We had an excellent night on our mooring. I think it was the quietest and calmest night we have had
since we started. It was a shame
to leave such a lovely place, but we must get a move on. At the moment the weather is
perfect for this area, but the forecasts we have seen suggest that the wind
will build up by the end of the week, so we want to be somewhere with proper
berths and shelter by then.
We first go around the next headland to Porto. This is also part of the Nature Reserve and World Heritage
site. The scenery remains spectacular. We try to go into the harbour in Porto,
inside a river, where the pilot book suggests it can be possible to moor for
the night. But there is no one there
to direct us to any mooring and it looks like all the moorings are used by the
commercial boats that take tourists up and down these waters. So we decide to go out and anchor for a
bit, to have a swim. We are very
confused about the buoyage. There is
a line of yellow buoys along the shore, which usually means that no one should
anchor inside them. However, there
are three boats anchored there and it is convenient, so we join them. But it doesn’t take long for the local
water police to come up to us and tell us we must move. They are quite polite about it and we
just have to move forward about 50 yards, so it is not a big deal -
particularly as the windlass is working!
We have a lovely swim. The
sea here has got up to 23 degrees centigrade, so it is quite pleasant. Then off we go. We have decided to go into a port
tonight called Cargese. It seems
to be a small port, but in an appropriate place with suitable berths. We get here at about 3:30pm. I call the port up on the radio and for
the first time find they speak no English, so I massacre some French, but make
it clear what we want and we are directed into a berth. The odd thing is that is this port it
is required to moor bows in, not stern first. This is apparently because there are cement ledges next to
the quay and boats going in stern first get damaged on them. But the real problem this mooring
method creates is how I am going to get off the boat. I have never managed to climb over the front before.
When we look at it, it seems possible to get off. The design of the front of our boat is
not conducive to climbing off the bows.
There is a tiny gap and that is filled up with the anchor. Many of the other boats have a little
step on the bows, but we don’t.
However, the good thing is that the quay wall is quite high so the bow
just comes up to it and there is no climb up or big jump down. With effort we both manage to get on
and off. I have less trouble
getting on than Richard because my small feet can find footholds around the
anchor which he can’t use.
So we have a walk around the harbour. We are not going into the town which is way up the hill, as
we don’t need anything from there.
Dinner on the boat. We are
trying to keep away from biting insects, but not with great success. We must now start to plan where to be
for Richard’s birthday in two days.
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