Corsica to Elba, Tuscan Archipelago

Having accepted that our street cred was about to go out the window, David went to collect our lovely Renault Kangoo….

Notice the absence of any of us brave or silly enough to pose next to this lovely car, we then went exploring, off to the Ajaccio.

Along the way we  passed a rather large Casino, and Sam taking it at face value piped up with how busy it was during the day and how many gamblers were on the island. We, knowing that it was in fact a rather large supermarket in France, had a right old giggle, at his expense!

The drive was long and windy, even with “Lewis” behind the wheel! Suffice to say we think we have found the next “reasonably priced car” for  Stig (Top gear), having got it up to 145km, on a very long straight I might add!

Ajaccio is the new capital of Corsica, typical big town with a nice but small area somewhat akin to the Lanes in Brighton, with lots of rather short people, and lots of young gorgeous “bangtastic” girls, the boys‘ eyes were on stalks most of the time.

Ajaccio, Capital of Corsica

We then decided to cut across to Porto Vecchio, in case we didn’t get there by sea. Port Vecchio is a very cutesy town, old, tiny streets and lots of shops, restaurants, bar and life.

Porto Vecchio

Having decided to have a cheapy pizza for dinner, the boys found us a restaurant, with an Italian waiter with attitude and some very funny translations in their menu.

We then wandered off to watch the World Cup semi-final between Argentina and the Netherlands in the square, but by then a cold wind was blowing and even with my hoodie on, I was freezing, and needless to say, a little bored, the score being 0:0 at 90 minutes, so I left the boys to it and climbed into the back of the then welcome Kangoo and had a few needed zizzez. Sadly the boys feeling a little guilty came and found me before extra time, and as a result apparently missed the best extra time ever, with 5 goals being scored in 30 minutes. We then made our weary way back to the boat.

Thursday morning, and much to our surprise, our part arrived. 2 days from Ipswich, hooray to DHL, 30 mins later, it was safely fitted, so we started to do the provisioning with the aim to leave by lunchtime, and hide round the east side of Corsica. Steven and Sam went to do a last minute sweet shop run, and Steven, thinking he was talking to Sam, ended up calling a random garlic chewing calaborator “babe”, who then proceeded to check him out!….. Quite what he was doing calling Sam “babe”, is anyone’s guess!!

On their return, the boys set about cleaning the decks… and after doing so, Steven, having not witnessed my interior spray job the day before, stood facing the socket, pulled the hose out and got a facefull of projectile water, much to the amusement of some strangers walking by the boat, and the helpful Sam on the quayside, note the hint of sarcasm!

We did a last minute forecast, both from movingweather and more localised from Meteofrance, both indicating a Force 5 with 1 metre swells, so we set off out of the harbour and immediately faced  a Force 7 gusting 8, with 3 metre swells. Fortunately, at least to start with, the winds were mainly behind us, so with just the Genny set we were flying along, or should we say surfing along,  at times with a speed over the ground of over 10 knots. However the conditions were such that we could not take the short cut between the beautiful Corsican Island of Lavezzi, with its turquoise waters, (not that day however) and Corscia, so had to go south before we could go north. This meant that once we passed Lavezzi, we had to turn into the wind and the swell, and despite our efforts to duck the spray, we all got repeatedly soaked, particularly David who was on lobster pot duty!

We finally (4^th attempt) dropped anchor in a Force 5 in a bay on the East Coast. So much for the east coast being sheltered from westerly winds. We were with a number of other yachts all attempting to do the same thing.

Next day we had a nice sail further up the coast, and looking at the mountains from the sea, understood the need for the windy roads to Ajaccio!

We dropped anchor in a very peaceful bay. Peaceful that is, until the boys decided to have some fun on a jet ski from the beach. Not sure Sam would call it fun with hindsight, when the psychotic Steven, supposedly in control, firstly decided to play chicken with another jet ski, and secondly flip the jet ski whilst trying to do a 360 degree turn. Both boys, (fortunately without injury and with life jackets on) were flung into the water, mouths wide open, so swallowed half the med between them. Having righted the jet ski and hauled themselves back on, they realised that not only had they been flung off, but the the ignition cable was in the water as well. 5 minutes later, it was located and marine boy Sam had to dive into the water once again to retrieve it!

Saturday morning, having decided to bug out altogether with more high winds forecasts for Corsica, we headed for Elba, the largest of the Tuscan Islands as it looked as if the weather was decidedly better that way. One extreme to the other, we had no wind to start the journey.

 Ha ha ha… as if that would last…. 14 hours later, with the bay on the South West tip we had chosen to stop at within spitting distance, the rain came…

The winds and seas turned southerly and having witnessed the one boat already there rolling like billio, we decided to keep going around the coast to what looked like a more sheltered bay. We finally arrived at about 8pm, dropped anchor and settled in for some well needed grub. Part way through the winds got strong and brought with them a squall, a rapid drop in pressure and sea level, and all of a sudden what was a reasonable safe depth under our keel, became very unsafe and off we were again to a larger, deeper area, near Marina Di Campo!

Yesterday, with torrential rains forecast, we moored on anchor stern toattached to the public quay, which has been more than a little challenging when trying to get off the boat, the quay being a good metre taller than us, well me! Having watched Steven and all his bravado, being the tallest of us all, nearly fall in, caution was taken thereafter. We then explored the bubbly town….

Marina di Campo, Elba

And then returned to the boat for a siesta and then beer o’clock arrived, along with 2 very pretty Italian girls sat on the rocks behind us, sadly not enough bear had been consumed for the boys to get enough Dutch courage to chat them up.  We then witnessed our European foes win against our South American foes, and after a bit of a photo shoot, called it a night.

This morning brought torrential rain, thunder and lighting, loud enough to make me jump out of my skin, the boat vibrate and serious rubbish being dumped into the normally turquoise bay!

Still tomorrow it is forecast to be blue skies and 28-30 degrees, so we will be on our way again (after negotiating all the debris).