After leaving Ile St Honorat (the monks island – pics are now uploaded) we headed for Villifranche, which is a very sheltered bay with lots of beautiful villa’s on steep hills and a lovely old town. There is another lovely town on the other side of the headland just a walk away – Beaulieu Sur Mur – so plenty to keep us occupied for a few days. Its also a destination for the cruise ships, they anchor just in the bay, almost every day there is either 1 or 2 massive ships helping the bay to be even more sheltered when the wind blows from the south. We headed here as the forecast was predicting easterlies, which would have made the monks island very uncomfortable, otherwise we would have stayed longer. After a few days, the wind came around to the south, making it a little uncomfortable, so we headed for another anchorage within the bay, but more sheltered. We went to bed in the knowledge that the anchor had been settled for the whole day, so should be ok…….not having done much anchoring, we tend to leave the bedroom curtain up, so that anytime in the night, we can peep outside just to make sure we haven’t dragged. This night, I had checked many times upto around 1am, we were lined up with other boats, so went back to sleep. At 3am we were both awoken with an almighty crash, sitting bolt upright, we both leaped out of bed, totally naked to see what was up. Another boat had crashed into us!!!!! Within a couple of seconds, we had realised the wind had changed we were pointing north and we had actually dragged 300-400 meters south crashing into another yacht. You can imagine, it was all hands on deck to get fenders in place(think we will put fenders on from now on!), engine on, anchor up and re position. We spent a while trying to decided what to do….go into the marina, pick up a bouy which I didn’t like the look of, as it didn’t look man enough for the job, anchor somewhere else in the bay or just anchor back where we were. We finally made the decision to go back to where we were, and have hourly anchor watches to make sure we didn’t move again. Stu covered the 1st hour. I didn’t mention that at 3am, there was the sound of thunder in the distance. I took the 4.30am watch slot and planned to read my book…..however the biggest and best thunderstorm was happening out to sea, we had sheet & fork lighting to the east and the west and finally right outside the bay where we had pink fork lighting, it was so amazing at 5.30 I told stu I would do the next hour as I was wired on the light show outside, it was fantastic! The anchor did hold, the sea bed shelved off quiet steeply, so with the sudden change in wind, we think this is what caused the dragging, since then, we have put out much more chain! Mits had her 1st swim off the back of the boat(pic in gallery), she really wasn’t happy at being lowered into the water – but she will have to get used to it, as we hope this will help keep her cool, as the weather gets hotter.
Next stop was Italy, passing Monoco. We decided not to go to Monoco or Nice, as cities, are not really our thing, but we got close enough to take a couple of snaps! Just as we passed Monoco we were approached by an official navy looking boat. The came very close to us, then very close to another boat we are cruising with, then went away several hundred meters away. A few minutes later they launched a rib with 6 people on board and sped over to us. They arrived saying “customs, we want to board your vessel” – we slowed down and allowed them on board – although I did say to Stu really we should have asked for their ID….but I think their guns & mini war ship where ID enough! They had a good look around, ask us if we had anything to declare for customs, we said no, they replied ….so no guns on board? Ha ha ha……Stu laughed out loud…..but still they wanted to have another look around, check our papers, passports. It wasn’t until we showed them our log that they realised we really where just 2 old farts on tour! The mountain views in that 1st part of Italy are spectacular – see pics in Gallery. San Remo is a big town, however it has a fab feel, very energetic but chilled out. We stayed 3 nights to get stocked up and catch up with the massive pile of laundry. The last day we walked up the hill to what I guess is the old town, it was full of tunnels and little streets, houses all joined together with the tunnels and flying buttresses, a must see if ever you go to San Remo. Weather was fantastic, had the summer set in? I wondered and hoped. We left after the 3rd night(as it was 3 nights free on the quay) decided to go 30 miles up the coast. There wasn’t much wind, however there was a swell. It wasn’t big, but wasn’t comfortable at all, so after an hour we stopped at a bolt hole just 7 miles away in a marina. Popping our heads into the chandlers, we stumbled across a used anchor the same as ours but the next size up which we bought – so we think that fete bought us here to improve our sleep when anchored up at night. We popped our noses out this morning, but the swell was worse than the day before, as we had wind over swell and the swell was breaking, so we decided to head straight back into the marina – a good decision, as the wind increased and it has been raining, we again heard faint thunder in the distance…..maybe summer hasn’t set in just yet…….