Waiting, waiting in Menton.
All too soon and it was goodbye farewell to family, friends and Australia and on to France. Sandy was meeting me there after surprising her sister Annie for her birthday at Lake Como. I took the second of the new QF services, full fare to Rome via Perth on a 787. I had last flown myself into Rome back in 2002 as the B747-338 was winding up there. It was a memorable trip back then with my First Officer back then, Karl Schwarz, who serendipitously turned out to be on his first time back to Rome since then, but now he was the Captain of this new service I was on. All said it was a very comfortable trip with the wide pitch seating of the Qantas 787's. Masks were on to Perth but off after that to Rome. Sadly for me probably, this is how I got my second dose of Covid as even the trains in Italy were strictly masks on.
After hibernating in Menton ( I don’t do Covid well!), we were able to settle on the boat and move aboard. The previous owners set an exorbitant price on the pots, pans, chattles etc so we decided to set it all up ourselves. We hired a car for a couple of days and headed to the big smoke of Nice to get lost in a french Ikea exactly as we do in Oz and to a bunch of other stores. Whilst my spoken french gets us by, stocking our new home finding all manner of “stuff” from forks to a washing machine, was certainly far from entertaining. Fortunately the wide array of cheap but very tasty rosé wine and fine cuisine preserved our sanity.
Whilst similar in a number of ways to buying a car the purchase of a boat throws up a few extras a car doesn’t especially if purchasing overseas. Insurance for a boat especially overseas is not quite so straight forward. Each country “flags” its vessels and gives them a registration number and usually issues an MMSI number in addtion to this and has requirements for these. One of these is to prominently display the registration number and vessel length, however Australia insists stupidly that a 10 m vessel must display the same size lettering as a supertanker! We couldn’t retain the French flag as we are not French nor did we have residency there. Besides which we liked the idea of flying the Aussie flag on our now Aussie yacht in spite of its design . Little did we know that Australian bureaucracy from the early 80’s persists to this day with our reflagging taking nearly 6 weeks at 150 euros per day in the marina (it added up!). And to the insurance, we could choose from a pletora of competitive insurers in Europe and the UK if we were Euro/UK flagged, but not if we were Aussie flagged. There are but 2 very uncompetitive insurers based in Australia who will insure Aussie boats overseas and they charge significantly more to insure the same boat in the same waters as their UK/Euro departments will.
So we used the time well fitting out the boat with sailing stuff that the previous owners took off the boat like life jackets and fenders, as well as e-bikes and little bits and pieces to make it feel like home. We enjoyed Bastille day and got into marina life meeting some terrific folk along the way. Liveaboards as I suppose we are known, all get along pretty well and enjoy mutual respect and tolerance fore each other as we experience all the same issues and foibles just at different times. All are generous of time and spirit, don’t mind a drink or five generally and are mostly always very hospitable.
Right from day one, a UK couple, Gary and Victoria on their Lagoon catamaran next door fit this bill welcoming me straight away with a Kronenburg 2 minutes after greeting me. Steve Pondart also on a Lagoon and resident in Port Garavan was very helpful with all sorts of additions we made early on to Cooinda. Steve was a clearance diver in the French navy and spends time otherwise doing ultra marathons and driving super yachts. Passing through Menton were Scott and Tina Crabdree on their FP 42 Astrea, Always. They were great company and we were destined to catch up with them seversal times ver the next few months. They are typical of so many we meet who have upped stumps for the cruising life. Not naturally sailors, hailing from Arizona, nevertheless they took to the life quickly with their fantastically set up boat overseeing the build in the factory in La Rochelle.
We got to know Menton well and ventured up around there not just on the bike but in a car. The village in the hills overlooking Menton, Saint Agnes enjoys a commanding view of the region and like so much of what we are to see has it’s own unique history of conquest, plunder and regeneration. It rates highly in the list of the most beautiful villages in France (Les Plus Beaux Villages de France).
We took Cooinda for a spin with Steve to get to know the systems. Steve had been looking after the boat as the previous owners only used the boat for a few weeks every 12 months, so was the perfect person to show us the ropes so to speak. We then took Cooinda west through Monaco and on the the very picturesque Villefranche sur Mer. We had with us as our first guests Emma Greene and her two friends Paris and Sarah. It happily was uneventful and a great day for a sail along the French Riviera seeing the rich and famous parade past or lounging in mansions by the sea.
