The day dawned bright and cloudless with a good forecast so we left at 7.30 am. The sea was bumpy to start but soon settled down once we were away from the headland.
The control panel
The GPS showing our course, speed, distance and time to go.
We arrived in Sete, east of Montpelier, at 12.45pm and tied up on the visitors’s pontoon in a small marina in industrial/fishy surroundings. Lunch was sardine salad and then a snooze. We walked around the town in the afternoon. It is very pretty like a mini Venice with the Canal du Midi running through the middle and joining with the Mediterranean. It has a big fishing fleet and lots of fish restaurants, but it is entirely spoilt by traffic passing in front of them and it is very busy. As we were back in France again we looked at all the menus. We ha d planned to eat out but spied a fresh fish stall and bought some mussels and 12 big prawns all for 5 euros and went back to the boat for our feast. Mussels a la mariniere and French bread, garlic prawns with creamed spinach and strawberries.
Any advance on 5 euros?
After we had eaten a man on a bicycle came along and asked if he could have a chat. He explained that he was English and on his own. His boat had run into engine trouble and he was waiting for a new part to arrive which was taking a long time and he hadn’t spoken English for days. So we invited him on board and sat him down. We chatted about all things boats until it was dark and then he departed.
So no time for Scrabble!!
May 23
We left the pontoon, fuelled up and left at 8.00. Another bright cloudless day with no wind and a good forecast. The sea was glassy calm for most of the way and for the first time we were able to make coffee and visit the toilet without slowing down.
As we were going along I mused on a conversation we had in Roses. As we were walking along the pontoon the man from the boat two away from us called to us and asked what our range was in Silueta. We replied 200 miles whereupon he told us he had a range of 500 miles. He asked us where we were going and we said Corfu whereupon he told us that we'd be better going to Turkey as he had been there and it was lovely. He'd also been to Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Egypt. He asked us where we were going next and we said 5hrs to Sete, we asked him where he was going and he said just round the headland. However, he thought we should not go to Sete but to some other place that was better and had this, that and the other thing. We started to edge away and bid him safe voyage. His wife did not utter a single word during the whole conversation but sat and smiled at us. Perhaps she was just dead beat. So we made ourselves a nice cup of tea because you can’t beat a nice cup of tea.
It reminded us of once in our early days of sailing when we had sailed from Poole to Falmouth stopping at places along the way and feeling very adventurous. A man in a small yacht tied up alongside and as we helped him with his ropes asked where he had come from. He said the Azores. Later we had to look on the map to find they were! To us they might just as well have been on Mars.
We arrived in Bandol at 1pm and entered a huge, very modern marina – bigger I think than we have ever seen. We paid for two nights and tied up on the visitors' pontoon. Lunch was a pizza bought from a patisserie in Sete followed by the usual snooze. We took a walk round a very pretty town between Marseilles and Toulon, which must have been a small fishing village until a few years ago and the arrival of the marina which now dominates the whole place.
For our meal we ate fishy soup made with stock from yesterday’s prawn shells, the other half of the steak bought in Roses and nectarines.
Scrabble followed - Michael won again.
C H E E R S!!!!!
Total hours at sea so far (THASSF) 23.3
Total miles covered (TMC) 382
Average speed (AS) 12.4