Solenzara -> Paris

Captain

Xavier comes at 08:00 to pick up the bits of broken cockpit table. He takes them to the office and comes back to say that this isn't the first broken one they've had, he considers it a design fault, and they aren't going to charge us for it. Great, thanks! Next time we won't risk it, we'll fold up the cockpit table when underway.

He comes on board and we go through the list of breakages, malfunctions, and the grounding. I don't bother with our list of suggestions because we are running short of time. 

For breakages we had the cockpit table and the binocular eye piece. For malfunctions we had a leak in the coachroof near the mast, the wind instrument whose display went blank at one point, and the autopilot that sent us off in the wrong direction once. The wind instrument and autopilot both worked normally after rebooting them, but the heading on the autopilot never did agree with the compass heading from the beginning.

First Mate

In case someone from Cotema is reading this, here are the suggestions: a gas lighter would be better than matches for lighting the gas rings, a hand brush and dustpan would be useful for tidying up crumbs, and a coffee maker would have been nice. Also a few bits of small cordage and a spare roving fender always come in handy. 

In general though, the boat was great. It was clean, well equipped, and well prepared. I had been worried about having problems with a brand new boat. The internet forums are full of people complaining about problems with their new boat and it's true that they do seem to need a bit of "debugging". But everything was well sorted on Achab and the few malfunctions we did have were insignificant.

We tell Xavier about the grounding at Rondinara and he asks me to show him on the chart where it was. I show him and he is pretty sure the bottom is sandy there. In any case I know we didn't hit rock and he doesn't seem to think there will be any damage. He calls Raphael to tell him about it. We meet Raphael at the office and he says he would like to lift the boat out to inspect the keel. Fair enough, but unfortunately the boat has to go out again so their won't be time to do that beforehand. Hmm, not great. I ask if they have a diver who could take a look but he says they don't. We agree to contact the insurance company.

Bosun

Raphael has arranged for someone to drive us to the airport, and it's time for us to get going. The driver is a young Brazilian who has been living in Corsica since he was 6 years old. He is very nice and we talk about Corsica and Brazil and languages and work and everything. He loves it here, he says the Brazilians describe Corsica as a "mini Brazil". He thinks we should move here, after all the real estate is cheap in comparison to most other places. And why would you want to live anywhere else?

Soon we arrive at Figari airport. We want to give him a tip, but the only cash we have is a five euro note that Eileen found in the street on her way to work. Her "lucky fiver" that she's been saving in order to buy a lottery ticket. We give it to him, and hope that we'll get some good karma in return. We'll never know if we would have won the lotto.

The good ship Achab

As soon as we stop moving the ground starts swaying. After a short delay, we board the plane. It's cloudy so we don't see much during the flight home. After an uneventful hour and a half we land in Paris, and boy is it hot! It was cloudy and 18° when we left Figari, and now it's sunny and 25° in Paris. We get a taxi home. It's Easter weekend, we'll have to try to find a piece of lamb for dinner tomorrow. For some reason I keep checking the wind forecast for the Strait of Bonifacio...