Upon leaving Pisa, we pointed our sails towards the large French island of Corsica. Our hope was to meet up with a couple of Conor’s Irish college buddies and their wives as they were already in Corsica. Ed and Heike were on their own boat, and Trevor and Sally Ann were vacationing on Corsica but planning to spend a few days aboard with Ed and Heike. Ideally, we all would have met up together, but unfortunately, the winds were such that we could not make that happen. Thankfully, though, we still got to see everyone, just in smaller groups. We had such fun catching up, hanging out, and enjoying two very lovely French towns – Saint-Florent and Calvi.
Here was our path:
To get to Corsica from Pisa, we had a long day and a stopover at the Tuscan island of Capraia. Absolutely gorgeous spot! The crystal clear water was fabulous, and we enjoyed our quiet night at anchor. In the morning we were entertained by a sailing race, which was tough as there was very little wind.
We then had a short hop to the northeast tip of Corsica. We had a beautiful anchorage at Punta Vecchia, and were officially in French waters. We were excited to start out in such a lovely place and were looking forward to seeing what Corsica had to offer. Our first gift was to be inundated with a hoard of flies, however. That was not fun, and Conor tried to squash every last one. As a result, our stern deck looked like a battlefield.
Our next move was around the corner to the large Gulf of Saint-Florent. The wind was going to start howling and would be for a while, so we needed a safe place to hunker down. We ended up spending a week in this spot just waiting for the winds to die down. (I’ll explain more about these crazy winds in my next post.) We also had a couple of days of lightning storms and heavy rains. A special phenomena – when the rains come from the south, they carry with them the red African sand. So, in addition to our fly battlefield, Sabática was now covered in a layer of reddish sand everywhere. Yuck. We heard through our sailing Facebook groups that the sand was reaching everyone from Spain all the way to Croatia. We were in a beautiful setting, though, and could easily take UberDing into the marina and explore the lovely town of Saint-Florent. So, we were not complaining too much.
Given we were stuck in place, Trevor and Sally Ann very kindly offered to drive about 3 1/2 hours across the mountainous island to meet us. We were excited to have them onboard, but Conor was desperate to wash the boat! We literally found out several hours before their arrival that the marina could offer us a spot. We grabbed it and got to work!
We enjoyed having Trevor and Sally Ann with us for what ended up being three days. I think we chatted for three days straight! As we chatted, we also explored Saint-Florent, returned to the nice restaurant Conor and I liked, spent a night at anchor within the larger bay in a beautiful swimming spot, spent another night at anchor outside the marina, and spent a day inland visiting a winery and a tiny hillside town, Oletta. All lovely! When it was time for them to leave, we conveniently pulled up to the fuel dock in the marina to fill up and drop them off on land. 😉 Thank you again, Trevor and Sally Ann, for making the trek and spending the fun time!
When conditions finally allowed us to exit the gulf, we made a beeline for the town of Calvi so we could now see Ed and Heike before they had to head off. Thankfully, we overlapped for a night so got to have a couple of meals, meet Heike’s stepmother who had just arrived, and explore Calvi a bit together. Did I mention that all the lads studied engineering? I think they had fun discussing all the techy details of the various boats! Ed and Heike had to get back to mainland Italy, but we’re so glad we managed to cross paths!
Conor and I stayed in Calvi another day because it was such a nice spot and we were waiting out wind conditions, yet again. Conor got to paddle (which he loves doing to explore all the cool places we land in), we went to the beach, strolled more around town, and chuckled at being so on show as we were docked right in front of all the seaside restaurants.
It felt a little strange being in France after being in Italy for so long, but Conor’s French came back to him and was very helpful. We found both Saint-Florent and Calvi to be lovely quaint towns with nice shops and plentiful French restaurants. The settings were just beautiful, and we left excited to explore more of Corsica!
Sailing Sabática 