7-Day Bonifacio to Olbia Yacht Charter Itinerary: Across the Strait into the Costa Smeralda

Bonifacio is the reason to start here. The port is a narrow inlet cut into white limestone with the medieval town standing on the cliff directly above the quay, and coming into it from the sea is the best first hour of any week in this part of the Mediterranean. The marina has around 350 berths with roughly 150 kept for visiting yachts, so it is bookable, though not in August without notice.

Almost no crewed yachts are actually based in Corsica. The fleet lives on the French Riviera and the Italian coast, so your boat comes to Bonifacio to meet you, and that works in your favour on this route: the week finishes in Olbia, where most of these yachts spend the summer, and a one-way that ends at the home base is the cheap one to arrange. Fly into Figari, twenty minutes from the port and served through the summer from Paris, Nice, Marseille and London, or into Olbia and cross. Board in the afternoon, climb into the haute ville before dinner, and look south from the top. Sardinia is on the skyline, and that is tomorrow.

An hour of open water and you are at anchor in the Lavezzi by late morning. The strait narrows to about six miles here and it funnels wind, so captains pick the hour rather than the route: a mistral over the Gulf of Lion squeezes through the gap and arrives stronger than the open-water forecast. In practice that means an early start and a flat crossing, which is exactly why it sits on day two.

The Lavezzi are a granite archipelago that has been a nature reserve since 1982, and the anchoring rules here are enforced rather than suggested. Free anchoring is banned across almost the whole group to protect the Posidonia meadows, so you take a mooring buoy instead. Yachts under 24 metres use seven buoyed zones around the main island. A decree issued in July 2026 added dedicated sectors with fourteen buoys for yachts between 26 and 70 metres, which is a thin supply for a reserve this busy, so a captain claims one early in the day. Patrol boats and drones do the checking. What you get for the paperwork is the clearest water on this route and a swim off the back of the boat with nothing ashore but granite and a lighthouse.

A short morning. Eight miles south and you cross into Italy and into the La Maddalena National Park, which runs its own permit system. Every boat entering the park's marine zones needs a daily permit bought before going in, online or through the park's app. The crew handles it, but it is worth knowing it exists, because the park is patrolled and the fines are real.

Cala Corsara on the south-west corner of Spargi is the stop. It is a shallow bay of pale sand and weathered granite shapes, the water runs from clear to turquoise over the sand, and it is the first anchorage of the week where the toys should go in before lunch rather than after it. Anchor on sand only. The rule across the whole park is simple and absolute: nothing goes down on the seagrass. Spargi has no village and nothing to walk to, which is exactly the point of this day after a town night in Bonifacio.

Six miles and half an hour, the shortest leg of the week. Santa Maria sits at the northern end of the archipelago with Razzoli and Budelli beside it, and the water enclosed between the three islands forms the Porto della Madonna, a natural pool with shelter on every side. It is the anchorage people have in mind when they picture this archipelago.

Two restrictions shape the day and neither is negotiable. Budelli's Spiaggia Rosa, the pink beach, has been closed to landings for years, so you look at it from the water and that is the whole experience. And the channel between Santa Maria and Budelli is currently closed to navigation and anchoring because of unexploded ordnance on the bottom, so the approach comes from the other side. Overnight anchoring inside the park was allowed again for the 2026 and 2027 seasons after a season of uncertainty, on sand and mud bottoms, with a cap on how many boats can sit in the busiest coves. Arrive early enough and you sleep here.

Caprera is the wild island of the group, joined to La Maddalena by a causeway and left mostly undeveloped. Cala Coticcio is on its eastern side: two small bays of white sand between pink granite, with water the colour the photographs claim. For most visitors it is reached from the sea or not at all, which is the whole advantage of doing it from a yacht.

Walking in from the land side has been regulated since the cove started taking damage from the numbers. Access on foot now needs an authorised environmental guide booked about a week ahead, capped at sixty people a day in groups of fifteen, with a park fee and a guide fee on top. From a yacht you anchor off and swim in, which is both the easier version and the better one. If anyone wants an afternoon ashore, Garibaldi spent the last part of his life on Caprera and his house is now a museum, a short walk from the island's main landing.

The week changes register here. Fifteen miles south out of the park and you are on the Costa Smeralda, the stretch of coast an investment consortium led by the Aga Khan built from empty scrubland in the 1960s, with Porto Cervo as its harbour. After five nights of granite and swimming, a dock, a shower that does not move and dinner ashore are well timed rather than a compromise.

Porto Cervo is a yacht-watching port and it is honest about being one. The Yacht Club Costa Smeralda is here, the marina takes large boats, and in July and August the quay is a parade. The shops carry the same names as Milan and the prices follow. If you would rather have the coast without the audience, Cala di Volpe is three miles away and the bay is a better swim than the village is a walk. Both work from the same berth.

The last full day runs sixteen miles south to Tavolara, which comes into view a long time before you reach it. It is a limestone block rising more than 500 metres straight out of the sea off the Sardinian coast and it looks like nothing else on this route. The island sits inside the Tavolara and Punta Coda Cavallo marine protected area, established in 1997 and one of the largest in the Mediterranean at around 15,000 hectares. Anchoring is permitted only on marked sandy areas within the protected zones, never on Posidonia, with authorisation through the area's own portal.

Spend the afternoon off the Spalmatore di Terra, the low sandy spit at the island's western end where the two restaurants are and where the water is shallow and warm. Tavolara has a permanent population you could count on two hands and, by long tradition, a king, which is a true story and a good one for the last dinner. On the final morning it is eight miles into the Gulf of Olbia and about forty minutes to the berth. Olbia's airport is roughly ten minutes from the port, which makes this the easiest end-of-charter transfer in Sardinia.