La Ciotat is a charming spot, the Old Port is full of yachts and fishing boats and is surrounded by shops and cafes on three sides and by the massive cranes of a shipyard that builds and repairs oil tankers on the other.   After Chris and John left, Sue and I strolled around the port taking in the almost too perfect harbour atmosphere – quiet cafes, strolling couples, the reflection of street lights rippling across the water of the harbour.   We settled down at one of the cafes where I tucked into moules frites.   Inside were a party from “Topolino” a British yacht we had first met in Avignon – two crusty old blokes and the charming partner of one of them, who clearly makes sure that the old blokes survive and have clean underpants.   Outside, where we were sitting, three young Brits and Antipodeans were at a nearby table, the “Topolino” people explained that they were carrying out work on a boat in the harbour.   Also outside a party of two ...

The Mistral at Frioul was my first real experience of a wind with its own name.   Sailing in the Med has given Sue and I an increasingly personal interest in the weather and how it works and we’ve started to read up on it.   Our “Mediterranean Cruising Handbook” lists thirty-five different named winds in the Med from the “Arifi” (the Sirocco from Morocco) to the “Vardaarac”, which must have been christened by a Scrabble enthusiast from its native Greece where it whistles down mountain slopes and out of the Gulf of Thessalonica.   The Mistral is one of the most feared of this lot and is apparently a “mountain gap wind” produced by cold air getting bottled up in Central France behind the Massif Central and the Alps and then suddenly blasting its way down the Rhone Valley, which is the gap between the two.   The Mistral lasts for as long as there is a reservoir of cold air, three, six, nine days or more – rather like squeezing a spot. I can see how th...

Well, now we know what a Mistral is!  There is bright sunshine and the air is almost halucinogenically clear – in the middle distance I can see the towers of the Chateau D’If, where Dumas’ Count of Monte Christo was imprisoned, standing on its own island not far from the entrance to the Old Port of Marseilles.  The wind is screaming at us from the North West, blowing down the Rhone Valley at gale force or more.  The sea is dark blue with foaming white horses racing across it and the air is full of salt spray.  Standing in the cockpit it is difficult to keep my balance as “La Fulica” vibrates and bucks against the seas, her rigging moaning with the force of the wind. Fortunately, we’re in a marina, so the feeling of man fighting the elements is more imagined than real.  And what an odd marina it is – Port du Frioul, six hundred yacht berths sandwiched between two rocky islands a couple of miles from the centre of Marseilles. Essentially it’s the Marseilles’ ...

We left Port St Louis on Wednesday 18th September, having spent eleven days there going quietly stir crazy.  Why so long?  Well it rained a lot and frankly after the journey down the canals and rivers we were actually quite tired.  Two or three days disappeared lying in bed listening to the rain and making the odd dash to the local Intermarche supermarket for supplies.  Our French is improving, although slowly and through listening to the radio we heard that there had been major flooding further up the Rhone.  From the local paper we learned that there had been a breach of the Rhone’s banks just down river from Avignon and that more than twenty people had died.  Also, that a group of Australian yachtsmen had been rescued from the mooring at Arles only two days after we had stayed there.  A little later we got the other side of this story.  At the mooring in Arles we had met Russell an Australian who had befriended Thomas, Nicole and Joshi some ...

So here we are in a marina on the Mediterranean.  We arrived yesterday in bright sunshine to find a large palm fringed dock full of yachts and small fishing boats.  Actually, today it is pissing down and we’re stuck on La Fulica listening to the thunder and the French version of Radio 2, but at least the rain is warm, well warmish.  Port St Louis is a working class little town with a busy marina, run I think by the municipality I would guess by their attitude to cashflow – “ pay us when you leave, it’s easier to work out the charges”.  There is a more up market marina just outside the town, but in true yottie style we’ve decided to slum it with the local boats and save some money.  Although a sleepy town it’s not quiet, this weekend there is a motorcycle club meet and the place is full of middle-aged blokes squeezed precariously into leather trousers and gunning their Harley Davidsons round and round the port.  The rain is a mixed blessing as all the Harle...

During our stay in Avignon the weather was mainly sunny but with a couple of spectacular thunderstorms and downpours, after which much debris would flow down the Rhone, including large tree trunks and in one case an entire tree.  One of these storms caused us to delay our departure and we finally left on 6th September.  After the last of the Rhone locks we tied up in Arles, famous for its near complete Roman Amphitheatre and as the place where Van Gogh cut part of his ear off.  As luck would have it there was a bullfight in the Amphitheatre that night, so never having been to a nearly complete Roman Amphitheatre or a bullfight before, we bought tickets. Although there is a tame Provencal version of the bullfight, this was a real Spanish corrida.  It was a one-sided affair, Matadors 6, Bulls 0.  Actually, I enjoyed it a lot and Sue was not as upset or disgusted as she thought she might be.  However, having read Hemmingway’s biography and got half way th...

On the 26th August we said goodbye to Lyons and continued our journey South, joining the big old river Rhone just after the City centre.  When the two rivers meet you quickly see who is boss as the size of the river grows and the current increases from something barely perceptible to a knot or more, helping us southward that much faster.  Our first day on the Rhone was actually quite a stressful affair, for much of the day a strong south wind blew up the Rhone valley making the river choppy and uncomfortable.  Early in the day we ran over a big lump of timber which hit our prop and stalled our engine for the second time on the trip – not a comfortable situation with the current running quite strongly and a large river cruise ship heading up river towards us.  Fortunately the engine restarted easily.  A bit later we tried to moor at the large town of Vienne to see the Roman temple there, but the chop on the river was just too great for us to tie up to the town...