The French Riviera

Our first couple of days on the French Riviera have been great. Starting in Nice with my Stanley Cup hangover, we were able to sail much of the next day to the port of San Tropez. It was quite windy and we were beating into the wind but we didn't really care. We tacked up the shore and into the bay around San Tropez. 

We anchored out in the bay just to the east of the marina and spent the night. The next morning we all piled into the dinghy and went into the city, a lovely town on a promontory. Again the yachts here are incredible, for example, we saw a 114 foot long catamaran and it looked small in comparison to the sailboat beside it. We sorted out my new internet stick and got some groceries, tried out our French and then hopped back in the dinghy for the long power back to Tara.

Ross in his "Jolly Jumper"

We pulled up our anchor and pulled out the sails and pointed the bow west along the coast. We stopped at this anchorage called Anse de Gau, near a marina and town and among a number of other cruisers. Clearly summer is getting here because the number of boats out is increasing exponentially. We swam around the boat, played our volleyball game where the guy who touches the ball last before it heads into the water gets to jump in to retrieve the ball. Happily it was Marina that needed to jump in more than the rest of us. Ross is so entertained and he is kept busy with his 'hoist me up the spinnaker halyard and drop me 8 meters into the water trick'. The rest of us used the halyard as a rope swing into the water.

The other reason to get our Internet stick is to check the weather, our favourite site being windfinder.com. Windfinder shows a couple of days of 25-30 knots and when it blows hard we like to be in a safe place.

We chose the Harbour of Hyeres on a salt marsh on the mainland coast. The marinas in France operate a little differently, you need to come into a dock, register and then they give you a slip. They also don't have guys help you on the dock the way they do elsewhere in Europe. We came in and got our slip (of course not before the boat behind yells at me to move forward so he can get it -- blocking our way out and wanting 60 feet of room for his 28 foot boat ... Grrrr ... Effing Frenchmen ). anyway we got our slip early in the morning and went to the beach. A very nice day without much wind ... Until about 6pm. 

The wind arrived about the same time as a group of Charterers so we took our beers on deck and watched the carnage as possibly sober, definitely inexperienced, and NOOB factor (No Owner On Board) yachts came in to tie up in 20+ knots of side wind. Some executed perfectly, others not so much. Our favourite was the guy that pulled in, threw the line to shore, was tied up and then realized that the end of the line wasn't tied onto the boat as they drifted away towards the next clump of boats. Comedy in it's purest form.

The best part of day 1 was the remarkable find of the parts we needed for our BBQ. So we bought them and now have a fully functional gas BBQ on the back of Tara. We grilled up hamburgers for dinner to celebrate. So far we have grilled every day!

Day two in the Marina was a maintenance day. The bow of your boat gets stained from the mooring lines -- they sit in dirt on the bottom and that gets transferred to the bow of the boat. So Marina and I got out the cut polish and cleaned it up along with the cockpit and transom. This is when you begin to realize the size of the boat ... It's big and takes a lot of work it keep clean and waxed. We ran out of gas after the starboard side, we will need to do the port side in the next few days.

Jessie met some friends at Hyeres and we tried to hook up with them at an anchorage (15 miles the wrong way) but alas, while we were there, we never found them ... Bummer. So we turned the boat back towards Hyeres and then anchored off Isle de Porquerolles in a beautiful bay. 

Showering off the transom.

The 2 days of 20+ knots has stirred up the water and dropped the surface temperature down a couple of degrees. That's enough to keep Marina and I happily on the boat but the kids were game. They were trying to clean off the propellor of some barnacles but unfortunately a jelly fish floated by and boom, Ross was out of the water like he was shot from a cannon. He is OK jumping off a 10 meter cliff, or off the side of the boat when we are doing 5 knots, but a 5 cm round jelly turns him from Superman into Clark Kent.

A couple of minutes after the kids got out of the water we were standing at the back of the boat and there was the jelly ... I quipped "he's a pretty strong swimmer to have made it from the middle of the boat to the transom in less than 5 minutes. Killers of the sea those jellies," and everyone had a laugh. Ross knows he has an unfounded fear but he will work through it I am certain. Meanwhile, Jess and I are fearful of fish nipping at us if we jump from the boat when it is moving. I guess everyone has their phobia.