Sat 1 Sep – Cinque Terre from the sea

Last night ended rather abruptly. I was in the middle of a cosy dream when I was jolted awake by a loud noise and a sense of movement around me. A quick look at Camilla, who’d also just woke up next to me, confirmed that something was up. It didn’t take long to figure out what was going on, as a massive wind gust rolled over the boat, howling in the rig and pushing Bini around on her anchor.

We both quickly put on some clothes and went outside. It’s always weird when you get woken up in the middle of the night in an unknown anchorage – for the first couple of seconds you’re completely disoriented and have no clue what’s going on.

After the familiar confusion subsided we got our bearings and realised that the thunderstorm which was forecast for earlier had finally arrived! The wind had shifted 180 degrees and had picked up power, gusting to 30 knots. Everybody was up in their cockpits, staring a bit helpless into the black sky. We were sitting awfully close to some rocks that seemed far away when we went to bed, as the boat had been pushed around. It looked like the anchor was holding though, as more and more gusts were pushing Bini around the bay.

We saw a bunch of guys frantically picking up their fishing gear on a little pontoon not far from us. What were these guys doing out fishing at 3am anyway? You gotta seriously love fishing. Also, we were surprised by their frantic action to pack up all their stuff and leave. The weather was bad, but not as bad as they made it seem? Anyway, to make a bad night worse a heavy rain set in, and we had to jump in our foulies as we were sitting in the cockpit trying to figure out what to do next. Pick up the anchor and set it somewhere with a bit more space? That didn’t seem right, our anchor was holding and resetting in this weather is a pain in the neck. There was a pontoon close by, could try to moor up there? Well, with the gusts blowing into the 30’s, manoeuvring a boat next to a pontoon is no fun either. So we decided to just sit and see what happens. By 3:30am the thunderstorm had reached it’s peak, and loud flashes where crashing down around us. There is just something special about sitting on a little piece of plastic in the middle of lots of salty water with a big metal pole sticking up right next to you. Anyway, at some point we realised that we were just sitting in the rain, chatting away, while conditions around us had stabilised. We decided to continue our conversation down below while enjoying a few Smarties. Smarties make everything better! Half an hour or so later it was still raining, but the nasty gusts had subsided and we decided to go back to bed.

After a short breakfast we picked up anchor and headed out to see the Cinque Terre from the water. This is when we found out why our nightly fishing friends were making a runner earlier. As I pulled up the anchor, long pieces of fishing line appeared out of the muddy water. Cutting them lose with a knife I could see that we had picked up at least two different fishing lines with our anchor chain … whoops!

Coming out of our anchorage we found a bit of a confused sea, but not too bad, so we decided to head up to Manarola to pick up a mooring buoy and check out the village. The swell was still rolling in quite badly, so we had to scrap the plan to go ashore and instead explore the coast from the water. The coastline is impressive, steep mountains that fall off into the sea, with little towns perched on the mountain side like swallow nests. You can see why this place is so famous. We finished our round of the coast and headed back to our anchorage, the swell still slapping us around.

Once safely anchored we got ourselves ready to join the party that seems to be going on ashore. We’ll tell you tomorrow how the locals in Le Grazie like to party!