Old routes, new places

Macinaggio

Maccinaggio anchorage at dawn

The east coast of Corsica above Porto Vecchio is relatively straight and not a great cruising ground so we decided to head directly up to Macinaggio, north of Bastia, in one long night passage. It appeared to be quite a popular plan as we passed a few yachts coming up and down the coast that night. We dropped anchor outside Macinaggio harbour late the following morning and dinghied ashore for a look round the old fishing village which has now turned to tourism for its income. We found a delightful little restaurant and treated ourselves to a delicious traditional Corsican lunch. With a good forecast we continued on our way at dawn the following morning around the notorious Cap Corse and on down to Saint Florent where we were due to meet our friends, Rob and Julie, in a couple of days.

Leaving Macinaggio

Saint Florent

French Foreign Legion in action

We had a fun week with them dodging the odd thunderstorm (or not), finding some new wild anchorages and even a hidden paillotte (beach restaurant/bar) which was closed due to the bad weather. Needless to say we soon persuaded them to produce a round of beers. We sailed on to Calvi and anchored off the pine fronted beach. We survived the long, bouncy dinghy ride ashore and had a wander round the impressive citadel before settling down to a lovely leisurely lunch. We stocked up with food and wine at the large supermarket and made our way back to the boat where we had fun watching the French Foreign Legion Parachute Regiment drop from the skies.

Calvi citadel

Lush

As usual the fishing lures were hard at work as we made our way back east again but still nothing biting. We found a lovely quiet anchorage for the night with only a couple of other yachts for company until much to our consternation we were joined by the very military looking 71 mt megayacht "Skat". This turned out to be owned by the philanthropic billionaire who developed Microsoft Office. Corsica is a bit of a magnet for super yachts and we also spotted the extraordinary looking 119 mt "A", designed by Philippe Starck and owned by a Russian oligarch, one of the largest private motor yachts in the world

Flying dinghy!

. In contrast we also came across the more modest yacht, "Lush", owned by Formula One's Eddie Jordan, as well as a very strange looking flying inflatable dinghy!

Skat

A

Ile Rousse

Bust of Pascal Paoli

It was soon time to return to Saint Florent and say our goodbyes to Rob and Julie. We stayed on for a few days catching up with chores like laundry, fixing yet another engine water leak (thankfully only a minor one this time) and filling the tanks with fresh water. Ship shape again we were ready for off and headed west in search of an Orange telephone shop to top up our data sim which had inconveniently expired. We dropped anchor off Ile Rousse and dinghied ashore. We spent a small fortune on a miserly 5gb which would hopefully see us through our time in Corsica if we were careful. Ile Rousse is a pleasant enough seaside town originally founded in 1758 by the nationalist leader Pascal Paoli. His bust stands proud in the large central square, Place Paoli. We stopped there for a while in the shade of hundred year old plane trees and watched the men play pétanque.

Playing pétanque

Calvi citadel from the boardwalk

Horses cooling off in the sea, Calvi

The next day we motored round to Calvi where we were going to have to sit out some strong winds for a few days before we could continue our journey on down the west coast. During this time our relatively new outboard motor decided to play up. It was beyond our capabilities and we needed to find professional help. We were anchored a mile away from the harbour so rowing in strong winds was out of the question. Instead we rowed the dinghy the short distance to the beach and followed the footpath through the pine trees to town. Miraculously we found a man with a van in the harbour who turned out to be a mechanic. He told us to bring the boat to the quay that afternoon and he'd take a look. We left the outboard motor with him and returned to the anchorage wondering if we'd ever see it again. A couple of days later he phoned with the good news that all was fixed. Dodgy Tunisian petrol had blocked everything there was to block in the carburetor. Needless to say we promptly got rid of all our African petrol and filled our cans with the French variety instead. At last we were ready to set sail again.

Leaving Calvi