Towards winter port

There was a large sailing ship off Cannes. On the AIS we could see it was called Royal Clipper. We googled the name. The Royal Clipper turned out to be a 5-masted clipper, built according to drawings for the German sailing ship Prussia. In 1910 Prussia sank in the English Channel and re-emerged 100 years later as the cruiser Royal Clipper, which with a crew of 106 men and women can accommodate 227 passengers.

Now, the Royal Clipper had reached Cannes and had anchored near the old port while the passengers were transported to and from land in special vesssels.

We passed the impressive sailing ship (it is the second largest in the world) and sailed into entrance of the harbour. Almost at the same time, a helicopter landed on the full board on the pier on our port side.

We called the port office on the VHF, but got no answer and even found a vacancy. When we had moored, we went up to the office. In the reception was a long counter. Behind it sat a younger man and a younger woman. Further down along the long counter sat 3 elderly men with VHF radios and a screen where the entire harbor could be monitored. To the left resided a lovely middle-aged lady behind her very own counter. Behind her were a few offices, staffed with what looked like additional administrative staff.

We went to the younger man.

"Good day. We are from the boat Heron from Denmark and have put ourselves in place E43. We would like to spend the night here, 'we said, handing the owner's certificate and insurance policy over to the younger man.

The younger man looked excited about the certificate .

It is issued by the Association for the promotion of long-distance shipping. In daily speech the FTLF. The top of the front is a royal crown. Underneath it stands with nice writing Danish Yacht Register. In the middle of the page are Heron's data, our names and photos of us and Heron. At the bottom is a nice stamp and a signature from the association's secretary. On the back is a letter from the Ministry of Justice, which in a formal English confirms that Danish yachtsmen have the right to use split flag. An impressive document. It has been received with great respect at the port offices in France. The younger man noted a number of information on his computer and asked us to go to René, who seemed to be the most significant of the 3 older men.

We walked 6 steps along the counter, made eye contact with René and repeated our starting line. (We know it in almost flawless French). René looked closely at the screen that monitored the harbor. Then he looked at his computer screen. Eventually he raised a large sheet. Looked at it for a long time, wrote something and crossed out something. Finally he looked up and answered - c´est bon,

We went back to the younger man, told him that René had said c´est bon, got an invoice and paid it.

After 30 minutes we were checked in for one night.

When we left home in Humlebæk for 15 months ago, we had two goals:

       1) The Mediterranean

       og

       2) Stop at places we ku 'li'

With Cannes, we had reached the goal of our trip. 

The harbor has room for 1.000 boats. There are quite a few megayachts and large well-maintained old sailboats with solid teak decks, shiny brass lapels and lacquered masts and booms. But there were also smaller boats. On the bridge where we lay, some were inhabited all year round. An entire family lived on an older 26-foot sailboat. It consisted of 2 adults, 3 children and a dog. Sharp contrast to the megayachts. Here the number of occupants was minimized to the least possible and now consisted of the 2-3 obligatory crew members.

The harbor is adjacent to the old town and the La Croisette promenade, which runs all along the city's coastline. Many, if not all, of the expensive branded goods are represented by their own elegant shops. Here are also great hotels, good restaurants and cozy cafes.

The promenade is also known for its festival and congress building. The famous film festival is held here, but many other festivals are also held.

Among other things, a TV festival, which was held during our stay. The participants came from all over the world. They networked in restaurants and cafes and had meaningful conversations on cell phones, if not then they just concentrated on looking famous. Others held morning meetings on megayachts their company had rented during the festival days. Later, they partyed with customers until well into the night.

In the old town is the Musée de la Castre. It is housed in a monastery castle, which is high above the harbor. Here is a wide view of the entire great bay. The museum has a fine collection of antiques, primitive art and musical instruments. A large part is donated by the Dutch nobleman Lyclama, who took the artifacts with him from his travels in Persia in the late 1800s.

We enjoyed the city's French and international atmosphere. Cycled along the promenade right out to Palm Beach. Here kite-and windsurfers made air acrobatics in the two days when the mistral blew hard. We went to the beach and bathed. Attended a Jewish wedding ceremony on the elegant bridge next to the Carlton hotel. Was on the market and drove a day by bus into the country to the mountain town of Grasse, also called the perfume capital.

After a few days, a Danish boat took off in a few places from us. It was Henrik and Karin from Copenhagen. They were nearing the end of their fifth sailing season in the Mediterranean. The first two seasons they had driven by car from Denmark to Croatia in the spring. Their 24-foot motorboat they had had on a trailer. In the autumn, they had driven the long way back to Denmark. Third season they were driven to Italy. When they were going back in the fall, they had decided to let the boat and trailer stay over the winter. A few months ago, they had replaced the boat with a larger one. Now they had come to Cannes. Here the boat was to spend the winter while they were in Denmark.

Cannes was a great deal on a winter harbor. We had seen that there were more vacant seats. A couple of them even on our bridge as we had begun to call it.

But alas ....

«Winter place? You should have applied for that in May, "the younger woman exclaimed, staring disbelievingly at us behind her desk in the harbor office.

Circular questions such as «Where can we lie this winter? "," Who should be in our place? »,« What do we do then? »,« Is there space in other ports? »Was completely without effect. Then we went to René. He thought it would be difficult. To the annoyance of the younger woman, however, he still recommended us to apply on the port's website.

With the help of the younger woman, we applied for the port's website for permission to stay in the harbor until the 31. March.

We could not tell how long it would go before we received an answer to the application.

"But," reassured the younger woman, "it's definitely going to be a rejection. There is no room for more » 

We started looking for other winter ports as well. And found one in Port Garavan in Menton.

"It was hard, but it worked," Albert explained. He was the international marketing director of a Romanian booking company. They were headquartered in Bucharest and led such a business almost on their own initiative. also after a winter place for us.

"And," he added, "here is France and not Italy or Spain. So you can give up negotiating the price » 

After 10 fine days in Cannes, we sailed east on towards Menton, which is close to the Italian border.

On our way to Menton we made a stop in Antibes. It is the European capital of the megayachs. In the outer harbour were the largest. Among others , Dilbar. It is owned by Russian Usmanov and is the world's largest privately owned pleasure boat. (Bonus info for those interested in megayachts: Dilbar has almost the same dimensions as the Oslo boat. It has accomodates 1.790 passengers. Dilbar accomodated 40). Further in the harbour was a basin for the smaller megayachts - ie those with a length of all the way down to poorly 25 meter. Here lay half a hundred of the kind - side by side. In the nice old city, a company offered to supply crew for the megayachts and another to train the crew. A third offered financial solutions with the strange subtitle to make the crew financially independent.

Most mega yachts in Antibes only sail a few weeks a year. If it is a consumption of XNUM liters of diesel per hour or a lack of time that sets the limit on how often the owner lets himself be transported in the Mediterranean by his crew, we did not find out.

We stayed in Antibes for a few days.

When the wind came from the west one morning, we left. When we were out of the harbor, we turned off the engine, sailed and sailed past Nice and Monaco until we reached our winter port in

… Menton