In the poster, there is only one building between the iconic Carlton and Martinez hotels. In real life, shot from Peregrinus at anchor, these two are a couple of streets away from each other.
But then again, what would a place like Cannes be without a dose of artfulness, a bit of a sleigh of hand?
iPhone 6 Plus. And never mind the fact that, in Cannes, there's usually a crew to drive the tender.
Leica Typ 114. 8:29 PM, 26 May 2016.
This area of the Roman Provincia Nostra was well-populated and accessible by a major highway –the Via Iulia Augusta passed thru on its way from Antibes to Fréjus. Unlike those towns, however, Cannes did not exist as a city, but merely as farms and factories along the coast.
With the collapse of security after the fall of the Empire, the area became largely depopulated, with a nadir in 891 when the Saracens invaded and held the territory for 80 years. After William the Liberator kicked out the Moors in 972, reconstruction began, and Cannes proper first appears in a document from 1030.
It is largely an accident that turned Cannes into what it is today. In 1834, the Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, Henry Brougham, was taking his daughter to Italy to take care of her respiratory ailment; but the Italian border, at Nice back then, was closed off because of the cholera. Backtracking along the road, he spent a few nights at Cannes, and liked it so much, he built a magnificent villa here and launched it as an internationally fashionable resort town.
Peregrinus at anchor in the Rade de Cannes in front of the Boulevard de la Croisette. 26 May 2016, Leica Typ 114.
Just arrived home from the PalmaVela 2016 regatta which ended Sunday, Magic Carpet 3, a Wally 100' and one the world's most famous racing boats, gets a thorough cleaning in the Vieux Port at St. Tropez: jacklines and foul gear gets hung out to dry in the foredeck, three large cases of all kinds of cleaners and soaps are brought dockside and onboard, wet-dry vacs and electric buffers are readied, and assorted mops, brushes and water-hoses lie about. When your racing crew is a couple of dozen sailors, it's probably not too hard to find a handful to clean up afterwards.
On Peregrinus, though, the sailing crew is down to two, so it's always quite a challenge for the Admiral to rope up cleaning crew after passages!
Check out the dodger on Magic Carpet 3: is it up to Bristol standards? St. Tropez waterfront, 13 May 2013. iPhone 6 Plus.
Saint-Tropez is a place of fancies and whims. One could strut ones' fashions on this dining table, or dance on it: steps are thoughtfully provided.
iPhone 6 Plus.
The Moors were kicked out of this region in 972, after almost a century of occupation. Nonetheless, this part of the old Roman Province remained generally depopulated because the Saracens continued to pirate and raid for the next half-millennium, and, not coincidentally, because Provence was passed along during that time from the German Holy Roman Empire to the Spanish Kingdom of Aragon, and finally to the French kings.
But under René, Count of Provence, a deal was struck in 1470 with a citizen of the Republic of Genoa: in exchange for defending the coast and building a fortress in St. Tropez, the Genoese would pay no taxes and largely self-rule. And so sixty Genoese families migrated to St. Tropez and since then the city had its own navy and army which over the following century fought off pirates, Turks, and Spaniards at various times. The city's privileges, eroded from time by the kings of France, were finally terminated under Louis XIV, in 1672.
To this day, many family names in the St Tropez cemetery, if not most, are clearly Italian.
A side wall in St Tropez, 13 May 2016. Peregrinus has anchored off for a couple of days. iPhone 6 Plus.
The Admiral and the Seaman went shopping for horses in Dourdan (Essone) with Jacqui and Adrian.
Jacqui testing a horse. Frame captured from video taken by the Seaman. iPhone 6 Plus, 21 March 2016
Adrian points out features of the extant features of the Cluniac church of Notre-Dame, consecrated by pope Pascal II in 1107, and the second largest church in Europe until the edification of Saint Peter's in Rome in 1506.
The 1429 siege of La Charité was Joan of Arc's sole military defeat, other than her final capture during the sortie at Compiègne.
With Jan and Jacquie. 19 March 2016.
The Admiral adopted the Alférez at the turn of the century, as a six month old, the last of his litter, just before we moved to Miami. He was our first cat, and because we did not want Sebastian to be lonely when we left the house, he opened the door for Philippe and Isabella not too long afterwards. That was the first favor he did us.
He used up several cat lives. In 2005 in Miami Beach, he ate the ribbon of a birthday balloon, which had to be surgically removed; the scar ran from neck to lower belly. In 2009, he underwent a nuclear medicine treatment to combat an overeager thyroid. In 2013, he was diagnosed with renal failure, and given three months to live. No matter. Not much later, he moved aboard, and went on to travel to six countries in two continents for the next two-and-half years.
Sebastian was devoted to the Admiral. On land, in the air, or at sea, he curled at her side. During her shifts sailing Peregrinus, for instance, he sat on her left, like a dependable co-pilot, no matter the time of day or night. He found peace with the Admiral. He lived his long life in no small part because he trusted her and meekly accepted from his Admiral whatever procedures and medications were needed, without complaint.
Some said he was a lucky cat, but in truth, we are the ones blessed to have had him with us, even if the years with him now seem all too short. Sebastian went to rest, peacefully, in Cartagena, on January 23rd, 2016.
The Admiral doing foredeck work, and so of course, Sebastian was there with her. Águilas, Murcia, January 21, 2016. Leica Typ 114.
We are now anchored in front of Club Náutico La Isleta, in La Manga, where we have been cordially welcomed.
As Luis said: this might be a club, but it is still a port. And good manners and respect for the sea call for ports to welcome mariners. So we are being hosted the way one hosts old friends who come to visit. There is courtesy in La Manga, province of Murcia.
This picture taken at sunrise this morning. iPhone 6 Plus.
Originally, we had no plans to enter this 11 mile by 5 mile hyper saline small sea —the Mediterranean being the big sea. The charts that we have come to rely the most upon showed Peregrinus couldn’t make it at the first set of Westbound buoys. Thereafter, we could –in paper– make it, but our Imray pilot book (2014) hints of silting and of irregular, unknown dredging periods.
We were fortunate, however, that along the way we’ve made Spanish friends with local sailing knowledge and who insisted we shouldn’t skip the Mar Menor, and so we decided to give it a shot. After all, we’ve been known to enter places, from the Bahamas to New Brunswick, with one inch of water below the keel.
We carry three sets of charts of this salty lagoon east of Cartagena, namely
- Navionics (vector, charts fully updated three days prior)
- Instituto Geográfico de la Marina 1:50,000, 1996, (raster, MaxSea on iPad)
- Garmin Bluechart (vector)
It is Navionics that reads that the entrance channel is impassable by anything other than a canoe, and in fact its very chart of the Mar Menor has been presented by others on internet forums as demonstration that Navionics contains imaginary information of the Mediterranean. However, other than here, Navionics has been good to us. For all of Spain, Garmin is simply a rasterised version of the official Spanish charts. And the most updated Spanish charts… are old (1996). Having said that, the Spanish charts, while showing less detail than we like, show that Peregrinus should enter the Mar Menor without issue.
In any event, Peregrinus, which at the very worst has a draught of 2.2 meters fully loaded, and which has its sensors calibrated to show water below the keel, entered the Mar Menor without issue in January 2016, under the following conditions:
Wind during transit 6 knots
True wind direction 45 degrees
Barometer 1032 mb and increasing slowly
True wind day prior 6 knots
True wind day prior 30 degrees
True wind in Cartagena harbour prior week: 10 knots or less
Least depth seen: 3 feet below keel at the second set of physical buoys
(second set of physical buoys are the first set of buoys shown on all charts, entering from Med)
Second least depth seen: 4 feet below keel, 200 feet west of bridge
Tide: 3.5 hours before high tide
Tide coefficient: 56 (two hours before transit)
Tide range: -0.1 metre (low tide), +0.1 metre (high tide)
Current: 0.5 knots, estimated, Eastbound
Peregrinus, under sail, comes across another sailboat in the Mar Menor. Note: no waves! January 29, 2016. Leica Typ 114.
