Leaving Port Camargue- France

Leaving Port Camargue

That’s it, we have had nearly 3 weeks in France and it is time to continue the journey. It has been great to see and catch up with family and friends over the last few weeks. We have had a ball and loads of nice food and wine.

Tomorrow we leave Port Camargue. Nice huge marina but very welcoming and secure, we were able to leave the boat for a few days to visit family without any issues. The facilities are good and you can get free bicycle which was useful to go to the Grau du Roi (a lovely little port), all on the sea front . There are beaches but they are packed and the sand is not great, you also have to walk for miles to reach swimming depth. Plenty of shops both in Port Camargue and the Grau du Roi and the fruits and veg are excellent, so is the bread and cheese and the rose wine. Ian has been able to spend some time in the chandlers, looking for bits and pieces and he has had a few days to fix stuff, so he is happy. And he was absolutely ecstatic when he met Jayne and Graeme from Southampton, on Scarlett, moored on the same pontoon as us. Finally, after 2 months, he could converse with strangers without having to think and translate… Scarlett is coming from Spain and bound for Italy so we were able to share experiences over aperitif.

We are aiming to reach Valencia in 3 to 4 days depending on the wind or the engine, cutting across the Golf du Lion. Well that is the plan anyway…

Lisa’s English homework

Think I like this!

Think I like this!

I asked Lisa if she wanted to be a published author and she gamely wrote a piece for the website on her sailing adventure on Mr X, in English, no less. I know, it was rotten of me to set her some homework, but to be fair, I did say that she could do it in French. Both Ian and myself were extremely impressed by her written English so we did not edit it. There it goes…

“Hi everybody!

My name is Lisa, I’m a french girl from Paris and this summer I spent 5 days on the sailboat of Manuela and Ian.

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Garagnanis onboard

All on board - The Garagnanis

All on board – The Garagnanis

The cruising Garagnanis

We needed to get fuel and water before we set off any further. Carole was arriving on the Monday 8th August, so we had the afternoon and a night to recover from the lack of sleep. The rade of Toulon is not especially pretty, it is  one of the biggest French naval base and it is littered with huge war ships of various shape and size.

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L’ile Rousse- Corsica to Toulon

Sunrise over Porquerolles - France

Sunrise over Porquerolles – France

The weather looked good to attempt the crossing to France on Wednesday … we were trying to avoid the tail of the previous  mistral onslaught which had been battering most of the south of France and  the predicted force 7 which was coming our way on the occidental coast of Corsica. We got stuck for 3 days on l’ile Rousse (north of Calvi), waiting for the storm to pass, the forecasted winds started earlier than expected.

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L’ile Rousse- Corsica

Ile Rousse - Corsica

Ile Rousse – Corsica

This will probably be our last stop in Corsica. We need to be in France in less than a week. This sounds a nice place for our last taste of Corsica. We were planning to stay for 2 nights with a day spent exploring the town, in the event strong wind kept us there a while longer.

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Parachutists wave us on from Calvi

Parachutists CalviWord must have gone round that we were leaving Calvi  today. Parachutists came and waved us goodbye with a fabulous display this morning for breakfast. We counted 8 drops of up to 15 of them…and they all waved at us…. Honest!

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They did make us late to the fuelling pontoon and by the time we got there it was mayhem. French have no concept of queuing system… A swede guy lost his rag to a bunch of shrugging queue jumpers (Ian nearly joined in, until I stepped on his foot). Poor swede left in disgust without fuel…

Visiting Calvi

Citadelle Calvi

Citadelle Calvi

Calvi – Corsica 27th  July to 1st Aug 16

We had a beautiful sail up to Calvi, all down wind, only Genoa needed to ride the surf.  And we arrived just in time for a late afternoon swim. What a view, the town and citadelle is the backdrop to the sunset and behind us on the other side of the bay are  towering jagged mountains.

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