Westward to Corsica (sort of)

Sitting in the boat at anchor in Port Man, the night before, I was in two minds about doing the crossing to Corsica at all. To start with, the wind was forecast as ESE or SE depending on who you believed. This would be right on the nose and would mean beating all the way.

Secondly, there were gale warnings all over; Golfe de Lion (thank goodness I was out of that), Provence, Cote d'Azur, and Corsica. However, I was not in Provence nor really in Cote d'Azur and the gale warning for Corsica was for Cap Corse to the north of where I was going. On the other hand, the coastal forecast for east of Porquerolles was good, the forecast for the Ligurian sea was good and the forecast for the area of Calvi was positively benign.

Confucius say, man who has too many weather forecasts does not know what the weather is going to be like. There was going to be wind no matter what I did, and the route on which there was the least wind seemed to be the one to Corsica. Except that it was on the nose. Swither swither.

I decided to go, with an option on piking at any point.

I got up at 6h30 and had breakfast and washed the dishes. I pulled up the anchor without mishap and motored out. Nobody else seemed to be up at that time. I set the full main and genoa as the wind was a friendly ten to fifteen knots and set off first to beat around the forbidden zone on the north side of the Ile de Levant. The main goes up like a dream without even having to winch. The genoa is quite small and is on a roller so setting it is just a case of tailing on the sheet and letting out the reefing line.

There are three forbidden zones around Ile de Levant; two are for naval firing practice and in the third it is only forbidden to anchor or trawl as there are cables on the sea floor. The Sailing Instructions (Instructions Nautiques for the French readers) are not completely limpid in expressing when and in what conditions you can or can't sail through the two naval ones and frankly, the paragraphs concerning these zones are so dull, my eyes glaze over before I can make out what they are saying.

The meeting with the boys in the zodiac made me assume that the I couldn't so I was going to have to go around them. The one on the south is ten miles long and extends far to westward. I had measured the distance on the chart and it was better to go north around the north eastern one than south around the south western one. If I'd known they were serious about these things I'd never have planned to come this way at all. The previous time I came to this area, I have the impression we sailed through all the zones with impunity and the only thing you had to be sure to respect was not anchoring in the national park areas.

I was nearly at the northern limit of the zone when I saw two sailing boats sailing through the zone. Ahah, zodiac for you my boys. Then I saw a bloody great ferry sail straight through it. Bugger, what were the rules about these things? I turned onto the course for Corsica at once. It was close hauled and though I was pointing the course I could see from the GPS that I was making heaps of leeway and would have to tack. Just as I was coming out of the forbidden zone, I saw the zodiac arriving again. Oh oh, I thought, ferries can pass brazenly through but naughty sailing yachts get their fingers smacked. It wasn't that at all. They said I couldn't go south of the edge of the forbidden zone because they were preparing a “tir”. They said I would have to sail 90°, due east that is. I said I was going to Corsica and how was I going to get there by sailing due east. How far did the “zone de tir” extend? They conferred on the walkie talkie. Ten miles. TEN MILES!!

So, I tacked north again and kept on, nearly at right angles to the course I should have been sailing, until I judged that I was far enough away from them that they wouldn't consider it worth their while to come and stop me. Then I tacked south again onto the course. By the time I finally did this it was midday and I was further away from Corsica that I had been in the mooring in Port Man.

No-one came to stop me though I crossed their imaginary line well short of ten miles from Ile de Levant. I ploughed on. The course should have been 104° but I was only pointing 115° and with leeway making 130° at best. I decided to give it until two o'clock then at two o'clock I decided to give it till three. At three I calculated the distance made good and calculated that it would take me two days to sail it if nothing changed. This was not possible. The boat was capable, but, I was not. I knew I couldn't stay awake and active for two days.

I looked at the charts and calculated what ports I could make on the coast. The problem is that the coast takes a deep dip to northward after St. Tropez. I didn't want to go back to St. Tropez, it was only about ten miles from Port Man. The other possible ports were far to the north and then there was that gale warning for the region just east of there. I would arrive back then be stuck in port further away from my destination than ever, waiting for the weather to get better.

If I motored it, at five knots constant speed, I would arrive in Calvi at about 08h30 in the morning. Would the boat do five knots straight into the wind and the sea? I experimented. No problem. The sea was relatively flat, the boat slammed occasionally when it came off the top of a particularly short wave but nothing to worry about. I rolled the genoa and we set off, course straight for Calvi and the auto-pilot driving.

From there on, it was plain sailing as they say. I had made a kind of salmon rillette and crudités sandwich from half a loaf for lunch. I made the same from the other half and had a cup of tea and some chocolate.

Towards eight p.m. I decided the clouds were looking dicy so I got out Mr. Watts “Prevision Instanée par l'observation du ciel” a present from an ex-girlfriend, and tried to work it out. As far as I could see (all those pictures of clouds look the same) these were cirrus and cirro-stratus. If I was right they heralded the warm front of a depression. I could expect the weather to deteriorate, the wind to strengthen and turn toward anti-clockwise, towards the north in this case. Towards sunset the clouds looked like alto-stratus with a halo surrounding the sun.

I had been motoring with the main set to reduce rolling. Before the sun set, I took in two reefs so I wouldn't have to do it in the dark. The sun went down and I put on the lights. No other boats were visible though the AIS said there were several in a radius of ten miles.

The port and starboard lights and the tail lights are not very well arranged. The bow lights illuminate the pulpit very well and the anchor stands out green. To see forward I had to place my head so that the edge of the companionway cover obscured the lights. As the Bavarias have got this swimming platform at the rear, the stern light can't be in the middle. It is off to one side and illuminates the rest of the rails and the edge of the transom. Very dazzling at night. The spray thrown from the bow is lit up green and any small breakers which happen to be caught in the beam look like they are phospherescent.

Shortly after midnight, the problem of the stern light was solved because the bulb blew and I didn't have a spare. Very poor preparation. I spent nearly half an hour rigging a battery powered LED headlight to shine backwards. God knows how far you could see that.

Just after midnight I had the encounter with the Club Med II which I put in the main article. Really it was ridiculous. From the AIS, I should have been seeing it's starboard bow light. An encounter with a liner earlier had shown me that the last thing you see on one of these ships is it's bow lights. You see the steaming lights which are two white lights on the masts then you see nothing but a mass of lights which are the casinos and cafeterias and ballrooms for all I know. When it has passed, if you are lucky, you might catch a glimpse of the bow lights which are not necessarily on the bow. The Club Med appeared to be showing me it's starboard lights. Then a minute later it was showing port, then later it was green again. It was as if the boat was yawing violently from side to side. What's more, all this was taking place in terrible slow time as it was only doing 12 knots. The AIS showed that we would miss, but I decided not to take a chance and turned at right angles to my course and put in the call I wrote about earlier. As it passed I saw what was up. The thing was under sail which explained the speed and the sails were being illuminated by alternately green then red lights. Extraordinary.

After the Club Med II had crept past and I had turned back onto my course, the wind went into the north and freshened. Mr. Watts was right. I was sick of the sound of the motor so I stopped it and unrolled a bit of genoa and soon we were going as fast or faster under sail.

Around one in the morning, it got very warm for a short while. The warm front must have passed. I looked at the pressure and sure enough, while it had been dropping slowly and steadily, it suddenly dipped then jumped back up in less than an hour. There were a few flashes of lightning and some drops of rain. This must be the mass of cold air behind the depression in Mr. Watts diagram.

At three in the morning the wind dropped and I started the motor again. Slog slog.

At about this point, the VHF started to go bananas. I had kept tuned to channel 16 getting the weather bulletins and listening to the messages between the semaphores and ships. From time to time there had been odd whistles and chirps (I mean real human ones, not atmospheric effects). Now, it began to play reggae. Some nut was using channel 16 on the VHF to do his late night DJ stint! This went on for a while with the semaphores breaking through from time to time.

When I was about twenty five miles from the coast around four, I started expecting to see the Revellata light house (two flashes, white, 10 seconds). The next time I looked at the wind speed indicator, it wasn't reading anything. Either the transducer had failed or a connector or whatever. I started to worry that the GPS would fail, or maybe it already had and I was about to plough full speed into some unknown part of Corsica (I knew that we had been keeping a steady course and speed from the other  instruments so I knew we couldn't be running into anything yet but my confidence was shaken). I went into the fore cabin and got out my hand held GPS and put batteries into it. I checked the boat GPS with the hand held one and they agreed. Minutes later I caught the first flash from the lighthouse. This was nothing like the clear flash – flash - pause etc. I expected. There would be a flash, then another then, not ten seconds later, another flash. Maybe I was also seeing the light from the citadel as well. Anyway, we were on the right course at the right distance after all.

Dawn (by whatever criterion the people who control the switches in lighthouses use) came and they switched the light off. The dawn was grey and murky. The moonlight was brighter than the pale sunlight for quite a long time. Still three hours to go to Calvi. I started to get seriously tired. I had tried standing, sitting, reading, stretching. Now I just gritted my teeth and held on. From time to time I would jerk and realise I'd nodded off.

The sea was lumpy. With all the changes in wind direction there was no sense to it. No two waves ran the same way. I had dropped the sail as it had been flapping and we began to roll in a most unpleasant way. The sea was also a disagreeable colour, a sort of metallic brown. It made me think of boiling mud.

The coast approached so slowly I couldn't believe it. I had to keep looking at the speed. Then I would look at the distance. Still ten miles; two more hours.

Eventually we got there. Just as we were approaching the point where the lighthouse is, there was a thud under the boat then another. We couldn't have run aground, the water was two hundred metres deep. I looked behind and saw what appeared to be a tree sticking up in our wake. Bloody floating logs. My nice new boat!

I called the capitainerie. It took two goes then this voice said. “I'm right in front of you.” I asked him to clarify and the voice said; “Where are you? I'll be waiting for you with a little boat”. Um, thanks. I approached the harbour, no little boat. I went into the harbour. It appeared very full with only the odd place vacant. I turned round and went out and called again. This time an English voice replied. “Want a place for the night? OK you can use the first wharf after the commercial wharf, just pick any spot.” I asked him where this was and he said “Just after where the ferries come in. It's called the fisherman's wharf”. Very quaint but not very informative. I went in again. I couldn't make out where this was. More attempts to raise the capitainerie failed. One of the problems with using the VHF is that I have to go down into the cabin to do it. Nobody is driving the boat while I am doing this except the auto-pilot and it is not ideal in the narrow lanes of a harbour. I should have got a VHF with a cordless mike. I decided that I hadn't been talking to the capitainerie at all and that boats in the harbour took it in turns to take the piss out of newcomers on channel 9.

Oh well. I headed for the buoys in the bay where a guy in a zodiac was helping somebody to moor. He was normal and friendly and helped me get the mooring on board and said he'd come back for the mooring tax.

Then unbelievably, I stowed the sails properly, tidied up the boat, made coffee and had a proper breakfast then had a swim (by this time the sun had come out and the water was a beautiful turquoise colour and the bay of Calvi was spectacular) If you had told me three hours earlier that I would have done anything else than the minimum for safety then hit the sack I wouldn't have believed it. The human body is a strange device. I had lunch then finally had a little snooze around three which turned into a big snooze and I was out for the night.

So, in the end it was more or less a piece of cake. The wind never blew harder than twenty knots. There was never more than about a metre of swell. Everything worked like it was supposed to with a few exceptions. But I wouldn't call it pleasant exactly.

Now sitting in Calvi bay two days later with the wind howling and the boat yawing violently with each gust, I wonder why I came to Corsica. But it was an interesting experience.

Calvi

10 June 2012