So, we left Beaulieu, France and had a mostly great sail of
about 90 nautical miles (about 20 hours) over to the French owned
island of Corsica (it's called Corse in French).
A highlight of the passage was of course the 3/4 moon setting. However, the best part was Pedro catching his first tuna and our first Mediterrean fish!
It weighed about 15-20 pounds and we feasted for the better part of a week on fresh tuna with numerous recipes - including
my favorite ceviche with coconut milk.
Landfall in Corsica was the adorable town of
Calvi. We took a mooring ball just
outside of the town marina and dinghied ashore to explore. Sailing into the cove, we see the town protected
by a wall and impressive Citadel on one side and snow-capped
mountains on the other. The town as
large enough that we spent several hours exploring the various streets, the old
fort sections and the nearby beach.
Leaving Calvi, we continued south (it was suggested that the west coast of Corsica is
best for cruisers) and sailed to our next
anchorage in Baie de Crovani. This was a
large beautiful and mostly empty bay. The coolest part of the anchorage was that
we were able to anchor very close to shore.
Since the beach was covered in small pebbles rather than sand, the sound
of the water rolling onto and then back off of the beach fascinated us all
night.
Our next stop was the mooring field in Girolata.
This charming Corsican fishing village is
only accessible by boat or foot.
While certainly not large, the “town” boasts several restaurants and bars where we had our first taste of the Corsican brewed Pietra Beer.
This beer claims to be brewed with chestnut
flour and while we couldn’t really taste chestnuts, we really enjoyed the beer.
We spent the next night anchored in a beautiful cove named Anse de Chaiuni surrounded by cliffs all around.
We pulled up anchor the next morning and sailed to an anchorage just outside of the capital city of Ajaccio.
The birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte, Ajaccio is a somewhat busy port city yet it maintains some very charming areas and a great outdoor market.
The next day we stopped in the
town of Campomoro where we again found a
great anchorage and took the dinghy ashore to explore.
Visible all along the coast of Corsica are abandoned Genovese watch
towers. These towers are left over from the days when Genoa controlled the island before
it was sold to the French in
1768 to help
pay for the current war.
The tower in
Campomoro is the only one we found that was open to the public so we hiked up
the hill and took the tour.
As expected,
the views were amazing and it was interesting to see inside one of these many
towers that we’d seen. We even managed to explore the beach town and make a new friend!
Our last and probably favorite Corsican stop was the
amazingly beautiful port city of Bonifacio. Quite literally, everyone who gave us any information about
sailing in the Mediterranean told us that Bonifacio is a must see and we whole hardily agree. Simply approaching the port entrance is magical. Touted as
the largest natural port in Europe, it’s surrounded by huge colorful cliffs and
beautiful turquoise water. Atop the cliffs surrounding the port is the former citadel that once served as protection for the
port. Next is the beautiful “Haute Ville” a walled city that overlooks both the port and neighboring Sardinia. To our delight, the marina is situated right in town. We literally walked off of
the boat and grabbed a draft Pietra beer that I took back to the boat for our welcome celebration. As
we had previously arranged for a repair to be made to our boat prior to arriving, we arranged to spend 4 days in Bonifacio. While waiting on our parts to arrive, we wondered the port city, Haute Ville and the hiking the paths that lead around the cliffs. If you’ve got to stuck somewhere waiting on parts, I highly recommend Bonifacio.
However, when the parts shipment arrived, an essential piece was missing. The new part was immediately ordered
but would not arrive for a few days (we were on a small island). To further complicate our situation, our repairman was on vacation the next week when the part was scheduled to arrive. So, rather than wait another week (even though we
loved the town we felt that we had explored it quite thoroughly), we decided to go explore
nearby Sardinia.
As we were heading south around Corsica, Dan and Alison
aboard Equus were heading East from Mallorca. They landed on Sardinia and
decided to come a little north and meet up with us. So, just like that the delay in getting the parts turned out to be perfect timing. We were reunited again with our boating buddies and life was even sweeter!
We spent the next week exploring the ”Esmeralda Coast” of Sardinia stopping in a few quaint port cities and enjoying beautiful anchorages. Our first Sardinian city of Cannigione turned out to be a huge hit. Alison found an internationally awarded pizza restaurant that we had to check out. Their almost overwhelming menu had 5-6 pages of pizza choices alone. We somehow managed to narrow it down and divided them up amongst the four of us. Top it off with a Sardinian wine and we had an amazing experience. The next day we rented a car and explored a little more of the island including the quaint city of Olbia.
Next, we headed over to explore the Maddalena
Islands. These islands are a national park
area made up 7 sparsely or completely uninhabited islands and are famous for having some pink sand beaches. While we never found the pink sand, we did explore a deserted military fort, numerous beaches and the remains of a really old shipwreck. We even saw the famous "Roccia dell'Orso" (it a rock that has been shaped by the elements and resembles a bear). It was great
having our boat buddies back with us and we followed each other and/or met up
in an anchorage each night. Dan and Alison even met us at one of our mooring balls (yes, we helped them at one too but no one took our picture). At another anchorage, a fellow boater was having a terrible time grabbing the mooring ball (it's pretty tough to do sometimes especially in heavy wind). So, Alison jumped on her paddleboard and went over to help them. An hour or so later as we were enjoying cocktails on Equus, the lady from the other boat swam up with a couple of local beers saying she wanted to thank 'Wonder Woman" for helping them. It was quite appropriate and we all loved it! Besides,
just enjoying their company, we had some great meals on each other’s boats (Alison
and Pedro are both amazing cooks) and Alison gave us a huge bag of tuna from a fish
they caught on their way over too. Double score!
Alas, our week of exploring Sardinia was up and the parts had arrived for our repair so we headed back into beautiful Bonifacio.
We arrived a day earlier so we could be ready for the repairman early the next morning. So, we decided to take the dinghy and go explore the nearby caves. The next morning as Pedro waited for our repairman, I hiked up the cliff to get some pictures of Equus (Dan and Alison's boat) coming into the port. They spent one night in the marina with us and we had an amazing time exploring the towns and cliff areas. Our repair completed, Pedro hoisted me up the mast to do one additional repair and catch another picture of Equus this time in the marina.
Here are all of our pictures:
Corsica and Sardinia Pictures
As I type this, we're both (WSW and Equus) sailing south towards Sicily. But we’ll fill you in on that next time.
Until next post!
