Yahoo.. the lifejackets work & 50-knot winds

This is gonna be a long one since we haven’t updated in a while.. so grab a drink & settle in..

Can’t believe we’ve been on the boat for over 3 weeks already… time flies.. some days it feels like we’ve accomplished a lot and other days we wonder where the day went and what did we get done.

Living on a boat is so much different than chartering… always stuff to fix, figure out, plan, etc etc etc and when you need something, you can’t just run to the corner store to pick it up. Having limited wifi and internet access is also a challenge as we can’t always just google the answer.

So what have we been up to the past 3 weeks… after spending 5 days in the boatyard in Port St Louis du Rhone we headed toward the French Riviera (aka Cote d’Azur). We had a great first day of sailing… wind was behind us around 25knots & we managed to get the boat going up to 15 knots a few times. It was a super fast sail to the Calanques. A really picturesque area of limestone cliffs and fiords… anchored just below some beautiful orange cliffs.

Onward to Hyeres for 2 nites caught up on some internet work at our broker’s office. Still trying to sort out the internet and sim card stuff.

Headed to St Tropez.. picked up a mooring ball just south of St Tropez and were treated to a stunt show by a couple of aerobatic planes and fireworks. Next morning we pulled into St Tropez, anchored and took a walk around the town. Had the famous pastry Tetarazine?? Lots of beautiful villas on the hillsides around St Tropez, but I wasn’t impressed with the town itself.. thought there would be more to it with all the hype. There was some kind of a Porsche car show that day… lots of different Porsches and some kind of formula one race car driven by some grey haired guy who everyone applauded and took pictures of when he got out of the car. Must have been some famous French race car driver… who knows?? All day we were treated to fabulous aerobatic displays by what looked like the French aerobatic team. Didn’t get a chance to stop by the famous beach at St Tropez as we sailed by the previous day because the winds weren’t favourable to head in & it was getting late in the afternoon.

By about 3pm we were done exploring St Tropez so we decided to move on to start getting closer to Nice where we had to pick up Dean in a few days.. arrived in the town of St Raphael just before sunset and dropped anchor just outside the marina. Headed out early in the morning and while pulling up the anchor we also pulled up a tangled mess of old fishing nets & mud that Scott ended up having to cut off. Uneventful sailing day into the wind toward Cannes arriving early afternoon. Dropped anchor in front of the main beach & hotel area with about 2 or 3 other boats. During the summer season this anchorage is packed with boats. Took a walk along the famous Cannes boardwalk. Was some kind of film festival going on… I’m guessing it was a Russian film festival.. lots of big yachts in the marina. Quite interesting seeing a couple of french women out walking their dogs… dressed to the nine’s, high heels, mini skirts and puppy on a leash. Hmmm… quite different than how people walk their dogs at home. Found the old town area of Cannes and took a walk up.. The old European forts and towns are so cool to walk around with their narrow cobbled streets, restaurants & shops. It was Thanksgiving that day & we managed to find some yummy donairs to feast on. Spent the evening hanging out on our boat in front of a hotel that was hosting a red carpet event.. could hear the announcements of different personalities on the red carpet including Patrick Dempsey. Kind of cool seeing the town all lit up.

The next morning we headed (up wind again!) toward Antibes. Saw some really beautiful homes along the dramatic shoreline cliffs. While in St Tropez we stopped by a real estate window & checked out some of the prices for these villas… the most expensive one w saw was 15,000,000Euro… it included tennis courts & a helipad. Yup.. this is the land of the mega rich & famous! Really beautiful properties though.. stunning cliffside locations! We decided to find a place to anchor in Antibes as there was not much for anchorage areas near Nice where Dean was flying into. Antibes was about a 15-20 minute drive to the Nice airport. We looked into staying in a Marina between Antibes and Nice.. it was 100Euro for the night and the marina right outside Antibes was 40Euro. Decided to anchor & spend our Euros on French wine & cheese instead. But we did get a close up look at the biggest super yacht in the world… Dilbar! Owned by some Russian billionaire… worth 800,000,000 Euro… but it only sleeps 40 passengers and a crew of 80. Geish, we can sleep 8 on our boat! It is truly unbelievable how the .01% live!! We really enjoyed Antibes… we were anchored right under the old town ramparts just a short dingy trip to shore. We fueled up at the marina there 275Euro to fill the boat engines & gas tanks. Not bad considering we have had to motor upwind quite a bit. Sorted out how to refill my French phone sim card… 30Euro for 10g of data. Not bad, but do need to watch our internet use. Free wifi is hard to come by. Found a rental car place so we could grab some groceries & pick Dean up at the airport. Scott dropped me off at Carrefour Hyper market!! Not a super market… a hyper market!! I’ve never been in a bigger store! Its like our Walmarts but twice as big!! Everything from appliances to groceries & booze. Grocery shopping has been a bit of a challenge.. not many familiar labels & of course everything is in French. Tons of interesting looking stuff in the grocery stores… most have a huge selection of seafood… everything from fish to sea urchins (how the heck to you cook those??). Prices seem to be similar to at home.. wine & cheese is much cheaper, so we’ve been consuming a bit of those! have not paid more than 3Euro for a bottle of wine and it has been drinkable. Picked up a 5L box of Sangria for 4Euro… we pay more for cranberry juice at home!! Driving around these European towns/cities is a challenge… it would be virtually impossible without google maps or gps.. Scott & I took the scenic route via the shoreline from Antibes to Nice to pick Dean up.. his flight had been delayed and was not arriving till about 10pm. Drove through the old town area of Antibes on a one-way street that was barely wide enough for a car.. sidewalk cafes, restaurants & shops… really cool! The towns are super clean here… no garbage anywhere. Picking up Dean at the airport was fun… we could not find where to pick up arriving passengers. After driving through the parking lot 3 times taking advantage of the free 5 minutes of pick up time, we found an on-site gas station that we hung out in until Dean called us… managed to cram the 3 of us plus 2 huge duffel bags into our little Renault Twingo… and off we went to take Dean to our boat. Parked the car & dragged everything about 500m to where we had the dingy tied up… if the stuff fit into the Twingo, it would fit into our dingy for the quick ride out to the boat. After a quick tour of the boat & glass of wine we tucked Dean into his berth for a much needed sleep after 24+ hours of travel & delayed flights.

The next day we went for a bit of a tour of the old town of Antibes and marina where Dilbar was until we had to take the rental car back. Of course we dropped it off around 12:30pm (everything closes in France between noon & 2pm for lunch). At least the car rental place answered the phone and we were able to drop the keys off “in the hole in the wall”. Off we went to take Dean for his first day of sailing… unfortunately we didn’t have much wind and of course we were still heading directly into the wind, but the goal was to get to Corsica via Monaco.

Arrived in St Jean Cap Ferat late afternoon. Again, fairly quiet anchorage, only a couple of other boats. Crystal clear water… Dean couldn’t resist going for a swim! Next morning we decided to take a walk along the coastline path out toward the point… beautiful views! Went about 2/3 the way around the point, turned around & walked toward town. Ended up finding out that the walk was a circle around the point… if only we had kept going! Wandered into town, again very quiet as tourist season is pretty much done the end of September… had a drink at a local waterfront bar & enjoyed the view.

Next morning we set sail toward Monaco… our intention was to anchor somewhere nearby & head to Corsica the next day. Again, we were pretty much motoring into the wind… but we wanted to see Monaco. We arrived in Menton right on the French Italian border around 1pm. It was our understanding that we had to check out of France because we were non EU citizens.. off we went to see the Port Captain. Once arriving we were informed that we did not need to check out as Corsica was part of France and even though we were not EU citizens we were good to go. We told the Port Captain that we were going to head to Corsica the next day… in broken English he told us the weather the next day would not be good to go to Corsica… so we decided okay, lets go now! ff we went, pointing the boat toward Corsica! Winds started out fairly favourable… on the beam, doing about 7knots directly toward Corsica… we’d make it in no time! This was going to be our first overnight passage and we expected it to take about 18 hours… arriving the next morning. After the first few hours, the wind disappeared… of course! I took the first watch from 7pm till 10pm and sent Scott & Dean off to catch some rest before Scott came on shift at 10pm.. it was pretty cool. The boys were down in their berths.. it was dark out and I was at the helm! Yipes… every 15 minutes I would turn on the radar to see if there were any boats or weather in the area. Only saw the lights of 2 large freighters that night. Had to make the executive decision to alter our course 15degrees “off course” in order to maintain our speed. It was a pretty cool feeling to be at the helm while the guys felt comfortable enough to go to sleep. At 10pm I crawled into bed and after a while I got used to the hull slams and fell asleep… it was a bouncy ride. Dean let me sleep in till 4:30am when I took over until 7am.. then it was back to sleep again. After sailing through the night we still had a long way to go. The wind kept switching direction on us and dying… the trip ended up taking us about 30 hours. We arrived and anchored by flashlight at Marine d Sant Ambrosio. The next morning we moved just south to Calvi (the birthplace of Christopher Columbus).. stayed there 2 nights, toured around the Citadel, fabulous mussels for dinner, thai salads for lunch. One other boat was anchored near us & we met & had drinks with Patrice on Taboo… Patrice started sailing over 30 years ago.. completing a circumnavigation from 1991-2000. He shared stories of how different sailing was back then.. no gps.. no watermakers.. navigating from copies of copies of charts. He was an absolute wealth of information and willing to share with us newbies. We traded online charts from almost everywhere in the world for our 2500+ ebook collection.

Unfortunately the next morning we had to take Dean to the airport. His week with us went by too fast!! Rented a car & drove Dean to Bastia through the mountains and then took the scenic route to Saint Florent driving on winding mountain roads barely wide enough for 2 small cars. Corsica is stunning.. rugged mountains.

Invited Patrice for dinner, drinks & another evening of great conversation.

Wednesday 23^rd left Calvi at 9am… heading north to St Florent.. 50knot winds.. managed to auto-inflate my life jacket as I reached over the lifelines to close the back locker. Had to heave-to to put a 3^rd reef in.. ended up anchoring in Marina di Malfulco as the winds were coming from the direction we wanted to head. Thunderstorm during the night.. wind shifted at 230am which dragged our anchor a bit, putting us about 20’ closer to a rocky shore… took the anchor in a bit & went back to a nervous sleep. Next morning in light rain we headed downwind for a quick 2-hour sail to St Florent where we spent the rest of the afternoon catching up on work with free wifi and boat chores. Next morning we again tackled boat chores and laundry. Headed into town for boat parts & a look around. Lucked out & found a Magma BBQ grill for about half price!! Unfortunately the boat stores didn’t have everything we needed, but suggested Sardinia may be a better bet for us… so the plan is to start heading south in the morning. Forecast shows light DOWNWIND… lets hope that doesn’t change during the night!

Things I like about living on a boat so far..

– my view changes almost daily

– keeping 600 sq feet of living space clean is a breeze

– wine is super cheap here

– our schedule is set by the weather

Things I miss from home..

– dishwasher!! My hands are taking a beating from washing dishes (usually in a mix of salt & fresh water to save on running the generator to make water)

– costco toilet paper !! The tiny rolls here last us about a day !!!

– news.. I’m a bit of a news junky.. so I do miss being able to turn on the tv or radio to hear what is going on in the world. When we get free wifi I try to catch up…