On Monday morning we left the anchorage at Porto Vecchio. As we said goodbye to Keith and Pat,
they started to shout at us. They
had just discovered that Richard left his shoes on board last night. So we had to go to their boat and
collect the shoes first!
We had been recommended to a couple of bays just north of here by the
Boothbys, so we decided to head towards one of them. As we set off the weather is nice and it is bright and
sunny. The idea is to stop at the
anchorage for lunch and a swim and if we like it stay for the day. But by the time we get to the Golfe de
Pinarella the weather has deteriorated.
It is at first very cloudy and then it even starts to rain! We stayed at the anchorage for a bit,
but the swell is coming in and it isn’t very comfortable. We try moving to another spot, but it
is not much better and the weather seems to be getting worse. So we set off to a harbour instead of
staying the night. So by 5:00pm we made it to Solenzara. It wasn’t the most exciting place, but
we were warned about it. But it is
a cute town with all local services.
We have dinner on board and a pleasant evening.
We were tempted to stay for another night as we are well ahead of
schedule. But after a fairly
leisurely morning we decide to move on.
There really isn’t much choice about where to go. This coast has no suitable overnight
anchorages. Well for that matter
no anchorages. So it is a case of
going to the next harbour, Taverna, or to Bastia. But Bastia is a ten hour trip, and we are not keen
especially as the sea has a rotten swell so I am not keen on carrying on. So we decide to go to Taverna. Everyone said it is a bit of dead
loss. It is a development which
has never taken off. So really
there is not much here, but then it is only for one day.
We get in and stop on the welcome pontoon and wait for someone to
allocate us a berth. Then disaster
strikes. As we try to leave the
pontoon to go to the berth, the bow thruster stops working! This is terrible. Because we have twin rudders (which
means no prop wash) the boat is almost impossible to manoeuvre at slow
speeds. We depend on the bow
thruster completely to be able to moor in tight marinas, especially going in
stern to. It was working this
morning, so we don’t know why it has suddenly stopped. We get the marina staff to push us into
a berth and set off to find an engineer to look at it.
First we find the instructions for the bow thruster (which luckily are
in a number or languages including French) to see if they give us a hint about
what is wrong. It seems to suggest
that we must have got something around the thruster’s propellers. So Richard goes in with his snorkel
pipe to see if there is anything obvious.
But there isn’t. So we are
directed to a local mechanic. He
thinks the boat will have to come out of the water to find the fault, but is
willing to come this evening and have a look. If, as the instruction booklet says, the problem is with a
linking pin, that could be fixed from inside without taking the boat out. But alas and alack, that turns out not
to be the case. So we will have to
have the boat lifted out. They are
not sure when they can do that.
They have a suitable hoist, but at the moment a boat is in it and they
do not know when it will be re-launched.
So we will find out tomorrow when the work can be done.
We wondered whether we should move on to Bastia to have the work
done. However, Richard spoke to
Bastia marina and they couldn’t say if there was a lift to take the boat out. The mechanic here says that Bastia has
very limited lifting equipment and cannot always lift a sailboat with the mast
up. So we will stay here.
Although this is a funny place in the middle of nowhere, we do seem to have
hit lucky in that it has an engineer (who speaks reasonable English) and a
hoist to take us out. Tomorrow we
shall find out how long we will have to stay before they can fix the thing. It is lucky we are well ahead of
schedule!
So we are making the best of it.
We have dinner out here.
There isn’t much to choose from, but we get a meal. If we can we will go to what looks like
a very nice beach around the corner, except that the weather forecast is for
rain!
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