Our first shakedown cruise on the new boat went well. We did not do too much damage to the crew or the boat. The crew was Marsha, Travis, Cameron, and me. We left La Grande Motte on Friday morning. It was blowing about 18 knots when we left the marina. We headed out around the point at Port Camargue and raised the mainsail and unfurled the jib. The boat moves so easily through the water and we were quickly going 9 to 10 knots close hauled to St. Tropez. We thought we might get there by midnight. But the wind dropped off to about 8 knots after a few hours. We set the Code 0 and flew that for few hours and then it picked back up a few knots and we dropped it and set the jib again. We sailed along for the rest of the day at 6 to 8 knots until the wind completely died and we started the engines. The boat has 2 Volvo 40 hp diesels on sail drives. It motors at 6.5 knots on one engine and 7.5 to 8 knots on 2 engines at 2200 RPMs.
We arrived in the Gulf of St. Tropez around 10 am after sailing all night and motored into the St. Tropez marina to see if we could get a slip. The marina was packed with megayachts doing the summer charter trade. It was full so we headed back outside the marina and anchored and all of us sacked out for a few hours to catch up on sleep. Later that afternoon, Travis was looking at the charts and said there was a marina at the north end of the bay in Port Grimaud. He called them on the phone and they had slip. (It is hard for Cameron and Travis to be without high speed internet for more than 24 hours.) We motored up to the marina and tied up stern to. In the marinas in the Med, there are typically no slips, just long concrete quays with mooring lines off the bow. The procedure is to back in, tie off a stern line, pick up the bow mooring line, and power forward while you tie off the bow. It is going to take a bit of practice to get the procedure down! The next day we took the short ferry ride over to St. Tropez and spent the afternoon eating lunch and walking around the town.
The food in southern France has been terrific and the prices are similar to US restaurants. We walked up to the Citadel at the top of the town. It offers views of the entire Gulf of Tropez. That night after returning to Port Grimaud, we walked over to a small restaurant and the food was very good as well. The next day we left Port Grimaud around 10 am to start back to La Grande Motte. There was very little wind so we motored to Ile de Porquerolles, which is a largest island of the Iles de Hydres. The islands are part of the Port Cros National Park. We anchored near Point Bearlieu in sand in about 12 feet of very clear water. There was some grass on the bottom and it took us a couple of attempts to set the anchor. We launched the dinghy and motored into the town. We walked over to the beach and checked out the small town. They had a surprising amount of boat services available for an island. We had dinner on the boat and a nice night in the anchorage.
The next morning we started early and headed back to La Grande Motte. For the last 6 hours or so of the trip back, the wind was blowing about 10 knots from the southwest at a true wind angle of 60 degrees. We set the Code 0 and the boat sailed really well at 9 to 10 knots until we made it to LGM. I am becoming a big fan of the Code 0. It was a nice way to wrap our first cruise on Cayuse. We have a couple of items to fix on the boat but not too much. The Outremer guys have been very helpful in working with us on the boat.
I fly back to Houston this weekend and Marsha, Travis, and Cameron are going to Paris and then to Malawi in Africa to help with the Good Steward’s literacy program. In the past, the group has focused on building libraries in Uganda, but this year they are branching out to Malawi. The books for the libraries have already been collected in Houston and shipped in a container to Longwai, Malawi. The group will spend a couple of weeks in Malawi building libraries in small villages.
Cayuse 