July 23, 2019
The following day, Stephen and I were relieved to wake up and find good old Flo in the same spot we’d left her the night before. There is still for us invariably this moment of panic when we first wake up, when one or both of us rush to the chart plotter to check that the boat hasn’t moved. Only then can you crawl back into bed and relax for another hour or so before tackling the day. This was a hot and sunny one. As we had the full day to take a break from boat jobs and to explore Cassis, we decided to go ashore and to celebrate being in France with a cafe creme and a pastry (or three). The French just know how to do pastries, man. It's other league. Our plans for the day were to load up on picnic items and take a long hike around the famous calanques. But first things first - checking in! This is something we still hadn’t managed to do properly since embarking on this trip, despite best efforts. When sailing a boat into another country, the first order of business is supposed to be to report to the first official port of entry in that country and to “check in”, which entails providing all the necessary documentation for your boat, including original registration documents, boat insurance, proof of tax-paid status of the boat, and then documents for all passengers, including relevant sailing qualifications, passports, etc. Being the annoying Type A person that I am, I have all of these documents laminated and in an official binder labeled “Florence Boat Papers,” ready for inspection. As we were only in Lisbon for less than 24 hours, we decided to forgo checking in there, and we didn’t have to check in at Gibraltar, as we only stopped for fuel and didn’t technically cross the border. In Dublin, we were told by the marina authorities that since we were a UK-flagged vessel and we would be going through the airport in a number of days, not to bother. Then, in Spain when trying to check in, we were met with blank stares and multiple officials holding their hands up, saying “no lo sé.” So yeah, we didn’t bother with that. France we had heard loves its bureaucracy, and check-in and customs procedures here are supposedly much stricter. Fine by me! I would have been happy to finally have a chance to put my organisational work to use and to stop inadvertently skirting the system. So we loaded up our paperwork and went straight to the Capitainerie in the marina in an attempt to finally become legal travellers. To our surprise, no one in the marina office had any idea what we were talking about. I used my best (re: butchered) French to explain our situation, but they seemed to have no idea what the concept of "checking in" was. They just said if we weren't looking for a berth in the marina, they couldn’t help us. What they did do was insist we pay EUR15 to leave our dinghy on the pontoon for up to 2 hours. What a racket. OK, the futile search for legality continues. We googled Cassis as a French port of entry to try to find the correct place to check in and found only one mention of it on a sailing blog. The post confirmed that Cassis was in fact a port of entry and gave an address and a phone number for the customs office. We walked to the address - the building did not exist. We called the number - it was not in service. Helpful. We walked into the tourism office to see if they had any idea what the check in procedure was for a yacht arriving from another country. No idea. Great! Given that Florence is a UK-flagged vessel and the UK is still (for now!) part of the EU, Florence technically falls under the freedom of movement provision, as does Stephen with his EU passport. I, however, as an American, have been technically illegally travelling since I left Southampton in early May, which doesn’t exactly fill me with ease. And here I am again, documents in hand, waving my passport at French officials, and no one is interested. I guess I have no choice but to continue being Florence’s illegal contraband... I’m just so edgy like that. After what amounted to 2 hours of frustrated attempts, I put our vestigial boat papers back into my bag, and we decided to find a spot in the shade to de-stress over a cold drink. Oh well, we will try yet again to check in at our next port of call in St. Tropez. Surely such a big harbour town would have a clue.
We then provisioned for our picnic at the local market and began our calanque hike. It was around 90 degrees as we approached midday, so the hike was definitely sweaty work. The hike took us along the perimeter of the bay, up some very steep hills, then popped us out by the first large calanque that sits just west of cassis. The view was really remarkable - the calanque was essentially a deep slit in the cliff face, plummeting a few hundred feet down into turquoise water below. There were dozens of small boats moored inside and some very adventurous people actually jumping from the cliff faces into the sea. Stephen and I enjoyed a couple hours of hiking along the narrow dirt paths, scrambling over rocks and under scrubby pines, trying not to fall over the side. We eventually found a little spot under a pine tree right at the tip of the calanque and decided to take a load off to enjoy our picnic - a heart-healthy affair of fresh baguette from the boulangerie, runny, stinky French cheese, logs on logs of saucisson, and rose on ice. This, in my opinion, is perfection. What a great way to spend our first day in Provence.
The hike back into town was in the height of the afternoon heat, and we were both dripping with the meat and cheese sweats by the time we limped back into the village. We headed back to boat and enjoyed an early evening swim listening to some Mozart (we had just watched Amadeus so had been full on nerding out on Mozart for the past couple days) before I knocked us up a dinner of salade nicoise, which we ate watching the most vivid sunset over our peaceful anchorage. The sky burnt bright orange over the dramatic cliffs, with the humming of the cicadas thickening the air as the sky changed colours. Our little corner of Baie de Cassis is turning out to be a remarkable spot.
The following morning, we checked the weather in search of a good window to continue our journey up the coast of France to the Cote D’Azur and our next destination of St. Tropez. There appeared to be a good window on Thursday that would have us on a bit of a beat, but a manageable one, up the coast, past Toulon and Hyeres and the surrounding islands, and into the Gulf of St. Tropez. That gave us another two days to explore Cassis, going on runs, exploring the town, and getting some pesky boat jobs done. Our favourite thing to do in Cassis was definitely the cliff hikes. You can hike around most of the perimeter of the bay before getting to the aforementioned and stunning calanques, which are definitely worth a visit. Oh, and the rose in Provence is dirt cheap, good quality, and well-worth stocking up on.
Thursday morning came and with it just enough wind to get us on our way to St. Tropez. It would be about a 10-hour sail to our desired anchorage in the Baie de Canebiers, a big and apparently well-sheltered bay just east of St. Tropez. We wanted to get there Thursday to avoid what we assumed would be mad crowds of super yachts and charter boats coming in for the weekend. Also, there appeared to be a bit of a gale blowing along the coat of Provence and the Cote d’Azur, kicking up Saturday afternoon and getting pretty ferocious by Sunday, so we were motivated to be out of Cassis and well-ensconced in the protected bay of Canebiers ahead of that threat. We woke up at 7 am, quickly prepared the boat for departure, and weighed anchor, heading out of the beautifully calm anchorage in the early morning light. We waved a final farewell to Cassis, which had proved to be a lovely little stop on our Med tour. Next stop, the glitz and glamour of St. Tropez and the Cote d'Azur.
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