30th June 2010

Well, the weather decided for us and it was east! We were quite relieved to be back on our way again and set a course down to Bastia - not too far and it looked like quite an interesting town. We had to go into Port Toga, just outside Bastia as the old port was full (and we're not entirely sure that we would have fitted in there anyhow). Toga had a very narrow entrance which was a bit hairy and we were put on quite an awkward berth, so mooring up wasn't the easiest and we ended up with 3 mooring lines instead of the usual one or two. After a day lazing around and not venturing further than the port itself, we took ourselves into town, heading first of all for a huge and rather empty square where we enjoyed a fresh orange juice in the shade of the palm trees. We then climbed up into the old town of Bastia which was a strange mix of the elegant and the totally run down until we got to the walled town which was in better repair! Had lunch at a fabulous restaurant high over the marina with a view along the coast, and watched huge ferries swinging in and out of port as we ate.
The next day we continued our trek south, and after a day in a totally delightful anchorage near an almost empty beach, we eased into Solenzaro, a small port which looked lovely from the pilot books and more than fully lived up to expectations. We spent a day on a gorgeous beach just a stone's throw from the port (perfectly clear, warm water, soft sand, comfortable sun beds and a convenient restaurant!) In the evening, we went to a great restaurant we'd passed, where we sat at a terrace in the garden and ate food straight off the feu du bois. The owners took a shine to us, and we ended up drinking myrtle liqueurs with a group of their friends late into the evening, before Monsieur insisted on running us back to the port!
In the morning we decided to explore inland, and in our little hire car, we ventured up into the mountains. What a treat it turned out to be! We stopped at a small cafe alongside the river and after a cool drink, decided to venture down to the water's edge. It was so beautiful that instead of continuing our drive, we spent almost the entire day lying on our towels by the river, sunbathing and dipping into a deep pool in the rocks, clear glass-green mountain water. Late afternoon we continued our drive up through the mountain passes where the air was much cooler (a mere 20c in places,) passing hikers and climbers and at one point, a family of wild pigs! The scenery was breathtaking and so totally unexpected and different to the coastal views we've become accustomed to lately.
We moved on from Solenzaro a day later, and about an hour down the coast we drew into a deep curve of bay where we dropped anchor...and stayed for three nights! Ciprianu was a perfect anchorage, the weather was still, the sea turquoise, the beach white and we had no desire to move on. On Sunday morning, before there was any sign of life on any of the other boats in the anchorage, we took the tender and went ashore to a tiny islet with just a small strip of sand where we enjoyed a picnic breakfast accompanied by a couple of glasses of Bucks Fizz! It was one of those moments that we'll always remember.
That evening we had dinner at a restaurant on the beach but when we came to pay, they informed us that they didn't accept credit cards. No worries, they said, come back tomorrow with the money. Easier said than done, as the nearest village (we soon discovered) had neither bank nor ATM. We took the dinghy down the coast to the next town, had a snack at a cafe and asked the waitress where we could get some cash. You see that village, at the top of that very steep hill, she said, well, there's a cash machine there. The steep hill made the climb up to Dinan look like a slight incline and hiking up at the hottest part of the day was no laughing matter. Especially when we asked for further directions at the top and were told that the nearest ATM was in a town at the bottom...on the other side! Fortunately, our informant was mistaken and we found what we needed before making the vertical descent. Thank goodness.
Eventually we upped anchor and yesterday afternoon we moved just a breath along the coast back to Porto Vecchio and last night we climbed that hill again and had dinner overlooking the harbour and watching Zaffina fade into the twilight.
Now it's time to move on again, either to another anchorage or to Bonifaccio. Frank is on his way back from the chandlers, having managed to drop the brush and long handle into the marina whilst cleaning the boat! Other than that, all is well in our world.

17th - 20th June 2010

I wrote this all up yesterday and when I tried to post it, immediately fell off line and all was lost! So, here goes again…
As planned, Amanda and Ian left on the ferry on Thursday evening, heading for Florence (€42 for a one and a half hour boat trip followed by a 3 hour train journey – for 2!!) so we rushed to the nearby supermarket and stocked up in readiness for our departure on Friday morning. We sat in the cockpit eating seafood and watching the world go by on our last evening in Porto Ferraio then the next morning I did a quick bakery run before we put out to sea again.
It is only a forty mile trip between Elba and Corsica but we had been warned that the weather can be very localised in this area, and when conditions are good in one island they can be quite the opposite in another. Things just got better and better during our two hour journey, the sea was calm with just the slightest short swell and the sun shone on us, until we were about 3 miles from shore. As we approached our destination, Macinaggio, a wind sprang up and muddled the water, at the same time as the sun disappeared behind a dark cloud, spoiling the conditions we had been so enjoying. We decided not to go straight into port, but in an optimistic mood look for a sheltered anchorage and hope the cloud would pass. For once we were right! We found a lovely spot about 20 minutes along the coast with just one yacht at anchor in the bay, so we dropped the hook. Strangely, the wind here was in completely the opposite direction to that which we had just encountered and we anticipated a slightly bumpy afternoon but no – the wind dropped, the yacht left and we sunbathed, ate, swam and slept under a clear blue sky.
When eventually we moved back to port, the wind was still blowing, and as we came into the marina it started to make things difficult for mooring up. Zaffina was being pushed fast into her berth and Frank had to work hard to hold her off from either bashing against other boats or the pier so it was a relief when eventually we were safely tied up. The yacht that came alongside us wasn’t so well handled and managed to give us a small ding in the side as it turned almost side on in its space before finally getting moored up.
Macinaggio is very small and not as pretty as the ports we left in Elba, but it is nice to be back somewhere where we can understand the language and decipher the menu! And of course, there’s French bread here!
The forecast promised strong winds and it certainly delivered. Throughout the day yesterday, the wind rose and blasted. The lifeboat went speeding out to sea twice, the second time returning with a yacht in tow. We checked, rechecked and changed our ropes as noisy gusts tried to throw us around. When we returned from dinner in the port, our neighbouring dive boat had retrieved one of our sun cushions, which had tried to break fee during our absence. The wind, which had been up to an 8 during the day, hit a force 9 during the night, whistling through the marina and slapping noisy waves against the hull. We slept in the saloon so we would hear if there were any problems on shore, and were relieved when finally the wind started to drop in the early hours and we could return to our cabin.
It is much calmer this morning, although there is still a breeze and we’ll probably stay here until Tuesday. We can’t wait to see a bit more of Corsica; like Elba, it is very mountainous, green and fertile, but it has a quite different feel to it, perhaps due to its French antecedents and of course it is much bigger.
As ever, the weather will determine our course – east or west side depending on the wind, and as ever, our fingers are crossed for things to finally settle down for the summer!

16 June 2010

Oops, it's been a while since I posted the last blog, and in that time we made the journey from Porto Lotti to Viareggio in mixed conditions. We thought we would spend the day anchored off somewhere in the bay of La Spezia, but wherever we tried to find shelter, the wind found us and rocked us around too much for comfort. Eventually we put the anchor down near a small port, but even that had quite a lot of movement and once we'd eaten we realised the anchor was dragging, so decided to head off down the coast. By this time it was quite overcast so sunbathing was out and we were happy to be moving into port. En route to Viareggio, the sky got darker and darker and it was clear we were heading not just for a shower but for a downpour and sure enough, the heavens opened and deposited the equivalent of Queen's Valley onto us - fortunately we'd had the sense to move below shortly before this happened! As we came into port, so the downpour ceased and by the time we were moored up, the sun had come out again and everything was sparkly and bright! Funny old weather.
With a trip home on the cards, we spent the next 24 hours tidying up and getting ready to leave Zaffina. Frank went up to the office to make the appropriate arrangements and immediately got whacked with a 172 euro fine. Apparently, we should have registered on our arrival in Italian waters and had failed to do so. We went home terrified that the Italian authorities would find some other infringement and decide to impound our lovely boat, and spent the next few days back in Jersey with this worry on our minds. We still managed to enjoy our time at home, catching up with as many people as possible and celebrating baby Lily's Christening.
On Wednesday evening, we met up with Amanda and Ian at Gatwick and flew back down to Italy together. It was lovely to be back in the heat and we were delighted to find Zaffina in good order, where we had left here! Moored a few places away from us was an old friend - the Magellano, Azimut's new model which we sea trialled in Tunisia at the end of last year. Two boats from us was another Azimut 62, this one belonging to the trainer of the Italian football team, but he wasn't on board; apparently he has some pressing business in South Africa at the moment!
Not only was there no problem with moving on with Zaffina, but the powers that be had decided that we hadn't, after all, broken any rules and we didn't have to pay the fine. Better still, they provided us with plenty of paperwork to say that we have conformed to all their regulations, so if we run into trouble again we have proof that we are legit in these waters!
The weather meant that we weren't able to leave Viareggio until Friday so we hired a car and went to check that the Leaning Tower of Pisa was still leaning (it is) and had a quick visit to Luca. On Friday, we made the break and set sail, in reasonable conditions, for Elba. Amanda wasn't wild on the sea (ie it wasn't flat calm) but managed to survive the crossing and we slipped into Porto Ferraio in the afternoon. It is a beautifully sheltered port, a horse-shoe of pastal coloured buildings ringing the harbour, with the town rising behind to an imposing fort.
The weather has been changeable since we've been in Elba, brilliant sunshine followed by thick cloud or a thunderstorm, and our plans to spend a couple of days here before moving on to Corsica have been scuppered. We have been all the way around the island though, stopping for a night in the very pretty Porto Azurro on the opposite shore and spending a perfect afternoon in a gorgeous anchorage before returning to Porto Ferraio two days ago. Then the wind came up again, and we've been here ever since, with storms and torrential rain last night followed by brilliant sunshine, but still with that wind around, today.
Fingers crossed we'll be moving on to Corsica on Friday, by which time Amanda and Ian will be in Florence before they return home to the UK on Saturday evening. I think our fingers may remain crossed for the whole summer, judging by the forecasts!

25 May - 2 June 2010

We did move on, but not very far - just a quick skip across the bay to Lavagna which wasn't a pretty port in the least but at least it was sheltered. What a relief to be still at last! The reason we chose Lavagna was because there was still some outstanding work to be done on Zaffina, and the firm doing it had their headquarters there. It was quite a walk into the town from our berth, and not a particularly picturesque one when we got there, but it had a good supermarket and an amazing cemetery! We wandered up to the church and then on into the cemetery behind it, and it was like walking through a slightly macabre museum; loads of massive statues of angels, of religious figures and of the dead, huge mausoleums and walls of interred remains with photographs of the residents in better days - oh, and loads of plastic flowers!

We ended up staying in Lavagna for three nights before a lovely trip along the coast, past the Cinque Terra, to Portovenere, which was just gorgeous. It only has room for half a dozen boats of our size so we were lucky to be in the port, and it was a great place to sit and watch the world go by. The town is crowned by an enormous castle and has an elegant church on the promontory by the entrance channel. The roads are just the narrowest lanes and there are so many steps that not even the ever-present vespas can negotiate to the higher points. Dinner was at a great restaurant on the waterside, watching the fishing boats coming in and out of the narrow channel, followed by a wake of seagulls in hot pursuit.

The only thing to mar the delights of Portovenere was the fact that an alarm was buzzing on Zaffina for no apparent reason, and the battery warning lights were on. Rather than continue our journey, the following morning we turned around and went back to Portovenere, but by the time we got there all the problems had ironed themselves out. The electricians could find nothing to fully explain the problems,(although they thought perhaps they were due to some interference from the naval installations in the area) and after everything was checked, we turned back to the Bay of La Spezia (where Portovenere is located) and enjoyed an early evening return trip over a velvet sea. We couldn't go back to our previous port so instead we went further into the bay and checked in to Porto Lotti. It didn't look too great on approach, but once in, we found it to be a lovely marina, welcoming and with very good facilities.

We've been in Porto Lotti for 4 nights, as wind was forecast but never materialised, and explored the surrounding area including Lerici and San Terenzo (places I visited several decades ago with my parents.) Yesterday we hired a car and drove along twisting roads clinging to the hillside, to explore some of the delightful towns of Cinque Terra, and today we expect to move on again, as we're booked into Viareggio tomorrow, from where we'll fly home to Jersey for a few days. We're not ready to leave Italy, even for a few days - it is simply gorgeous around here and we couldn't have had a better area to start this year's cruise.