Olbia

Olbia is Sardinia's busiest passenger gateway, with roughly 108 sailings a week in season shared between Tirrenia, Moby, Grandi Navi Veloci and Grimaldi Lines. From our timetable:

• Genoa — the busiest link, 9 listed sailings, around 10–11 hours. GNV and Tirrenia.
• Livorno — 5 sailings, scheduled about 7 h 30 m by day and longer overnight. Moby and Grimaldi.
• Civitavecchia — 4 sailings, roughly 7–8 hours, and the shortest hop from Rome.

Crossing times across the whole network run from about six and a half hours to thirteen.

The deadline is published as a seasonal rule and it is worth reading carefully:

• 1 June – 30 September: one hour on foot, 90 minutes with a vehicle.
• 1 October – 31 May: just 30 minutes on foot, but still 90 minutes with a vehicle.

The vehicle figure never moves. What changes is the foot-passenger allowance, which halves in winter — so a rule you learned in August will be wrong in November, and vice versa.

A quirk worth knowing on the Livorno run: Moby Fantasy departs at 08:55 on Mondays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays but at 09:30 on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. It is one daily service whose time shifts by 35 minutes midweek.

Read a timetable on the wrong day and you will be out by more than half an hour. Check the day, not just the route.

On the long mainland runs you are choosing between two journeys:

• Daytime — roughly 7 to 8 hours to Livorno or Civitavecchia, arriving the same evening. A deck seat is bearable.
• Overnight — about nine hours, cabins sold as inside or outside, double or quadruple. The crossing replaces a hotel night, which changes the real cost comparison against flying.

Moby offers free satellite wi-fi on Moby Legacy, Moby Fantasy, Moby Aki and Moby Wonder only, and states plainly that it depends on sea and weather conditions.

Sardinia rewards having a vehicle — the island is large and the good coast is spread out. All the mainland ferries are conventional car-and-passenger ships.

Two things save money. First, combined packages: Moby sells passenger-plus-car fares that undercut buying separately, from around €129 in economy on comparable routes. Second, understanding the cabin codes — A means an outside cabin with a window, AB means inside, and the digit is the number of berths. So AB4 is a four-berth inside cabin. Outside runs roughly €7–15 more than the equivalent inside.

All three work; the difference is what happens after you land:

• Civitavecchia is the Rome port — about 80 km from the capital, with a direct train link.
• Livorno puts you in Tuscany, and is the practical choice for Pisa, Florence and the A12 north.
• Genoa is the longest crossing but lands you in Liguria with the whole northern motorway network at the terminal gate.

Booking one leg out of Civitavecchia and back into Genoa is common and usually costs no more than a return.

Olbia's railway station is a short distance from the port and connects south to Cagliari and west to Sassari. Olbia Costa Smeralda airport is about 5 km away, which makes a fly-in / sail-out itinerary genuinely workable.

The Costa Smeralda resorts begin roughly 20 km north; La Maddalena and Caprera are reached by a separate short ferry from Palau, about 40 km up the coast, which runs far more frequently than the mainland ships.