebook Sardinia has had a long history of mining and one of the main production areas for galena (lead) and sphalerite (zinc) was in the southwest part. Each mine was not large, but combined they produced significant 
quantities of ore. However mining was only marginally economic as there were no nearby ports to load the ore onto ships. Finally in the early 1923 a Belgian company, which then managed the mine at Masua, decided to construct a loading facility in the cliffs close by. We could not imagine how this would work but LE found an historic black and white photo showing a ship loading at the Porto. It was a good idea and reduced the transport costs by 70%. The loading facility was finally closed in 1990 following the slow decline of Sardinia's mining industry.
We dropped our anchor in 4 meters onto a large patch of sand with a perfect view of the Sugarloaf to the west and the Masua mine tailing to the east. A geologist's dream anchorage.
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