We finally received our safety kit, loaded it on board and returned the rental car. All ready for an early start on Saturday. We awoke on Saturday morning, ready to go, breeze was forecast as 20 – 25 knots from the east, so it should be an easy reach to Palma, some 300 miles away. We fuel led up at Toulon Old Port and motored out of the Harbour. The way out of the harbour was \u00a0 upwind so we motored for about an hour until we could unfurl the jib (but only 2\/3 out) We then set course for Palma, only to find that the wind had increased to 30 knots and it was very uncomfortable. Given that this was our first sail and we were still not familiar with the boat, we decided to sail to Bandol which was downwind most of the way. wind was now gusting to 35, so we knew we had made the right choice. Arriving in Bandol just after mid day, we went alongside at the Capitanairre and had to wait until 2pm for them to return. Thankfully they found us a berth and we then set about mooring the boat, wind was gusting up to 45 knots at this stage, so mooring her was quite a challenge, however we got lots of help from the boats either side and we managed to get in without damage. The harbour master was a great hand and the bow moors to a chain which is in permanently in place. After a nice dinner ashore at a locals cafe, we retired for the evening only to be woken at 3am by a bang – the bow line had chafed through in the windy night. Managed to re-moor and go back to sleep. Looking at the weather forecast it appears we will probably be here for another night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We finally received our safety kit, loaded it on board and returned the rental car. All ready for an early start on Saturday. We awoke on Saturday morning, ready to go, breeze was forecast as 20 – 25 knots from the east, so it should be an easy reach to Palma, some 300 miles away. … Continue reading This Wasn’t in the Brochure<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventures-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3VxXq-U","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58,"href":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions\/58"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}