Prelude to Another Big Adventure

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Our first "big adventure" sailing holiday in Greece seemed to have been a big success. Everyone enjoyed themselves, nobody got sea-sick, we didn't break anything. But the real test was going to be whether or not Eileen and Laura would want to go back and do it again... 

So around November 2010 I started dropping hints to the effect that it sure would be great to go on another sailing holiday. To my amazement, Eileen agreed but she was only really interested in returning to the Ionian. We knew the people at Sail Ionian (highly recommended), we knew the boat (we could probably get the same boat), and we knew the area (deep water, few dangers, and still lots of interesting places that we didn't get to see the first time). So there would be much less stress going back to the same place.

Easter holidays in France would be from 11 April until 25 April 2011. I sent off an email to Di at Sail Ionian asking about availability of boats starting around 16 April. Bad news. They would be delivering new boats from Slovenia and then fitting them out in Greece, so their season would not start until 20 April. Too late for us.

Then I tried Nisos Yacht Charter, who are also located on the island of Levkas. They are another small, family run operation. Their season starts on 1 May :-(

The Ionian is highly popular with British tourists, and the whole thing is driven by the cheap charter flights that run from the UK to Corfu and Preveza. These flights run from the beginning of May until the end of October, so the yacht charter companies base their schedules around these dates. Also, many of the hotels and restaurants close over the winter and don't open up again until Easter. So Easter is really the beginning of the season. But this year Laura's Easter holidays would be early (Easter is on the 24th) and it looked like the Ionian was not going to work out. Time for Plan B.

I started looking at other possibilities in the Mediterranean. What about Corsica? Laura always wanted to visit "L’Île de beauté" and I liked the idea of her discovering a new part of her country. Northern Sardinia also looked very interesting, especially the Maddalena archipelago. The Paris Boat Show was coming up in December, and it seemed like a good opportunity to talk to some charter companies. We went to the Kiriakoulis stand (number 1 charterer in the Med) and asked about Corsica. They don't have a charter base in Corsica! But they do have boats in Sardinia. We got a quote for a boat in Sardinia, but I kind of had my heart set on Corsica by then so they were kind enough to recommend a charterer based in Ajaccio. We tried to find their stand, but couldn't! I consoled myself by visiting the new RM 1060. 

Back home I started searching the web, looking for charter recommendations for Corsica. What I mostly found were people who were unhappy with the condition of the boats they had chartered. Not looking good. While searching online, ads for Corse Technique Marine (Cotema) kept popping up. I tried to ignore them, as I usually do with Google Ads but they wouldn't go away. They were very persistent and I eventually gave in and clicked on the link.

I liked what I saw: a small company that does bareboat charters, but also does skippered charters, sales, maintenance and repairs, and is the exclusive distributor for Sparcraft in Corsica. Surely they would have well-maintained boats. I contacted them and they had a brand new Bénéteau Océanis 31 available. Perfect!

The other good thing about Cotema is that they are based in Solenzara on the east coast, which is the least windy part of Corsica. The prevailing winds (Mistral, Libeccio) come from the west so the east coast anchorages should be more sheltered. 

Wind was going to be more of a problem in Corsica than in the Ionian, because in the Ionian the islands of Levkas, Kephalonia, Ithaka form a sort of barrier to the sea swell. There is no such protection for Corsica, and the extreme northern tip (Cap Corse) and extreme southern tip (Bouches de Bonifacio) have fierce reputations. There are also fewer places to shelter, so we would have to plan things carefully. And of course I told Eileen that we wouldn't be going anywhere near the Bouches de Bonifacio...