Corsica

12 November 2023 – Porto-Vecchio, Corsica, France

Corsica is lovely and I’ve really been enjoying visiting the island. We first landed in Bonifacio, which is the coolest harbour I have ever been to. As Festina Lente approached, it looked as though we would crash into the steep white cliffs before the narrow entrance became visible. The harbour was long and narrow, sandwiched between cliff faces on either side and overlooked by an old stone citadel. We Mediterranean moored Festina Lente for the first time mostly successfully – it’s a style of docking without pontoons, where the stern is secured perpendicular to the dock and the bow is held off by a line attached to a mooring. Luckily the marinero helped us pick up the bow line with his dinghy.

Bonifacio is beautiful; it almost looks unreal. The view of the town from a nearby cliff that we hiked to looked like something out of a fantasy series.

The old town is located at the top of a hill and can be entered by climbing up a steep staircase and walking through a massive stone gate that would have been part of the wall fortifying the town and could be secured against invaders.

Entrance to old town – Bonifacio, Corsica, France

We ate lunch at a restaurant along a narrow cobblestone street lined with tall stone houses, then went for a walk along the nearby cliffs.

Our next destination was Île Cavallo, only a few miles out of Bonifacio. We anchored off a beach and enjoyed an evening walk past empty holiday homes that looked a bit like hobbit houses. It was pretty deserted but we got a great view of the stars that night.

The next day, we sailed another short distance to the anchorage of Golf de Rondinara, also empty at this time of year.

After we returned from our morning walk, it was pretty calm in the anchorage so we decided to repair a small rip in the giveaway of the genoa. We took it down on deck and my dad got out his sewing machine just as it began to rain. We had already come this far so my dad decided to sew it up anyway while I held the umbrella over the sewing machine. Then Jonas noticed a whole bunch of other small rips in the sail so we fixed a few of those before it started raining harder and the wind picked up so we had to stop. The sail is very well used so soon we need to take it down below and look it over fully.

Fixing the sail in the rain – Golf de Rondinara, Corsica, France

We are currently in the town of Porto-Vecchio. Like Bonifacio, there is an old town up the hill with a stone citadel, although the scenery is less dramatic (but still beautiful; there are a lot of mountains in the background). As this is our last port before we head to Italy, we have been stocking up on delicious French food and eating lots of pain au chocolat and baguettes. My mom and I passed a little roadside stand selling clementines as we came home from the bakery and bought a five and a half kilo bag of them. They are delicious. The farmer selling the clementines gave us a massive sweet potato for free, which he said he had dug up yesterday.

Corsican clementines and a massive sweet potato – Porto-Vecchio, Corsica, France

This morning, we walked around a salt lake and saw a bunch of flamingoes until they were chased away by a dog (not Sirius, surprisingly enough).

Tomorrow the weather is looking good for sailing to Rome, where I have a long itinerary of sites to visit planned out.

Sightseeing in Rome

Sardinia

Festina Lente