5-Day La Maddalena Sailing Itinerary: Palau, Caprera, Spargi & Budelli

Before You Slip the Lines: the Permit, the Zones and the Bridge

Three things decide the shape of this cruise, and all three are easier to sort in Palau than to discover among the islands.

The permit. Every vessel entering the waters of the Parco Nazionale dell'Arcipelago di La Maddalena needs a park permit, bought online at lamaddalenapark.it before you sail. The fee scales with length overall and sailing yachts get a discount. Buy it on the dock in Palau: signal among the islands is patchy, the permit has to be produced on request, and the park is genuinely patrolled. The mooring buoy fee is separate and charged per night on top.

The zones. The park is divided into A, B and C, and the difference between them is the difference between a swim and a fine.

The rule that shapes every evening: night anchoring is prohibited throughout the park outside designated mooring buoys. Daytime anchoring is allowed in Zones B and C, but on clean sand only — Posidonia seagrass is protected across all Italian marine protected areas and the fines here are real. Our Mediterranean anchoring rules guide covers the wider Italian framework, and the overnight rules by country explains why buoy-only parks are becoming the Mediterranean norm.

The bridge. The Passo della Moneta, the channel between Isola Maddalena and Caprera, is crossed by a fixed causeway. It is not a through route for a masted yacht, and plenty of crews have planned a day around a passage that does not exist. Everything between the two islands goes round — south past Santo Stefano, or over the top of Caprera — which is exactly what Days 1 and 2 below do.

The weather rule is the Sardinian one. The Maestrale — the north-westerly that funnels between Corsica and Sardinia — accelerates through the Bocche di Bonifacio and can reach Force 7 to 9 with very little warning. It is also, usefully, predictable in direction: the south sides of Spargi, Santa Maria and Caprera are all good Maestrale shelter, which is why this route sleeps on them. The trap is the reverse case. A Scirocco or Libeccio with south in it turns every one of those bays into a lee shore, and the change usually arrives after the Maestrale dies at dusk.

Day 1: Palau → Cala Gavetta → Cala Portese (5 nm)

Almost every charter in these waters starts at Palau, and the first day is deliberately short — this is a provisioning and paperwork day dressed up as a sail. Buy the park permit, fill water and fuel, and do the big shop: the only other real supermarket on the route is in La Maddalena town and the outer islands have nothing at all. If you anchor rather than berth, use the roadstead east of the ferry pier on sand in 4–10 m (radius 90 m), well clear of the fairway — the ferries run every twenty minutes into the night and their wash is the reason people don't linger here.

Two miles north across the channel is Cala Gavetta, the harbour of La Maddalena town and the only high street in the archipelago. Take a berth for lunch, top up whatever Palau didn't have, and note the park authority office in town if you would rather sort the permit face to face. Then head east and south through the Passo degli Inglesi, round the bottom of Caprera's western lobe, and into Cala Portese for the first night on a park buoy — sheltered from the north and north-east, sandy-floored, and quiet once the day boats leave. On the buoy, set 40 m.

Day 2: Round Caprera to Spargi (15 nm)

The long day, and the one that pays for the short ones. Drop the buoy early and run south around Punta Rossa, then north up Caprera's wild east coast to Cala Coticcio — the twin-lobed cove of pink granite that everyone calls Tahiti, in water clear enough that you can pick your sand patch from the bow. It is Zone B: anchor on sand only, in 4–12 m, with a tight 70 m radius, because the granite is close on three sides and the cove takes a handful of boats at most. Be there before ten or after five; in between it belongs to the excursion fleet. Since land access now requires an authorised guide, arriving by sea is paradoxically the easy way in.

From Coticcio the route goes over the top of Caprera and west along Isola Maddalena's north coast — an exposed, handsome stretch with the granite of Corsica on the horizon — before turning down to Cala Corsara on the south side of Spargi. This is the archipelago's Maestrale bolthole: the island's granite ridge takes the whole north-west quadrant, the floor is sand, and the park maintains a buoy field. If a hard north-westerly is forecast for your week, plan the route so you can reach here. A Roman wreck was excavated just off this bay in the 1950s, which tells you how long crews have been using it for the same reason.

Day 3: Budelli, the Pink Beach and the Lagoon (5 nm)

A short day and the most beautiful one. Leave Corsara, run west around Spargi past Cala Granara, and head north to Budelli. Be completely clear about what happens here: Spiaggia Rosa and its cove are Zone A — riserva integrale. No landing, no swimming, no anchoring, boats outside the marked line, and it has been that way since 1994. The pink comes from the crushed shells of a foraminifer living on the Posidonia offshore, and enough visitors filled enough bottles to measurably fade the beach before it was closed. You pass slowly along the boundary for the view, and then you keep going. If you want to stop at Budelli, the legal anchorages are the sandy bights on the island's west side, outside the line.

A mile north is the anchorage everyone remembers. Porto della Madonna is the shallow lagoon enclosed by Budelli, Razzoli and Santa Maria — three islands close enough to ring a sand-floored basin in 3–9 m, in a pale turquoise that photographs like a filter and isn't. The park maintains buoys and the floor is protected, so it is buoys or nothing. Shelter is remarkable for somewhere this open to the sky: only a hard south-westerly finds a way in. It is also the most contested buoy field in the archipelago and gone by late afternoon in high summer, so treat Cala Santa Maria as your fallback and arrive early. Set 40 m and note that here the basin, not your scope, is the binding constraint.

Day 4: One Mile, All Day (1 nm)

The shortest passage on this site, and deliberately so. Slip the buoy at Porto della Madonna and move a single mile east to Cala Santa Maria, the wide sandy bay on the south side of Isola Santa Maria — easier to get into than the lagoon, roomier by a long way, and sheltered from the same Maestrale. Then spend the day in the dinghy instead of under sail: the Passo degli Asinelli between Santa Maria and Razzoli takes you back into the lagoon in minutes, Razzoli's Cala Lunga is a few strokes further, and the beaches at Santa Maria's western end are the quietest sand in the park.

Two navigation notes for the log. The Passo dei Monaci between Budelli and Razzoli is shallow and rock-strewn — it is a dinghy route, not a yacht route, and the charted approach into the lagoon exists for a reason. And the reason this bay is the sensible bed rather than the lagoon on a doubtful forecast is direction: shelter at Santa Maria is from the north-west, so it is the wind veering into the south overnight that catches crews out, not the Maestrale they went to bed with. Day anchoring on the sand east of the buoys works in settled weather at 90 m, the most generous circle of the whole week.

Day 5: The Run South to Palau (7 nm)

Seven miles straight down the western side of the archipelago with the Maestrale, if it is doing its job, on the starboard quarter — Spargi to port, the Sardinian coast filling the horizon ahead, and the Bocche di Bonifacio astern. It is the only stretch of the week that feels like a passage rather than a day out, and it is short enough to leave time for a swim off Spargi's west coast on the way. Back at Palau, fuel, water and a berth; if you have an afternoon, the Fortezza di Monte Altura above the town gives you the whole cruise laid out below in one view, which is the right way to finish it.

Variations: 3 Days, 7 Days or Corsica

• 3 days: Palau → Cala Portese (overnight) → Cala Coticcio → Cala Corsara (overnight) → Porto della Madonna → Palau. You lose Santa Maria and the dinghy day, and the middle day becomes long, but every headline stop survives.
• 7 days: add a night on Isola Santo Stefano, a full day on Caprera for the Garibaldi museum and the island's trails, and a run east to the Costa Smeralda — Porto Cervo and Cala di Volpe are 12–16 nm south of Palau and a complete change of register from the park.
• Corsica: Bonifacio is 12 nm north across the strait, and on a settled forecast the archipelago and southern Corsica make one outstanding two-week cruise. Our 5-day South Corsica itinerary picks up exactly where this one leaves off. Treat the Bocche di Bonifacio crossing with respect: it is the windiest water in the western Mediterranean and the forecast matters more than the calendar.

Why an Anchor Alarm Matters on a Mooring Buoy

This cruise inverts the usual argument, which is precisely why it is worth making. Four of your five nights are spent on a park mooring buoy, and the instinct on a buoy is to switch the alarm off — someone else laid the block, someone else inspects the chain, and there is nothing for you to set. That instinct is wrong in a specific way: on a buoy you have given up the one thing you control. You did not choose the ground tackle, you cannot check the shackle, you have no idea when the strop was last replaced, and you are lying to a mooring whose scope was decided by someone who never saw your boat. What an alarm gives you back is the detection: a parted strop or a dragging block moves you, and a 40 m circle catches that move while it is still a problem you can motor out of.

The geometry makes the case sharper here than almost anywhere. Porto della Madonna is 3–9 m of water in a lagoon ringed by granite on three sides; Cala Coticcio is a cove you could throw a line across. These are 40–70 m swinging rooms against the 100–120 m of an open Mediterranean bay, so the distance between lying quietly and touching rock is a boat length or two. Work the number out from your rode and depth with our anchor scope calculator, then take whichever is smaller — the scope figure or the basin — and read how GPS accuracy affects anchor alarms before you trust a 40 m circle. If the whole business of setting a radius is new, start with our complete guide to anchoring a boat. Every anchorage page linked above carries its own recommended radius.

The Bottom Line

Thirty-four miles, five days, and a week's worth of the best water in Italy: a town harbour on the first night, pink granite and Tahiti-clear sand on the second, a beach you are forbidden to touch on the third, and a lagoon between three islands to sleep in. The park's rules are strict and worth it — buy the permit, know your zones, stay off the Posidonia, and remember that the Maddalena–Caprera channel is bridged. Then take the buoy, set your anchor alarm at forty metres anyway, and sleep properly. On someone else's mooring, in a lagoon this tight, that circle is the only part of the night you actually control.