Italy!

38 miles from Cannes we arrived at our first port in Italy. San Remo is a nice little town with a dock you can tie up to for up to 3 days for free. We just stayed a night and in the morning organised a 3G dongle card for Italy before heading East to Finale Legure. We arrived after the marina closed and tied up to the fuel dock for the night. It was hard to find anywhere to stay along this coast, most of the marinas didn’t answer the phone or VHF calls except occasionally and then only in Italian. Jen and my Italian wasn’t really up to it but the fuel dock was fine for a night. We prepared to leave before they opened at 8am but the marinero caught us at 7 and asked how long ago we arrived (obviously wanting $$ for a nights stay) I told him in broken english/italian we just arrived a few hours ago for fuel and he was obviously disappointed to miss out on a nights berthing fee, but when we don’t use any of their facilities it seems fair enough to me! We bought 30l of diesel before heading across the Gulf of Genoa to San Margherita to hole up while yet another Mistral blows through. We med moored here between a couple of superyachts and found yet another beautiful town to explore. The hills are full of Tuscan style villas owned by Italy’s jet set as holiday homes. The town definately has an italian flavour with its Tuscan painted buildings. A credit to the town is that it seems to have been kept totally original, with no obvious construction work since the 1700’s. The arrt work on the buildings is fantastic!

The Italina/French border with the Alps behind..

We went for a walk to the nearby (7km) town of Portifino. Another popular harbour for sailors and tourists. It was a great walk and we ate lunch there before heading back to Sephina.

 

 

Cannes

Headed to the Porquolles from La Ciotat, a National park group of islands off the French coast. Very scenic and a nice sail down. We picked up a mooring buoy at Ile Port Cross for the night then continued on to Cannes. It was the week of the Cannes Film Festival so a lot of action around the town, Paparazzi and people on the Biz. Cannes is a beautiful town to explore, a ton of history and beautiful Jazz ere architecture. Its also the playground for the rich and famous to a lot of superyachts were in town for the festival. Fortunately we got a berth in the Old Port right in the heart of the city. Unfortunately its undergoing work and on the way in we managed to snag another mooring chain with Sephina’s rudder. Luckily we were virtually stopped, entering our berth and managed to swing into position no harm done (except the plan to go stern to changed to bow to!)

 

there’s Sephina just behind Jenijane.

A couple of days relaxing in Cannes while yet another Mistral blows through the Gulf of Leon was perfect.

Back in France

After Canet en Roussillon we continued around the French coast to Port D’agde. We wanted to visit Sete' but they didn’t have room for us so we headed to Camargue.As we sailed past Sete we wrote a song each in the style of George Brassens who was born and is buried in the small seaside town.

Camargue isn’t the nicest place we have been, just a very big marina, but we took the opportunity to stock up on groceries, hired a car to visit Sete, visited George Brassens grave and museum. We went for a 15 km bike ride as well and enjoyed the sunshine, wildlife and flamingo’s!

After Camargue we sailed to PortGuardian and on to the Calanques which were interesting little bays carved into the limestone cliffs. Must be a popular summer cruising ground for the locals but not so interesting for us. We did have a nice walk into Cassis though, a very pretty port. From here we had a short sail to La Ciotat. We would have sailed further but conditions were bad so we decided to call it a day. La Ciotat was great. We stayed about 4 nights, had a lot of fun with some local guys we met, playing guitar, singing, chatting, kazoo, drinking etc etc. A really nice place and a great marina to stay in as well. Only about 25 euro/night and we tied up alongside the wall in the heart of the town. Thanks a lot to Antonin, Romain, Romain Juju and the rest of the guys for welcoming us and making our stay in your town a very fond memory!

Leaving Barcelona

Relaunched Sephina just after midday on Friday May 3rd and sailed to La Balis about 20 M East of Barcelona. We arrived at 5.30 and tied up to the fuel dock for the night. A nice sail all the way and all systems going fine on Sephina. We will do some short day sails over the next week or so to get our sea legs back.

next day off to Palamos, 32 M east. Unfortunately no wind so we motored most of the way. Lots of sealife and not many other boats out even though its Saturday, it’s not really Summer yet. What we did see was Tuna, LOTS of tuna ! schools of tuna swimming past and lots of birds following in their wake. At first I thought they were dolphins, they were HUGE! We had the fishing line out but just with small lures. I didn’t really want to catch a Tuna today because we would be eating tuna for a month by the size of them. When we pulled the lures in one was missing half of it. I guess maybe a tuna took a bite at it anyway..

We tied up in Palamos at 1730 for the night

The town is a major port with one of the last remaining fishing fleets on this part of the Mediterranean coast. It is famous for the locally caught prawns (gambas) We are going out now to try some (Jenijane’s favourite ! )

oolala we just got back from dinner…the gambas didnlt have a price on the menu but we ordered it anyway, 45 euros for 8 prawns ! waaaaa

We will head to La Startit tomorrow morning. Another short sail of about 16 M

L’Estartit was a nice warm stoppover and a chance to practce our Mediterranean mooring skills again, catch up with some laundry and go for a bike ride around the town. 62 euro a night so we left the next day and headed to France. Beutiful day and flat seas, we motored mostly but managed a lazy 10K downwind sail at the end to arrive in Canet en Roussilon for a night or 2. They charged us 36 euro here because they didn’t (forgot) to multiply the rate x 1.5 for catamarans. We are planning to head to Sete for a couple of days and then on to Camargue for some horse riding and later to the Calanques for some anchoring.