We Sailed to Napoleon’s Exile Island...

We're sailing through the Tuscan archipelago in the north of Italy and in this episode we visit two very different islands. One with only around 400 inhabitants. I believe the life on this island is very different compared to most people's lives. And another that ends up becoming our favorite stop so far. It really feels like a tropical Caribbean island. You should definitely go here if you have the chance. But on our way there we're chased by thunderclouds, hoping we'll make it to shelter before they catch up with us. Then it's time for our second time docking this boat since we bought her, which always is a little nerve-wracking. We explore the island of Elba where the Italian vibe is impossible to miss. As we wander through the little streets every corner seems to get a little more charming than the last. If you enjoy our videos don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss any episodes. And leave us a like and a comment. Welcome to Sail and Doxie! This is the first time Nora is not swimming directly towards the boat. She's chasing her floating ball instead. Maybe this was the trick. This place is so random. It's just a tiny island. With some houses. Not many people can live here. No. How many would you guess? A few hundred. A few hundred. I'm so tired today. I haven't even got out of my PJ shirt yet. But I was thinking that I would open up a little gadget that I bought in Sweden and brought here with me. And it's a little photo printer because I wanted to put up photos With everyone visiting our boat on the wall inside, as a memory. So I was first thinking to buy a Polaroid camera, but then I got this printer instead, so you can print photos from your mobile phone. So I thought it could be a fun personal touch to put up photos together with our guests. Ah, yellow! So here are the photos that I have printed out from our little printer. And here is our first guest we had on board, my friend Luisa. And we had to print this adorable picture of Nora when she was a puppy. And then a little family photo. So here will be our wall of fame. This place is a vibe. Here is a bus stop. Direction Village. Only one direction. This island is not very big. There's around 400 people living on this island and it is the smallest community on the ocean side in Italy. I don't know why but places like these does not feel European to me because they're just so like off-grid. Would you want to live here? Maybe. I believe the life on this island is very different compared to most people's lives. We should have anchored here yesterday. Most definitely. We anchored where it was very roly. Oh well. Oh well. We'll spend another night before heading to Elba. Good morning. We are on this small island still and the night has been pretty good, but we woke up and realized that the grass thing on Nora's little toilet here has gone into the ocean. This little grass thing. that should be on this seems to have been blown away which is weird because it hasn't really been windy but now Eric is trying to find it with his snorkel and it's pretty deep here i think we anchored on like 13 meter steps i hope he will find it because um i don't think Norah wants to use this thing without the grass but i don't know maybe you also can see that we have got rid of our Big dinghy that used to lay here. Our old dinghy. We gave it to a guy on this island. So that's great. What do you think, Nora? Will you find it? Will you find your toilet or not? We are heading towards Elba today. It's not very far. It's about 25 miles to go there. And we can see the island right now. So no night sailing tonight. No. Ugh. I'm kind of tired of night sailing, you get so tired afterwards. You do, especially when you're the one up-sailing all night. You get very tired from sleeping during nights. And we think that when we get into Elba we will try to see if we can get a place in the marina, because now we have been 10 nights on anchor or something. And we need soon to refill the water tanks, we need to stock up the food, refill some diesel and it would be nice to give the boat a wash as well. So we will see if we can get a place in the marina at Elba. Come on! I'm really happy with how the galley turned out with this teak shelf. from SVB where I can have all the spices and then we put a little magnetic knife rack here. Very nice. Now I'm making lunch and we will do our typical corn stew that we do when we don't really have any fresh food left and it's really good so I can really recommend it. She's so perfect. And we're doing good speed. Yeah. Three and a half knots. This is a nice sail. It's funny that we say good speeds. Three and a half knots. We haven't really experienced. Seven knots of wind. Better winds in the mud yet. We are preparing for what looks like a shower from heaven. We heard some thunder before and there is some dark clouds behind us. Luckily we're sailing from them, but... But we can see on the radar that they are catching up. Yes. So I think they will come just as we drop anchor. Yeah, I hope so. But we have closed all the hatches, we have reefed in time, and we're ready. But we have only reefed at Genoa so far because we want to keep the speed so we can outrun the cloud. Yes. I think when we see the cloud coming very close I think we will drop the main completely. Yeah. because dark clouds like that means very strong winds here. Here we can see the thunder clouds on the radar and they are coming towards us. But I think we have about an hour before it catches up with us. And if we can make some progress in an hour we have even more time. They are coming from here and here is Elba so we're not very far away. The captain made a decision to Take down the sails and I think it was a very good decision. And we want to push into the marina, not the marina, the anchorage as soon as possible. Yeah, so we thought it would be a great time to use our turbo because we have a turbo on this boat and I believe that sometimes you have to use the turbo because it's good for the engine. Push it! It really feels like it's the calm before the storm and we're just entering here into Elba and the city. But there's still some very dark clouds behind us so I think we will have time to drop the anchor before. It looks like we made it just in time. The dark clouds are getting closer and now I can see the lightning. We made it safe to the anchorage. And I hope we get some rain because then we get a free wash of the boat. And then we can have a cozy night inside watching a movie or something. Because it's Friday today after all. Okay we are approaching the marina here in Elba. So first night in a marina in like 10 or 11 days. Exciting. We've almost forgot how you do it. But we put up the fenders, we prepared with the mooring lines and yeah. I think it will be all right. Erik will reverse right? Yes. Are you nervous? A little bit. It's only like the second time we dock with this boat. So first landfall after 10 days on anchor. Yes. Worked out yeah worked out pretty good actually. It seems like we found a marina that isn't crazy expensive. Yes we paid the 70 euros. 70 euros for one night. It's still high season. And we have a bigger boat. And water and electricity included. Yeah, not too bad. And after this I believe we can anchor for another two weeks or something. We actually, the water will be refilled in... A few days ago. We haven't even used it yet. No, we haven't used it yet, so. So yeah, the water hasn't been an issue yet. But yeah, it feels good to be in a marina for a night, wash the boat, refill everything, buy a lot of new food, you know. Yeah, now we have to go to the supermarket, we have to do some laundry, wash the boat, fill up the water tanks. Hey! Okay, we have been cleaning, washing clothes. That's about it. Uploading a YouTube video since we got to the marina and all of a sudden we got in a very rush to go for aperitivos because we don't have any... Saturday. Yeah, it's Saturday. We don't have any food on the boat and we don't have the energy to go grocery shopping today. So what's better than to go for aperitivos? This aperol was probably the best I had in my entire life. Probably a combination of the plays. It's very beautiful here. Too good. Dig in, looks amazing. What did you order? Just a aperitivo plate. I said not too big. I love it, perfect. When we left Anchorage this morning, we were the only boat left. And when we arrived in the marina, we were basically the only boats. Thank you, folks. Thank you. Yeah, it was not many boats. But now it seems like everyone is arriving. Been sailing all day? All right. We haven't. We haven't. We're in the main town. I think it's called Porto Ferraio or something like that and yeah I think this island has a lot of history with Napoleon and so on so maybe we should tell you something about it. Take it away, Lynn Elba is the third largest island in Italy, and it's located just off the coast of Tuscany, surrounded by the Mediterranean and the other islands of the Tuscan archipelago. Around 30 000 people live here year round, but the population increases a lot during the summer, when the island gets busy with visitors. And Elba has a pretty fascinating history. Iron was mined here for thousands of years and made the island valuable to different civilizations. And it sits right in the middle of important Mediterranean trade routes. But probably the most famous person to ever live here was Napoleon Bonaparte. After he was forced to abdicate in 1814, Napoleon was exiled to Elba. But rather unusually, he wasn't exactly treated like a prisoner. Instead, he was made ruler of the island with his own residents, guards and even a small court. He only stayed for about 10 months before escaping and returning to France for what became his famous hundred days. But after his final defeat at Waterloo, he was exiled again and this time to the much more remote island of St. Helena, thousands of kilometers away in the South Atlantic. Today Elba is better known for its landscape, mountains, small villages and nice beaches than for Napoleon. And so far this has been our favorite stop on our journey. We wanted to finish this video here and say thank you for watching. Thank you for following along. We just walked up this viewpoint here. Really feels like a tropical Caribbean island. It feels very very far away from home. It's very exotic. You should definitely go here if you have the chance. Thank you so much for following along and subscribe to our channel if you aren't and we will see you soon. Thank you, bye bye. Bye. Good night. Nora is enjoying the view. Okay before we say good night and end of the video. You have to look at our Italian pizza. Let's look.