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Monday, May 21st, Cargese, Corsica, France
After leaving a few more tracks through the Gulf of
Alghero, Zia has arrived along the breathtaking western
coast of Corsica. We had a hard earned sunny
day at the beach before leaving Alghero. Gav experienced
his first overnight passage and both Larson and Gav had
some success with the fishing rod. Cenou, with its
crew of Claude and Rike and the girls, greeted us in the
charming little "town" of Girolata on Saturday morning.
Cassie, Juliana, Celine and Anouk have been inseparable.
We've made arrangements to return our guests to Alghero via bus or ferry or on Zia herself, depending on
how our agenda works out. In the mean time, we'll
tag along with Claude, who grew up in the area and knows
all the spectacular spots. Spectacular might be a
bit of an understatement, actually.
The wind mellowed out after its latest blow on Thursday
night. We set a 4pm departure time, anticipating a
20 hour motor in no wind. We hoped the worst of
the seas would have died down by then, and knew it would
continue to mellow with time during our whole sail
north. An afternoon at the beach put us all in the
right spirits for the trip. Just north of the town
we were able to anchor off a beautiful white sandy
beach, bordered by a strip of pine forest. The
swim ashore was a little chilly, but well worth it. Gav and Larson were unable to break their 301-hit paddle
ball record, but I think the girls came close to theirs
for the most sand transported back to the boat.
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We
raised the sails and headed out to sea right on
schedule. It didn't take long for us to hit some
pretty substantial swell leftover from the strong winds
that had plagued the area for the past four days.
Hobie barfed, Juliana got scared at the sight of the 10
foot waves, and Gav and Larson both turned a little
green. Things mellowed out quickly enough,
however, and we even got a little wind, allowing us to
sail for at least a portion of the passage. Pure
sailing was limited to just four hours, but by using the
sails simultaneously with the engines, we added a good
knot or two to our boat speed, making the trip a couple
of hours shorter than anticipated.
Spirits quickly rose despite the slight nausea, as we
heard the fishing rod start its telltale singing.
Larson jumped up and claimed the kill, bringing in a
nice little Atlantic Mackerel.
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Larson and Joe shared the first watch, and Gav and I
took the second one. It was an uneventful evening,
a little chillier than we would have liked, but a steady
stream of ships going south along the coast kept us on
our toes. We were surprised to see the sky
lightening as early as 4:45am. Gav was quick to
suggest setting the fishing lines. We were reeling
in two nice tuna by 6am.
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Four hours later, we called up Cenou on Channel 16,
realizing that it had been Alvor, Portugal, nearly
eight months ago, since we had been close enough to
communicate via VHF radio. It was great being in
constant email and skype contact, but not nearly as good
as seeing Claude coming out to greet us in his dinghy, helping
us to hook up to the mooring ball next to his, preparing
to raft up the two boats for the evening.
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We
were quickly caught up in catching up with each others'
latest news. The Dussaud family spent the winter
in a small skiing village in Switzerland and kept their
boat out of the water in southern France while we were
in Barcelona. The girls obviously had a lot to
talk about as well as we hardly saw them for the next
ten hours.
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It was a beautiful
setting for our reunion. Claude spent every summer
for the first twelve years of his life here and knows
the coast extremely well. He steered us to the
small town of Girolata where we met. Completely
isolated without even a road leading down to it, it
caters exclusively to the boating crowd; fishermen,
cruisers and tourists on day-trip boats.
Ashore, there are a couple of overpriced restaurants and
cafes. The real attraction are the views.
Corsica is extremely mountainous, with jagged red
granite cliffs shooting straight up out of the sea and
continuing inland in fascinating layers. A dense
green vegetation called macqui covers the often vertical
hillsides, painting a stunning picture of reds and
greens against the deep blue serrated skyline.
Sunday, our tour guide
had an even more spectacular spot picked out for us.
We were awestruck as we dropped the anchor in Cala di
Palu. I cannot even attempt to do it justice with
prose but a picture might work.
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Actually, the pictures
don't even come close to capturing the feeling of wonder
as everywhere we turned our eyes feasted upon a
brilliant collection of colors and textures. We
enjoyed the whole afternoon, exploring the coastline via
dinghy, kayak and foot. The often turbulent sea
here has whittled the shoreline into hundreds of caves
and crevices, stony beaches and hidden water passages
behind 50 foot rocks.
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This coastline is
dangerous with the frequent heavy winds that churn up
the sea and send it pounding into the stone hard enough
to create such wonder. We are keeping an ever
watchful eye on the weather forecasts and hoping they
hold true so we can continue to enjoy this area without
menacing winds driving us into port.
Larson and Gav have
tickets out of Alghero for Barcelona next Saturday.
They will likely wind up taking a ferry between Corsica
and Sardegna and then a bus back to the airport.
They've promised to write the next update for you all so
stay tuned.......
Next Entry
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Many thanks to our friend Craig Homenko for his assistance in setting up the website.
We also would like
to thank our buddy Scott Brunner who has been kind
enough to host the website on his server.
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