July 13th - July 22, 2005
Other cruisers had told us not to miss Bonnifaccio, but we were unprepared for the stunningly beautiful town perched up on a limestone cliff You pass by the cliffs then circle your way back into the town. As we're winding our way up the inlet, the BIG Yachts were parked everywhere. The "boat boys" in inflatables met us and directed us to a berth in the marina. It's easier to get off the boat from the stern so Steve carefully backed Sugilite into the slip. Then they directed Triumph and Tapestry, the two boats we're traveling with into slips on the same dock. As we were getting settled, James and Karen (Blue Heron) came by to say hello. They picked up their Hallberg-Rassy the same summer we did. We last saw them in Lagos and then again in Rota last year. They are meeting up with a group from the San Francisco Yacht Club in Croatia in about 3 weeks so we didn't have much time to compare notes. We both have the same engines in our boats so we traded maintenance issues and problems that we have been experiencing. (They are using about 5 times as much Camping Gaz as we are, and our motor mounts keep getting loose - things like that.)
It turned out that July 14th is Bastille Day in France and because Bonnifaccio is a French Island, we were treated to a great fireworks show the night of the 13th. The fireworks were shot off over the citadel up on the cliff in front of the marina.
The next day, the boat beside us pulled out early. Based upon what we had seen so far in our fellow cruisers (particularly charter cruisers) we didn't comlpletely trust the docking skills of our new potential slip mate, so we took turns going to the internet cafe so that one of us was on the boat when the "new boat" pulled in next to us. I should mention that there are a variety of "charter boats" here and the skippers of charter boats are known for being inexperienced and sometimes doing just plain stupid things. While Steve was checking email, the wind had come up a bit, making backing into slips even a bit more challenging. The new boat came in, but apparently this was the first time ever that they had landed their boat and no one knew about taking the line from the dock and walking it to the bow, pulling up on that line until it was tight enough to hold the bow of the boat from hitting your neighbor's boat. Fortunately, there were several people on the adjacent boats and we all jumped on this boat and "showed" them what they were suppose to do. After that boat was snug in its slip, another charter boat comes down the channel at a very fast clip and managed to hit about 3 other boats. It totally destroyed the dingy motor on the first boat he hit and just about crushed a fiberglass runabout. He scraped his boat on our anchor but didn't hurt our boat. Steve came back at this time, so we decided it was time to leave as more charters boats were coming in. Before we could get out of Dodge, there was one more charter boat side-swiping boats along the way. He managed to nail two boats and push one of those boats into a third one. The spectators had a great time. The participants were less thrilled. We managed to stay mostly in the spectator category.
Julie on Tapestry has been doing watercolors and sketches of the different scenes along the way and encouraged me to give it a try. I had some colored pencils so did a picture of a dingy that we saw in Alghero. The pencils didn't give it enough "color" so Julie let me borrow her paints one evening. So, now I'm an "artist in training", having done about 5 different sketches. We found some watercolors in a town in Corsica so now I have my own set of colors to mix. Having never had an art course, its an interesting experience.
Here is a copy of one of Steve's emails to some fellow cruisers:
Avast ye dogs, we've been boarded
Motoring up this stunning coast, I was lazing in the sun when I heard the roar of big engines coming our way. Looking up from my almost slumber, I see what appears to be a cutter heading at full speed directly for us. Since he was going to cross our "fishing" line, I thought I just might get up and warn him. Fishing is in quotes, because that damn line has never ever seen a fish. He didn't pay too much attention to my gesticulations and ran over it anyway, but not without a lot of gesticulations on their part when they finally saw the line too late to stop. He stopped, I stopped. He waited. I waited. I looked at the stripe on his hull and the big letters "DOUANE" and figured he wasn't coming by to give us some fishing pointers. Finally, they lowered an inflatable into the water. Triumph and Tapestry, who had been cruising with us, decided not to stick around to swap fishing stories, and motored into the horizon. I think they even boosted their RPMs, but you will have to ask them for sure.
Four of them dropped into the boat and headed our way. Knowing the French proclivity for bare breasts, I suggested that Jan might consider that option as a tactical diversion. She didn't think enough of the suggestion to respond however. So, if she wasn't going to co-operate, it would just have to be me that would keep my shirt off. They pulled along side with their guns, notebooks and regulation manuals. Three of them boarded, the fourth stayed in the inflatable and puttered around. They proceeded to inspect our papers, ask detailed questions on the various ports of call we have made. Three separate times they wanted me to confirm that we had been to Gibraltar. They wanted to know when we crossed from the States. We told them that we hadn't and had purchased the boat in Sweden. They then wanted details on our trip down from Sweden, where we left the boat, etc. They then brought out a big book of EU Regulations and proceeded to make a conference in the back of the boat. At one point, (my French is not that great) one of them said that it doesn't matter because we came from Gibraltar. Another one took our passports during this time and went to the bow and called them in on the radio.
After about 20 minutes of paper looking and question asking, they wanted to do a search below. We were getting a little frustrated at this point, because they hadn't even offered us one tip on our fishing technique yet. Anyway, two went down below with me. Jan stayed above with the other one. They looked in several lockers, doors, first aid kit, and a few other things. It didn't help a whole lot when they picked up a basket that was loaded with empty shotgun shells that we had picked up as souvenirs from an Sardinian festival we had attended a couple of weeks back. We got this new round of questioning on whether or not we had guns aboard. I tried in my best French to explain silly Sardinian country festival rituals involving shotguns, wine and horses.
When they finally got to the V-berth and saw how loaded and piled up it was, even they didn't want any part of it. So back up to the cockpit we all went. Then they wanted to see the ship's log. They went through it page by page. I assume to confirm my earlier verbal summary of our itinerary. They didn't like the fact that it wasn't a glued book binding and was spiral bound and that it didn't have printed page numbers. They pointed out that if I wanted to, I could tear our pages and replace them. But they accepted it. They then went through our passports again, page by page. Occasionally asking about specific entries in them, particularly about the Moroccan entries. Finally, all was good and they left roaring off into the proverbial sunset (except it was still morning and they headed North). Total time aboard -- about an hour.
What I got out of this was that the French consider Gibraltar a restart on the VAT clock. In layman terms, what that means is that if you stay in the EU more than 18 months, you have to pay the VAT TAX on the value of your boat. The tax rate is about 20%, which is a big hunk of change, not easily pulled out of an ATM machine. They clearly felt that our trips to Gibraltar and Morocco were enough to give us a new entry into the EU and a new start of the 18 month clock.
Imagine our surprise, when we pulled into the bay later that afternoon, where we planned to spend the night, and the French Customs boat was already there and all of the Custom's officers were out swimming. Late that afternoon, they decided to get dressed and began to track down one more suspect. They picked on Triumph this time, but he got swimming hole tips out of it. We never did get our fishing tips.
We should say something about the dramatic cliffs along Corsica. At the town, Calvi, you can even see a bit of snow on the high mountains. Each night we have been mooring in a cove. Sometimes that gets a bit interesting. The French have some new kind of anchor that doesn't require you to "set the anchor." They simply let out the chain. By the time it hits bottom, they are busy getting drinks or swimming. Makes the rest of us a bit nervous.