Today was our first proper day out sailing. Just two of us, as Max is still staying with his mum looking after his dad who had an operation last week. We needed to go to Antibes because Phillipe will dismantle our mast and lay the cable in it properly. All this should happen in French shipyard where they did it initially and should happen on Monday the 14th. But as on Tuesday is in France holiday the shipyard is closed both days and they'll see us on Wednesday. Andrea insisted on making the passage as planned on Sunday early morning so we can spend two days in Antibes. I wasn't very keen as the weather forecast for Sunday the 13 th included some gales.

Well, we woke up at 7am. We left Marina degli Aregai around 0800, had some good wind at the beginning for at least 3 hours. Around lunchtime, the wind died on us and had to motor for half hour… we took turns in helming the boat, one hour each and made sure that the log was kept. The Vauban-Antibes port was busy, no vacant berths, so we moved to the other one and the same… We were in the similar situation as few years ago in South Ives in the UK. So we kept trying, sailing towards Nice and more west. By this time the wind really picked up…the lesson number one: make sure you have charts on board for the area you are planning to visit as well as the surroundings. What happened to us was that we had only one chart covering Antibes nothing for westerly parts of France. Luckily we had C-Map charts and a wonderful pilot book that gave us brilliant information about nearby ports… So we got berth 571 in Port de Cannes and congratulations to Andrea because he managed to get between two motor boats without any difficulties. One thing that was new to us were the rings on the pontoon instead of big "cleats" we are used to. Both neighbours were in so they watched our every move with anticipation and at the end one of them helped us to put the stern lines into the rings. I took the chain for the bow anchor and feeling tired, but happy we both started on putting our yacht to bed.

From all that excitement, didn't even feel like eating something straight away (was almost 1800, lunch at 1200). We went for a short walk nearby, saw oysters and got twelve for dinner, pasta carbonara followed by one beer to share…