jfm
Well-Known Member
Just a report back and some pics on beautiful new (to me) cruising grounds of Corsica and Sardinia
Our boat is based Antibes (about 40miles west of San Remo, in the map below) and as I only had 4 days over the bank hol weeknd and wanted to see the bottom of corsica/top of Sardinia, I got a deliv skip to take our boat right down to Bonifacio on the Friday before bank holiday, 10 days ago. It's an 8-9 hour trip taking it steady and I couldn't face burning a day of holiday doing it myself, though I did do the return
Here's a map so you can see where the places are. To put some scale on it San Remo to Bonifacio is 200 ish miles.:
We flew to Figari, easy connection at Nice onto a propellor aeroplane (book direct with Airfrance, loads cheaper than Opodo, but that's another story) and then 20min cab to Bonifacio port. Deliv skip had gone home, only our stewardess was on boat. They had got us a fab berth right at the top end of Bonifacio harbour - this is best place because it is a long narrow harbour with tall cliffs either side and the prevailing westerlies funnel in fast and it's pretty windy for boats only halfway down
Within an hour of arriving we headed out of bonifacio and turned south. People had told me how hard it is to see the tiny split opening to Bonifacio when arriving from the sea - they're right, this is how it looks
The whole town of Bonifacio is sort of cantilevered out on chalk cliffs that are being eroded by the sea. It looks incredible. I dunno if you can get a mortgage on any of these houses! There is history to the town. It belonged to the genoans and was a bit neglected by them. It was was attacked by the French but because of the odd geography and the high fort the townspeople could resist but ended up beseiged and slowly starved. They did a deal with the invaders and handed over 32 children, to buy some time while the rescuing Genoans could get there. The Genoas did finally arrive but a bit too late and the children were kept by the invaders who took them away never to be seen again.
We anchored off an island called Lavezzi, one of the first ones south of Corsica in the Bonifacio straits. All these anchorages need a bit of concentration as there are just-submerged rocks all over the place. Heikell's pilot has diagrams. You can see the rox here, this is looking southish and the distant coast is the north of Sardinia
Actually I found Heikell's book disappointingly short of photos and so we were glad we had sussed out some places on the net beforehand. we were short of time though, and if you had a week or two you could visit loads more places and not worry about just seeing the very best spots. Here's the anchorage west of Levazzi
Unlike France there were no buoys along the beaches so you can take your tender right in. It was end of May, so this might change in July/Aug. Again, note the loads of tiny rocks all over the place in this pic, like the critter toward the left, and there are loads more just below the surface too.
Next day we headed further south, then travelled eastwards along the passageway south of Maddalena island and with the N coast of Sardinia on our starboard side. This was a fabulous one hour run heading east at about 20Knots with a 20knot wind behind us, being funneled through the islands. Zero apparent wind, a rare treat on a flybridge boat underway /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif. Here's a map of the isalnds NE of sardinia
This pic is the town of Maddalena, south side of Maddalena island
We also stopped off in Spargi, a uninhabited (I think) island with loads of quite beautiful caribbeanish turquoise bays and beaches all around it. The colour of the sea was breathtaking. This is Granara cove east side of Spargi:
Here is another anchorage, on the east side of Caprera
Next stop was Porto Vechi (or Porto Vervo as it's called on the above map). Not to be confused with Porto Vecchio, on Corsica). Supposedly a centre of universe place on costa smeralda, NE sardinia coast. We thought it was a bit dead. A good port, deep and sheltered from westerlies, and some nice boats, but lacking in much of a town behind the marina buildings
By now we'd run out of time. We trudged back up to Bonifacio, overnighted then the next day refueled (bit more spensive than mainland france, diesel was 52cents detax/94cents taxed) did the 55 miles northwards to Ajaccio in some heavy seas, max 12-13knots and windscreen wipers. Funny, the weather charts all showed zero gradient wind yet there was a swell from the west and some short confused seas kicked up by local winds, just as the pilot books warn you in fact. Ajaccio was nice enough town but with the seas as they were I suggested SWMBO run to the airport and fly to Nice on the 6.50pm flite and hotel it in Antibes, and those with sealegs (namely Judy the stewardess, who has quite nice land legs too, and my youngest son) set off about 6pm for Antibes. we motored about 5-10miles west into the swell to clear the headland and then turned north, course about 330degrees, put the cursor on Antibes and hit goto. 160miles to go, 17 knots!
It was actually great fun. I've never done that mileage in one leg before but as stated in tcm's long-distance post the other day it's really quite ok. We sat downstairs, reclined the chairs, had lots of cups of tea and watched the world go by. We watched the most beautiful sunset and then took it in turns to stare at the radar for the next several hours. The radar was set on 12 miles and we saw about 6 targets the whole trip. The machine saw them long before we did. One PITA yachtie showed as target doing about 4knots on Marpa, and when we got closer it had just one of those white LED flashing lights. We were going to pass about a mile away and could only just make out the light, so we wondered Moose-One-ishly if it was a liferaft so diverted a bit but irritatingly he was just a battery-miser sailboat.
After about 70miles the lumpy swelly sea very suddenly became much calmer, as if we had suddenly left the Corsica zone that the pilot books talk about. The swell, only a metre or so, was suddenly behind us and we were lightly surfing. we decided to leave the boat speed at 17-18knots as we were in no hurry and around 2am we saw the French coast and the distinct flash of the Cap D'Antibes lighthouse. Coming into Antibes at night is dead easy because there is so much streetlighting and stuff you can see perfectly. We pulled into the marina at 3am and the visitor boat in our neighbour berth, a nice German flagged Jeanneau 50ish footer, had decided we weren't coming in that night so had tied his tender in our berth. We were shorthanded so this was a bit awkward but judy got on the tender and moved it to the bows of the Jeanneau and tied it there. The German owner must have been woken up by this mild commotion and came on deck, about 3.30am or so, and somewhat stroppily explained we were disturbing him. I said surely not, he would have been getting up at that time anyway to put the towels out wouldn't he, and it all went a bit downhill from there.
Fab trip though. It was fun to realise that an 8-9 hour crossing is easily done if the conditions are ok, tcm is right on that one. also it is much better done by night than wasting a day imho. Though I do love sailing at night, and i guess you either love it or hate it. I feel we have barely scratched the surface of beautiful Sardinia/Corsica and will definitely go back. Can definitely recommend this as a one week trip away from the French/Italian mainland coasts /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif
PS thanks as ever to Petem for hosting pix - is there enough space? Let me know if you need a clear out
Our boat is based Antibes (about 40miles west of San Remo, in the map below) and as I only had 4 days over the bank hol weeknd and wanted to see the bottom of corsica/top of Sardinia, I got a deliv skip to take our boat right down to Bonifacio on the Friday before bank holiday, 10 days ago. It's an 8-9 hour trip taking it steady and I couldn't face burning a day of holiday doing it myself, though I did do the return
Here's a map so you can see where the places are. To put some scale on it San Remo to Bonifacio is 200 ish miles.:
We flew to Figari, easy connection at Nice onto a propellor aeroplane (book direct with Airfrance, loads cheaper than Opodo, but that's another story) and then 20min cab to Bonifacio port. Deliv skip had gone home, only our stewardess was on boat. They had got us a fab berth right at the top end of Bonifacio harbour - this is best place because it is a long narrow harbour with tall cliffs either side and the prevailing westerlies funnel in fast and it's pretty windy for boats only halfway down
Within an hour of arriving we headed out of bonifacio and turned south. People had told me how hard it is to see the tiny split opening to Bonifacio when arriving from the sea - they're right, this is how it looks
The whole town of Bonifacio is sort of cantilevered out on chalk cliffs that are being eroded by the sea. It looks incredible. I dunno if you can get a mortgage on any of these houses! There is history to the town. It belonged to the genoans and was a bit neglected by them. It was was attacked by the French but because of the odd geography and the high fort the townspeople could resist but ended up beseiged and slowly starved. They did a deal with the invaders and handed over 32 children, to buy some time while the rescuing Genoans could get there. The Genoas did finally arrive but a bit too late and the children were kept by the invaders who took them away never to be seen again.
We anchored off an island called Lavezzi, one of the first ones south of Corsica in the Bonifacio straits. All these anchorages need a bit of concentration as there are just-submerged rocks all over the place. Heikell's pilot has diagrams. You can see the rox here, this is looking southish and the distant coast is the north of Sardinia
Actually I found Heikell's book disappointingly short of photos and so we were glad we had sussed out some places on the net beforehand. we were short of time though, and if you had a week or two you could visit loads more places and not worry about just seeing the very best spots. Here's the anchorage west of Levazzi
Unlike France there were no buoys along the beaches so you can take your tender right in. It was end of May, so this might change in July/Aug. Again, note the loads of tiny rocks all over the place in this pic, like the critter toward the left, and there are loads more just below the surface too.
Next day we headed further south, then travelled eastwards along the passageway south of Maddalena island and with the N coast of Sardinia on our starboard side. This was a fabulous one hour run heading east at about 20Knots with a 20knot wind behind us, being funneled through the islands. Zero apparent wind, a rare treat on a flybridge boat underway /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif. Here's a map of the isalnds NE of sardinia
This pic is the town of Maddalena, south side of Maddalena island
We also stopped off in Spargi, a uninhabited (I think) island with loads of quite beautiful caribbeanish turquoise bays and beaches all around it. The colour of the sea was breathtaking. This is Granara cove east side of Spargi:
Here is another anchorage, on the east side of Caprera
Next stop was Porto Vechi (or Porto Vervo as it's called on the above map). Not to be confused with Porto Vecchio, on Corsica). Supposedly a centre of universe place on costa smeralda, NE sardinia coast. We thought it was a bit dead. A good port, deep and sheltered from westerlies, and some nice boats, but lacking in much of a town behind the marina buildings
By now we'd run out of time. We trudged back up to Bonifacio, overnighted then the next day refueled (bit more spensive than mainland france, diesel was 52cents detax/94cents taxed) did the 55 miles northwards to Ajaccio in some heavy seas, max 12-13knots and windscreen wipers. Funny, the weather charts all showed zero gradient wind yet there was a swell from the west and some short confused seas kicked up by local winds, just as the pilot books warn you in fact. Ajaccio was nice enough town but with the seas as they were I suggested SWMBO run to the airport and fly to Nice on the 6.50pm flite and hotel it in Antibes, and those with sealegs (namely Judy the stewardess, who has quite nice land legs too, and my youngest son) set off about 6pm for Antibes. we motored about 5-10miles west into the swell to clear the headland and then turned north, course about 330degrees, put the cursor on Antibes and hit goto. 160miles to go, 17 knots!
It was actually great fun. I've never done that mileage in one leg before but as stated in tcm's long-distance post the other day it's really quite ok. We sat downstairs, reclined the chairs, had lots of cups of tea and watched the world go by. We watched the most beautiful sunset and then took it in turns to stare at the radar for the next several hours. The radar was set on 12 miles and we saw about 6 targets the whole trip. The machine saw them long before we did. One PITA yachtie showed as target doing about 4knots on Marpa, and when we got closer it had just one of those white LED flashing lights. We were going to pass about a mile away and could only just make out the light, so we wondered Moose-One-ishly if it was a liferaft so diverted a bit but irritatingly he was just a battery-miser sailboat.
After about 70miles the lumpy swelly sea very suddenly became much calmer, as if we had suddenly left the Corsica zone that the pilot books talk about. The swell, only a metre or so, was suddenly behind us and we were lightly surfing. we decided to leave the boat speed at 17-18knots as we were in no hurry and around 2am we saw the French coast and the distinct flash of the Cap D'Antibes lighthouse. Coming into Antibes at night is dead easy because there is so much streetlighting and stuff you can see perfectly. We pulled into the marina at 3am and the visitor boat in our neighbour berth, a nice German flagged Jeanneau 50ish footer, had decided we weren't coming in that night so had tied his tender in our berth. We were shorthanded so this was a bit awkward but judy got on the tender and moved it to the bows of the Jeanneau and tied it there. The German owner must have been woken up by this mild commotion and came on deck, about 3.30am or so, and somewhat stroppily explained we were disturbing him. I said surely not, he would have been getting up at that time anyway to put the towels out wouldn't he, and it all went a bit downhill from there.
Fab trip though. It was fun to realise that an 8-9 hour crossing is easily done if the conditions are ok, tcm is right on that one. also it is much better done by night than wasting a day imho. Though I do love sailing at night, and i guess you either love it or hate it. I feel we have barely scratched the surface of beautiful Sardinia/Corsica and will definitely go back. Can definitely recommend this as a one week trip away from the French/Italian mainland coasts /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif
PS thanks as ever to Petem for hosting pix - is there enough space? Let me know if you need a clear out
. I can't resist another turquoise water shot:
