Alicante - Nice

So, here we are, in Nice. It’s been a while since our last post, apologies, but it has been completely manic! Sorry to worry you, we haven’t sunk yet! I just had a look at the last post, and it was pretty much around Alicante that we last had proper time to post and upload pics, so have some filling in to do.

We left Alicante in the same ‘Go Go Go’ fashion, and belted it all the way to Barcelona, where we chilled for a week, waiting to cross the evil and generally rubbish Gulf de Lion. The gulf is just a pain in the behind, it really is. Permanent strong winds, weather that seems to be very unstable and rolls in fast. So, we waited for a good 48 hour window, explored Barcelona and surroundings, and fixed things, of course. And then we went to cross the bay. All was well for the first 20 hours or so, although the wind was from a completely unexpected directions, as usual, but then the FOG came. I hate fog. My first English Channel crossing was in fog. Since then, I absolutely hate it. You hear the rumble of the ferries, the fog horns of some oil monster, but you can’t see them. It’s the worse thing ever. So this was no different. The commercial traffic outside Marselle is horrid, on par with the channel, I’d say, and to approach it in the middle of the night, in complete fog (our massive torch could penetrate 2 metres, I kid you not), is no fun. Yulia kept her calm though, as I was running around, having heart attacks, so all was well in the end. Finally, about 100 metres from the land, we could see some lights and dropped anchor outside Cassis, well and truly in Provence. Whehey, we are almost on the Riviera.

Cassis is amazing, although a bit touristy. Next to it, are the Calanques, where we spend a few days. It’s the best harbour in the world, really chilled out, very pretty, and has a working marine rubbish dump next to it, i.e. you can find anything there, from a mast to a pretty good boat. So we went rummaging, but unfortunately I wasn’t allowed a surfing board on the boat, there were a few for the taking. We also met Erik there, he was on a berth next to us, with a pretty incredible racing boat, Archambault A40, called ‘Awaken’. We went racing the next day, and did some serious wine drinking. Oh, and I made a table for the cockpit, it accomodated 6, which is a result. Could have fitted another 6, but we ran out of wine.

And from then on it was plain sailing, as they say. We hit the Porquerolles islands, and then on to St. Tropez bay, and into the Les Issambres marina. Where we had our first hurricane go over us. It was unbelievable, I have never seen wind like this, even in UK. I now firmly believe in the power of Mistral, and the fact that it can blow an absolute stink even in the Med. The dinghy (26 kilos) was flying on a painter (it’s the rope you attach the dinghy to the mother ship with), for about 10 hours. Literally, flying. I was having a heart attack, as usual, for 2 days, thinking that the cleats will go, the wind was so strong. If the cleats went, good bye boat, no joking. But they didn’t, which was great, I did double everything up and spread the pull among both stern cleats, so we were ok. I went to the marina office in the morning, and the wind reading was 60 knots on their anemometer. That is a lot of wind, you can’t walk straight, basically. Mad.

When it was all over, we went for a swim, only to discover that the water is freezing. 12 degrees. Colder than in England, basically. It’s because the northerly Mistral blows the top few metres of the water away from the south coast, and deeper water fills in. And it’s very cold. It took a good week for it to warm up again.

At the moment all is well here, anchorages are good, exceptionally pretty, the marinas ok, much cheaper than was expected, although we do struggle to find places sometimes, they turned us out of St. Tropez, so we went next door and walked into town. It’s high season, so a bit mad, you can’t really guess there is a crisis about.

It was at this stage that we decided to rethink the plan for this year, and stay in France for the winter. The original plan was to go to Italy, but here is good enough, so we are chilling. We will most likely stay in Villefranche for the winter.

Here are some photos, hope all is well with you all, Tingara out.

Tags: DIY, Gulf de Lion, Hurricane, Marina, Photos, Plan of action, Prices, Southern France