Sojourn I Sailing

After a couple pleasant days at Bonifacio we headed out through the cliffs and paralleled the coast of Corsica for a number of miles until the coastline turned to the north east and we continued toward the French mainland. The usual mixture of motoring, motor sailing, and sailing had us make reasonable time. As we neared the mainland coast we came into the short sharp chop of the Mediterranean. The original plan was to make the first stop at Marseille but given the sea state we decided to stop at Hyeres near the Porquerolles. We had anchored off one of the Porquerolles last season prior to making the crossing to Corsica and were happy to return. This time we anchored off Hyeres and took the tender into the local marina to find dinner at a nice restaurant.
The following morning we followed the coast westward to Marseille arriving mid afternoon.
Marseille was our first marina stop outside of La Grande Motte after buying Sojourn I. The main marina in the old port is very large and we were met by two very jovial and helpful French guys to show us to our berth. Both Sue and I recognised them from our last visit and to our surprise they recognised us. They said it was because we were from Australia and they also recognised the boat name. We think they remembered us because we were so wet, cold, and miserable when we were there last.
As this was Kamel's final night with us and he would be on a plane the next morning to return to Turkey we headed out to find Kamel's favourite place - a fish restaurant. To my surprise we ended up having mussels.
I am extremely grateful to Kamel for his time and assistance in sailing Sojourn I from Crete to France. It was much more than either of us originally expected.
Sue and I motored away from Marseille early the following morning toward La Grande Motte. It was always going to be a long day as there was little to no wind and motoring would be it for the day. We did get the sails up and help things along a little later in the day.
As we started to head up into the Golf of Lion we saw more and more boats out enjoying the nice warm day. La Grande Motte came into view as we motored into the mine field of fishing buoys. There is no doubt that La Grande Motte looks different to any other place we had visited over the last two seasons. Its looks are polarising - we both like it.
We called Outremer as we neared to find a berth. They had few options and placed us along side the restaurant query. We had been there before so were ok with this. Unfortunately we were greeted by an angry French cafe owner/manager (not really sure what his job was). Although his english was as good as our french (non-existent) we got the message that he didn't want us there. After talking with Outremer it became clear that this was a long standing dispute as any boat berthed there blocked his customers' view. This escalated over the next few days as Sue found a sign he had placed on our boat (I never did find out what it said) and we hang the washing out all over Sojourn I. The latter resulted in Outremer receiving (by email) a formal complaint that we were breaking some by-law.
When Outremer found us a spot on the regular pontoon P we were very happy to move and join the other Outremer owners far away from the nasty restaurant man. Our pre-atlantic job list wasn't huge but there were a few key jobs that were always gong to the be the critical path. Once these were locked I could clear out the jobs on my list, including replacing the discharge pipe on the starboard head.
Two of the key jobs were upgrading to lithium batteries and having a rig check done.
Saul and Rosie arrived at La Grande Motte the same day as us, after taking a more direct route from Greece, so we enjoyed great company while there.