On the way to Isola Rossa, Sardinia

Tara at anchor

We're on on way to Sardinia -- to a marina called Isola Rossa. It's a little less industrial than Porto Torres, about 10 miles closer to Corsica, 20 miles closer to the cruising grounds of the Emerald Coast and, most importantly, near a beach. We'll be hunkered down there for two days in a marina. We are skosh water, down to our last 150 litres, on our last can of camping gaz, and we've used a half-tank of diesel fuel in the last couple of days -- so time to top up. Fortunately there have been lots of grocery stores where we can victual up and also buy wine and beer -- thank goodness!

We have some boat maintenance to do -- need to get an Italian internet stick working (we have three from last year, hopefully it won't be like France where they cancel my SIM after not being used for 6 months). Then we have to find a rental-car or scooter place so I can go pick Chelsea up at the airport.



Ross and Matt working on the Jib furler.

 In addition to the boat maintenance elements, we really need to spend a day cleaning Tara. She left Port Napoleon with a cursory cleaning job and we haven't visited a dock since, so we've been swinging on a hook or mooring ball for the last week -- not bad ... a bit easier on the budget than 100 Euro a night marinas that's for sure.  It is time to run a vacuum, use a cubic meter of water washing everything down, break out the polish and wax and get her ship-shape for the Costa D'Esmeralda -- where maybe we can make friends with people on a 50 meter yacht.

Sagone to Porto Pollo

Not much to report as we sprint down the coast of Corsica on our way to Sardinia to pickup Chelsea. We got going around noon and headed south, motorsailing most of the way until the wind pooped out ... then we rolled up the jib and motored for an hour. Thankfully the wind returned and we were able to sail the last hour without the motor assist.

Braiding Jessie's hair.

We pulled into a quiet anchorage, dropped the hook, made a BBQ chicken dinner with salad and vino. The boys ventured out in the dinghy for a while to take a look and then returned.

We've been on a bit of a mission to get down the coast of Corsica in a timeframe that will allow us to meet Chelsea in Sardinia -- there was a 500 Euro difference in airfare to go from Rome to Sardinia vs. Rome to Corsica -- so the last five days we have covered about 250 miles including some 23 hours of engine time -- so about 2/3 powering, 1/3 sailing -- which is OK by me but eventually the lug of the diesel motor can get monotonous.

Matt and Ross

(Marina here ... with a side note as we motor along the coast of Corsica. We spoke with a very nice guy who we hired a car from in Port Napoleon, who told us that Isle de Frioule was once covered in beautiful trees, but the local ruler at the time wanted  the lumber for ships so razed the island. We had thoughts of all those beautiful trees ... gone. Looking at Corsica now, with it's lovely high terrain and covered in "trees", I'm a bit disappointed. Coming from BC, these are shrubs. This guy needs a walk in Lighthouse Park, or better yet, a trip to the Queen Charlotte Islands so see some proper trees!)


Not Isle de Frioul but a good example of "trees" on Corsica.



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.

Passage to Corsica

July 5th morning started pretty early at 4:30am. We (Marina and I) woke up, made some tea, put away the last of the dishes from the previous night and went on deck. The moon was full but the sun was an hour away. At around 5:05 we had the anchor lifted and were powering out of Hyeres.

Sunrise

After crossing with a local merchant vessel heading out to Isles Parquerolles, we went out the gap in the islands and turned left onto our course of around 105 degrees heading for Corsica. With about a 4 knot tail-wind we had to power ... 2800 revs but the boatspeed was a disappointing 7.1 knots. Uh-oh, adverse current of one knot could extend our trip two hours and our arrival 'till after dark. Oh well, you can only deal with what you can deal with.

At about 7:30 Marina said she'd had enough and wanted a nap -- so she climbed in with Jess in one of the forward cabins .. much quieter under power than the aft cabins that straddle the engine compartment. Otto (the autopilot) and I carried on by ourselves until 10:30 when Marina and the kids woke up and came up top. The day started with cloud and slight sprinkles but by the time 10:30 rolled around there was nothing but sunshine all around. Starting to fry we put our bimini up (the sun cover that protects the cockpit) to protect us from the Mediterranean sun.

We have a routine every hour we're on a passage to check whether we have a leak in several compartments (something that came in mighty handy when we were taking on water from the stern compartment on our trip from Israel to Turkey), check the AIS, and put a position check on paper so that we can make an accurate distress call in the event that we run into trouble.

At around 11 am I went down for a ziz as the boat powered along -- this time in favourable current doing 8.5 knots -- life has a funny way of evening itself out -- and I settled into Jess' forward cabin because Ross was still asleep in his. At around 12:15 Hayden came down knocking on the doors so we ran up to see a whale. We weren't sure what type of whale so we need to do some research, but I think it might have been a Sperm whale -- very small dorsal fin, quite dark with no mottling or barnacles on it.

Whale sighting!

Other than passing another boat in super slow motion .. he's a mile ahead ... half an hour later -- he's half a mile a head, another hour goes by -- we're closing within a few hundred yards -- another hour .... you get the point.

At 14:00 hours after several successive 8+ knot hours underway, we were ahead of schedule so we took a 15 minute swim break, slowed down the boat, put a long line out the back and jumped off the boat and streamed out the back.

Along the way fun!

More along the way fun!

We sighted Corsica around 6pm and around 6:30 enough wind came up to sail -- at least for a while. We pulled into a bay called Galeria around 8pm and dropped the anchor. Since I forgot the new depth-sounder at home (coming later this week with Chelsea), we are without ... so coming into anchorages is a bit more tentative than usual. Not wanting to pile a 15 tonne boat onto the sand or rocks is quite an incentive to go slow and make our way gingerly. We anchored in about 7 meters of water -- we know this because we were throwing down a line to measure depth just like they did in Captain Vancouver's day, and dropped about 40 meters of chain to keep us secure.

The France and Corsica Courtesy Flags

Jessie did a great job on dinner, making aglio and olio (garlic & olive oil) gnocchi with about the garlic-iest salad on earth to accompany it. We were definitely safe from vampires that night.

Another Day in Hyeres

There was a small system blowing through so we decided to stay another day in Hyeres to wait for a calm day for the crossing. Later in our journey I hope that we start looking for days with more wind ...but with our first two days of 30+ knots and fairly large 2-3 meter seas, a little calm isn't really all that bad.  Besides, we could use a long power to charge the batteries and fridge.

View from the top of the mast.

We spent the morning trying to get our new LED running lights installed in the top of the mast to no avail. The wire is not conducting electricity. We vainly tried to pull the new cable using the existing one and then gave up -- having spent several hours accomplishing little else other than cutting a wire on top of the mast.

The day before when Marina and I rode the bus to Hyeres Centre-ville to get our telephony situation ironed out, we saw a go-cart track. The gang went to shore on Bonnie Blue our faithful little RIB and we walked to the track in total anticipation...and not just the teenagers!

We saw a couple of carts bucketing around the track and started smiling. Each "ticket" provided for a 5 minute race with lap times around 50 seconds, it meant you get about 6 laps each race. Ross and Hayden are newly minted drivers, Jess has never driven before, so we had no idea what to expect. These carts have Honda (lawn mower?) 160cc engines in them. I would guess they do 50-60 kms top speed and you can really pull G's in them as they corner like they're on rails. They also rent 320cc carts, though I think we would need some instructions on how to drive them optimally before I would be willing to try one. There was plenty of fun to be had with the small displacement carts.

We took 5 or 6 seconds off our lap times in the 4 races, Jessie was the most improved -- going from being lapped by everyone to where she started ahead of everyone and was able to hold most of us off staying ahead for the entire race. Ross had the fastest lap of anyone and claimed to be fastest, though I remember passing him twice and never having him pass me, so we'll agree to disagree. In our (soon to be) 20th year of marriage, Marina and I decided that our best lap times would be identical ... 47.724 seconds ... down to the earnest thousandth of a second. Hayden, who has less than 2 weeks with an 'L' steadily improved but did spin on the hairpin right more than once. His highlight was probably holding the hard charging Ross off on the second-to-last lap of the last race, Ross bumped him going into the corner, Hayden carried on, Ross spun out and was passed by a few of us on the last lap ... tee hee hee.

Happy GoKart'ers!

We walked back to town, did a little more grocery shopping and headed back to the boat to put the day's carnage away, lift the dinghy on deck for the passage to Corse.   

Hayden has a Haircut



Before....

Succumbing to peer pressure (or so Matt says...he was quite happy to have it done!), Ross' friend Hayden decided to let Marina cut her his hair. At around dusk Marina, Jessie and Hayden disappeared to the transom scissors and comb in hand, and reappeared -- this time with Hayden sans mullet. Check out the pictures ... He's so handsome.

And here hs sits after (with Ross)!

Port Miou and Holy Cow it's Windy in France!

The passage from Isle de Frioule to the Calanques (Cassis) was pretty calm and uneventful. We powered for two hours and covered the same distance that it took us 7 hours to complete the day before. It was nice to enter one of our favourite spots from last year yet again, and tie up in familiar territory front to back against the calanque wall. Much cliff jumping into the rather cool water (there is an underground river that enters the calanque).


Tara at rest in the Port Miou Calanque

 After hanging out at the Calanques for a day the kids decided that they had enough cliff jumping and said that we should move on. The wind was supposed to be a nice force 4,  16-21 knots, from behind so we were keen to make our way to our next stop... Hyeres. Marina and I got up at 9am, the kids got up at 10 -- we made it to the office ... had breakfast got ready to go and at around noon we headed out of the mouth of the Calanques.

We powered for about 20 minutes to get into the wind ... then we pulled out the genoa and started the 35 mile journey in about 20 knots of breeze from a broad reach or run. The waves were about a meter and through the journey they grew to 3 meters or more.



Ross and Matt working on the jib furl.

 Somehow when we unfurled the genoa the furling rope came out of the spool, so Ross and I spent a half-hour rethreading it. Hayden steering while we were up on the bow set the speed for the day at 8.5 knots.

Matt at the helm.

Matt not wanting to be outdone took the wheel and in a few minutes hit 8.9. After a number of runs into the mid nine knots, Marina made lunch and took over driving ... and promptly hit 10.0 knots -- a new overall record for Tara. the wind continued to build and Matt took the wheel again and on one big surf achieved 10.3 knots. About a half hour later we hit 10.8 knots -- and then chickened out and we rolled up some of the sail, though we still hit mid-nine's regularly surfing waves.

As we entered Hyeres and gybed for the last time onto port-tack we headed up towards the anchorage. While the waves abated behind the spit, the wind continued to blow 25-30 knots. Ross donned his harness (jolly jumper) and swung from the rigging right as a big puff hit and he was swinging 20-30 feet outside of the boat hull -- causing the boat to heel and I was as close to losing the rudder on Tara as at any other time in 6,000 miles.


The wind blown look on Jessie and Hayden.

 We brought him back in and rolled up the genoa, but unfortunately, we still had about 5 wraps to do .... so Ross and I went to the bow of the boat and rewrapped the furling drum again. We'll do 5 more later before we head out tomorrow and see if we can fix this problem once-and-for-all.



Hyeres waterfront boardwalk.

 Once anchored Marina and I headed into town to do a little grocery shopping while the kids setup the spinnaker pole and did their patented release-shackle drop - AKA the Hellivator -- where they winch themselves up to the level of the first spreader attached to a harness and then trip the load-release shackle and drop into the water -- a far different and scarier scenario than jumping from the same height.

We settled down to an evening of burgers and salad -- made by Jess and had a quiet evening at anchor. Nearly a week into our trip it's starting to feel like normal.