Feeling a minnow on the French Riviera

Mike and I dropped anchor after our crossing of the Bay of Marseilles at the pretty island of Porquerolle and got our heads down for a few hours. Refreshed and looking forward to my croissant I threw some water over my face to wake myself up – and got the shock of my life – there was a demon looking back at me out of the mirror!

When I had dived down to the anchor before leaving for the crossing, with a rope in one hand and the other being used to hold my nose to clear my ears I had been unable to equalise the pressure in my mask. I had felt the pressure increasing but was so focused on getting to the anchor that I had not paid it much attention. Here was the consequence. The pressure had burst a few blood vessels in my eyes, filled my eye balls with blood and given me a couple of nice black eyes – this photo was taken 3 days later! Oh well, I hopped I wouldn’t scare too many people away!

The islands are nature reserves and had some lovely walks. It was then time to hit the French Riviera – to St Tropez! The idea didn’t grab us much. We pictured a coast of over developed high rise (albeit luxury) apartments. St Tropez could not have been further from that description. It is a delightful old harbour town with cobbled streets, narrow alleyways and over hanging timbered buildings; the wealth one would expect was certainly there but it was discrete and very tasteful.

From St Tropez we were lucky with the wind and had a very pleasant sail east to our next Riviera gem, the rather larger old town of Antibes dominated by its 16^th century fort and a stunning backdrop of the snowy Alps. We took to our bikes to get a closer look at the Riviera.

The snag with biking here is its hilly. However, we had learned last year to cheat; we got a taxi inland and up several thousand feet and cycled back. We still managed to climb over 2000’ on our 30-mile ride despite basically heading downhill! From the hills we hit the coast south of Cannes and took the coast road back to Antibes. Cannes it met perfectly our worst expectations of the Riviera – a place to avoid.

From Antibes it was a short sail to Nice where I would drop Mike and pick up Melanie. We dropped anchor in front of the beautiful old village of Villafranche, just past Nice. We had ordered a spare part for the anchor winch that had failed before leaving Spain so jumped on our bikes to ride back through Nice to pick it up. Nice also rather fits our original description; stay away from the big places but the small harbour towns are delightful.

In what anywhere else in the world would be regarded as a good size boat, here we are a minnow. We would fit nicely if we were dropped sideways on the aft deck of many of the super yachts parked here. The big yachts have super sexy big rubber boats to get them ashore, the really big yachts have helicopters!

On Thursday I said goodbye to Mike and waited for Melanie later that day. With royalty arriving the boat had to look her best; I dressed her up with a wonderful bag full of bunting I found had been left on the boat!

Following hot on Melanie’s heals were Olly, Tim and his girlfriend Lucy for the bank holiday weekend. It was lovely to have them on board; anchoring off the beach we went for lunch in a lovely restaurant that Lucy had always dreamt of arriving at by boat!

After 3 days of fun we had our team photo in ‘Rock ‘n’ no Roll’ T shirts and said goodbye. 

One of the days with the kids we had been to Monaco and it seemed we had stumbled into Monaco at just the right time – the Grand Prix was in town!