Galeria to Sagone

We are picking up Chelsea in Sardinia on Monday the 9th so we need to make our way through the west coast of Corse fairly quickly. We thought about having Chelsea fly into Corsica but the cost differential was around 500 Euros -- too much for a student and it would take a week's bite out of our cruising budget, so we decided to go to Sardinia a little faster than we had originally planned.

The coastline of Corsica is quite rugged with primarily rock faces and some green vegetation on them. The terrain is quite mountainous with some peaks to nearly 3,000 meters. The coastline is fairly open to the sea on many angles so we need to be careful of the weather and where we anchor. So far we have been incredibly lucky with a daily sea breeze coming up and then dissipating later in the evening. The swells are fairly consistent 1 meter or so in height so that we aren't overwhelmed either. In both places we have anchored we have had a chance to get out of both the wind and waves so we have had nearly a week of restful sleeps in a row at anchor.


Matt at the helm.



We powered about a mile and a half out of Galeria and then hoisted our sails. We needed to do a quick beat out of Galeria bay and then we were able to sail from point-to-point-to-point barely being able to lay each one but somehow making it work. Hayden took his first turn steering and seemed to enjoy himself.



Hayden at the helm.

 Tara has a very narrow groove upwind -- a few degrees too high or low costs you about a knot in speed. He got the hang of it pretty quickly and we were regularly chuffing along at 7 knots or so boatspeed.



We came into Sagone, a bay with a huge beach at the end and anchored inside all the boats swinging on mooring balls. We were nicely out of the waves and wind and dropped the dinghy in the water off the deck and put the motor on.



Ross at the helm...sort of.

 We then piled in the dinghy and went to shore. We were running short on supplies so we went in search of a grocery store. Marina cheated having searched on Google-earth where the settlement was so we took off down the beach and within 200 meters came across a nice grocery store -- in fact two groceries. We went to the closer of the two and were pleasantly surprised about both the quality of the groceries and also the prices. One thing we noticed last year when we came home is how much more expensive food is in Canada than it is in Europe.

Tara at anchor in Sagone

 We ended up with 6 bags of groceries including 4 bottles of wine and 4 500ml Corsican beers for 110 Euros or about $150 .. we reckoned the booze would have cost $75 and the groceries that included sausages and chicken breasts, a bunch of cheese, veggies, deserts, milk, eggs and sauces would have been another $150 -- so if you like wine, cheeses, beer, and meats .... Europe is the place for you.



Ross and Jess having fun together...what's with that??

 The kids played in the water for an hour or two while Marina and I relaxed (actually I worked for a couple of hours) made some phone calls -- talked to my brother for a long time, then went to bed.  Life is so simple here, eat when you're hungry, sleep when you're tired, wake when you're ready, leave when you want to, go where you think is nice. Not a bad way to go through life that's for sure.

The next morning Marina and I woke and went into town again, this time to find a Corsican flag to fly on our courtesy staff. You generally fly the French Flag over top of the Corsican flag on the starboard first spreader to show the colours of the country you're visiting. We learned from the guidebook that it is good form to fly the Corsican flag as well so we went into town in search of une drapeau de Corse. We found that, some nail polish, a T-shirt and a few more provisions. We made it back to the boat -- Jess was up, then we had a Joy bath -- when you jump in the ocean, lather up with  "joy" soap -- actually any soap will do, then jump back in the water to rinse off, followed by a quick fresh-water shower on the transom. In this case you want to be the last guy showering so you get the hot water -- the first two showers go so quickly that the hot water doesn't reach the shower head.

Apres dinner goofing around.

The two sleepy-heads woke up when they smelled Jess cooking eggs but they declined to get wet so we pulled up anchor and headed south.

There isn't a lot of wind today so we're going to need to power for a good part of the journey. We're trying to get to Porto Pollo in order to hide from the prevailing swell and to get ready for our 50 mile jump to Sardinia. This will put us in a day earlier than Chelsea so we can scout about how to get a car, bus, train, or scooter to the airport to pick her up. She will be bagged .. having left Vancouver 16 hours before, but she sure sounds excited about joining us -- and truth be told we're excited about having her here too.