Sailing from Tuscany to the Cote Azur

We started our sailing travel at Piombino, Italy on 8th October. Our first goal was to arrive in Nice, France by 24 hours non-stop sail.

The weather conditions were perfect for sailing. We continued on our way to Nice by crossing the island of Capraia. Unfortunately it was a dark moon period and the sunset was around at 19:30. The only lights that we could see was just the stars after the sunset. The night was cloudless. Imagine that you are in the middle of the sea in the middle of the night and there is no piece of land around of you and you’re going to a place that you’ve never been to before. You turn your head to the sky and thousands of stars blink at you. It was the moment I felt closest to the stars. I’ve never seen before something like this in my life. It is difficult to describe the feast that the sky presents to you. We have seen at least 50 shooting stars till sunrise. Who knows how many thousand light years before they were there, who knows to which galaxies they brought life.

While we were sailing with all these thoughts in our mind, suddenly we started to see lights on our route in the middle of the sea. We thought it was a cargo ship, but there was a lot of light. Even if it is a cargo ship, should be a three times bigger than Titanic. We were trying to understand what it was. Then we noticed that the light that we saw was not going away. Because of that we were getting closer and closer. We were trying to figure out what was going on with the binoculars but it was not possible to see in the darkness of the night. Then the radio started to announce. Security, security, security. I think there is no other thing is more excited than this announce in the world. In the middle of the night security, security, security. Then we realized that the announce was about two tanker ships that they crashed each other and all the others should have passed 10 miles away from the accident. Coordinates: : 43 14 9 N, 009 287 E.

So we changed our route to 10 miles away. We started to move away from the scene with security announcements in the windy night with Gran lasco.

As the night progressed, the sleep began to suppress. We couldn’t sleep cause of stress of the tanker accident but we were almost sure with the sunrise we will have started to be more relax. The sun started to rise at 6:00 in the morning. Darkness finished, but we didn’t get much peace. There was a wind of 30 knots. It was also quite volatile, although it was not said in weather applications. We kept on waiting for the current weather.

Current weather predictions said that, the winds will have continued to run till 10 o’clock. But it never finished actually. Luckily, the weather was sunny, and if it was rainy, it would be more tiring for us. We continued in this chaos for two more hours and reached Nice.

Entering in a port from a rough sea make you feel warm, after docking the boat in the marina the day started to be very peaceful.

Nice is a nice place. As in all the French coast you can feel a great welcome reaching by boat. French people are very respectful to who arrive from the sea. The main idea is that going around by sailing is not an easy thing, so when you dock your boat in the marina you feel really welcomed. The price of the Port of Nice for one night is just 16€ (october), with a well mooring, with electricity, water and good showers.

The port is located few minutes walking from the city center. You can visit the beautiful streets around the old center, find a good restaurant and tast some delicious french wine. Only problem was a rain a lot for 3 days, but we were happy to find ourselves in a safe port during this bad weather. Because of the shitty weather in those days, some troubles happened in the cities along the coast of Lion Gulf, right on our way for the next week, some floods, even some death (read the news here).

We stayed in Nice for 3 nights. Then 2 days of great sun and N-E wind were waiting for us, to bring us to our next destinations by sailing. Saint Tropez and Toulon…