Thu 23 Aug

Although wide open bays have their advantages their one major disadvantage is that they’re prone to swell rolling in – and that’s exactly what happened last night. Now it’s fine if the boat sits directly into the waves (with either it’s bow or stern) as the waves bump and then pass by. If however it sits side-on it’s a different story. The boat rolls violently and nosily from side to side making moving, sleeping and not having a massive sense of humour failure completely impossible.

At 02:30 we were woken up. Hoping it was just wake from a passing boat we kept positive and tried to fall back asleep. Not a chance. Fifteen minutes later and we were still being tossed about. There was no way we were going to get any more sleep so we decided to leave Calvi and start our journey to St Florent. It was planned to take – yes, you’ve guessed it – 6 hours. By 03:00 we were underway in the pitch black carefully following the course we’d set on the chart plotter. Every night so far there’s been quite a noticeable breeze coming from the land, caused by the land being cooler than the water at night. You’ll remember from your geography lessons that when that happens air rises from the sea and is replaced by air from the land – voila, a sea breeze. We made the most of it and managed to squeeze in an hour’s sail along the coast as the sun came up.

We’ve picked St Florent as it looks reasonably protected from the predicted wind, so we think we’ll be OK at anchor here. We did try the other day to get into the marina but were told it wasn’t possible to make a reservation in advance; we’d have to turn up and hope for the best. Whilst doing a bit of Googling yesterday about the town I came across a marina booking site who claimed they could make reservations. With nothing to lose I gave it a go and was surprised to receive a confirmation today, so we’ll stay there Saturday night. Even if the wind doesn’t materialise it’ll give us a chance to give the boat a good clean, she’s filthy!