Fetovaia, Elba to Porto Vecchio, Corsica

 Fetovaia 12/08/17

We had a four hour hard sail against the wind, and arrived in this beautiful bay. If you look at the rock lit by the sun, you can see it looks like a chess piece. 

From here we decided to sail to Padulu Tortu on Corsica. We left the bay at 03:00am for the 75NM sail, and what a night, we were treated to an amazing meteor shower. The weather was kind to us, the swell had reduced to something almost comfortable but the wind wasn't quite strong enough for us to sail, so we motor sailed the whole way.

Padulu Tortu 13/08/17 

 Chris and Desi 

Views over Porto Vecchio 14/08/2017

Having arrived by dinghy on the beach, I discovered that I had forgotten my flip flops, oops! Too far to return to the boat, so decided to buy a cheap pair in town, which was fine, but a bit of a walk.

We went to the town, would have been a very long walk, had it not been for the tourist train. As Corsica is French, I found it difficult as I kept coming out with various different Italian phrases, very embarrassing!

On our way back to the boat we were stopped by armed police, Desi was trying to tell them that we were from a sailing boat and had a dinghy, and NO we didn't have tickets, we weren't going on the ferry, and when she started making outboard noises, to describe our method of transport, I'm sure I saw the policeman smile, just before he let us go. 

We still have no idea why there were so many police around, we wondered if it was because of a girl being shot in the leg two days before, by a local for being naked on the wrong beach.

 Isola Lavezzi 15/08/17

 This was more like a car park for boats, than an anchorage. Getting in wasn't easy either, weaving our way into the inner basin passed rocks, underwater reefs and other boats, but well worth the effort, it was very calm and peaceful. The entertainment of other boats coming and going, once at anchor went on all day. There were many day tripper boats with tourists, but the largest was at least 70ft long and got through the melee using a rib to push yachts out of the way! (grey hulled boat behind the yacht)

Snorkelling is amazing here, the waters are so clear and it is a nature reserve, so a lot of fish. 

Chris and I went to the memorial of the wreck of the frigate La Semillante 1855, 400 marines and 373 seamen were on board and over 500 perished. This island of rocks is in the middle of the Bonifacio straights, a very dangerous place!

We did pass through the Maddelena islands, anchoring in Cala di Villamarina, a lovely place, but because it is national park we had to pay €37 per night, I phoned the park authority to find out why the 40% reduction for yachts was not available? It would seem that they only give the discount if you go into one of their offices! I was then told that only locals can anchor after 22:00hrs, so we had to move to Porto Palma and find a mooring buoy, we were lucky and found one free. The experience of Maddelena was not what we had expected from the hype, it was far better outside the national park on the Costa Smeralda (Emerald Coast), with clearer water and many more fish.

We stopped in Cala di Volpé, which in the sailing pilot was less than 2 metres deep, a problem for us as we draw 2 metres. Hmmmmmm! So when we arrived we found some very big super yachts and a few yachts of our size in the bay. We went in very slowly and found 3.5 metres of water, and very good protection from the weather. We spent the day watching the mega yachts come and go and came up with the pseudonym... PPs ( Pension Palaces) i.e. Phillip Green's dreadful BHS saga. Desi and I thought it would be fun to go for an iced cappuccino at the hotel Cala di Volpe, a very posh hotel which had it's own harbour for the PP tenders. We walked in, me with my very salty shorts and Dark Side of the Moon T-shirt. I'm sure we must have been mistaken for people in the music business, as we were shown through to the terrace and served with three very nice but expensive cold cappuccinos, €12 each, ouch!!!!

Golfo Aranci

So pleased to be meeting Annie in two days!