A bit of a sad day yesterday because we said goodbye to Murray and Belinda. They left on the train in the morning to go back home to Brisbane. Robin, Lindsay and Gavin went to see them off at the station and pick up some provisions on the way back. I stayed behind to get Wildling ready to go.
Wildling at the marina in Cannes on our last night before heading west
The Cannes marina was a bit of a mixed bag. While it’s a good location with great access to the shopping and beaches in Cannes, and not far from the train station for day trips to Monaco and Nice, the marina systems weren’t that great. We couldn’t connect our power cables to the dock outlets without borrowing a special plug that other residents told us are unique to the power outlets in the Cannes marina. The plug has to be wired onto the end of your power cable, so you have to remove your standard plug, wire on the new one, and hope it all works. To complicate things further, the power outlets are 3 phase, so you have to decide which phase to connect your single phase line wire to. I chose phase 1 and it worked fine.
The Wildling crew in Cannes. You can see Wildling in the background
WiFi in the Cannes marina was pretty much worthless. We were only able to connect every now and again, and then not for long. We had a very strong WiFi signal, but it seems that the whole system is so overloaded by users, it doesn’t really work.
We started our trip west back to LGM and stopped last night in an anchorage in the SW end of St Tropez gulf. We had light winds of 5 knots from the NW in the morning that built to 15 to 17 knots in the afternoon. We were able to sail the whole day with boat speed between 4.5 and 12 knots under full main and jib. Very nice! I probably should have used the Code-0 as we were upwind all day, but the forecast called for gusts up to 30 knots (which we never saw) so I kept a conservative rig setup for the day.
Enjoying a glass of wine in the anchorage at the Gulf of St Tropez
Today we’re continuing west, with no fixed destination in mind, we’ll see how far we get and stop somewhere that looks good in the afternoon. I raised the Code-0 this morning and rigged it ready to unfurl when we start sailing, as I am expecting another light wind morning. I’m also going to try out our Watt & Sea Hydro-generator today. It’s the only system on the boat we haven’t used yet, and I want to make sure I know how to operate it in case I have any questions when we get back to LGM.