Saturday 28 June 2014

Saturday 28 June 2014 - Port Toga, Bastia

We are finally leaving Port Taverna!  We make our way out at about 9:00am and head for Bastia.  The wind at first is rather gentle, but it is on the beam, so we put the sails up.  It soon settles down at a force 4.  Richard suggests that we may want to put up the cruising chute, but I say if the wind is this strong at 9:00am, it will get worse and be too strong for the chute.  I turn out to have made a good call.  Within half an hour we have 17-18knots of wind.  Too much for the cruising chute.  And we are going nicely.  So we have a pleasant sail for about 3 ½ hours, when suddenly the wind dies.  We are only 6 miles from port and we don’t want it to take two hours, so we put the engine on.

We have been recommended to Port Toga by the Boothbys, as opposed to the old port in the centre of town.  So here we are.  We arrive just before 2:00pm and there is no one here!  It is lunch time.  Within a few minutes a man arrives.  It seems he is on his own here in the marina.  He shows us to a berth and then berths other boats.  When we try to pay he simply asks us to come back tomorrow.

We have a lunch made up of the few leftovers I have in the fridge.  It is now very hot and sunny.  But it is imperative that we shop for food, because we have virtually no fresh food on board.  So we go to the big supermarket just over the road and replenish our supplies.  We then go out for a cold drink because we are so hot that we are dehydrated.  We find a nice cool space and have a rest.  Every café and restaurant is showing the football.  I have no idea what is going on.  It has been nice to be away and take no notice of it!

We go into town for dinner.  We manage to find the bus stop and it is a quick hop into the centre of town.  We look around the old harbour.  We are probably better off where we are.  It appears the visitor spaces are all taken and they are at the very entrance of the harbour, where there is not much shelter.  The bad news is that strong winds are forecast to be coming in, so we may be here for a few days.


We have a nice dinner of fish and walk back to the marina.  It isn’t a bad walk.  There is a lot going on in the town.  There is a big sort of fun fair with a stage and terrible pop music.  Again, it is probably better that we are out of town!

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