We decided to head over to Courchevel 1850 today, in what turned out to be variable weather. It provides some great skiing, but is equally renowned for being the place to be seen in your designer, fur trimmed ski outfits. Luckily some of our gear is now so old it has passed through “old skool” and is now officially “retro” so we like to think we fit right in!

This place is absolutely not renowned for good value lunch stops, we turned up at Les Verdons, a restaurant half way up the mountain and they asked us if we had a reservation… funnily enough, no… but they found us table anyway (no doubt with the chic retro skiwear they assumed we were celebrities they did not recognise).

Apparently it is not the done thing to photograph your food in posh restaurants.

But this salad seemed worthy of breaking etiquette.

In the afternoon the group split into two. Those of us who thought that skiing in a cloud at 9000 feet was a good idea, and those sensible enough to spot the fact that this was unlikely to be very pleasant.

Further experimentation with our new video camera, we have now tried it chest mounted, helmet mounted, and so we decided to try boot mounting. This gives a much better impression of speed.

http://youtu.be/dx_dtI-_ZfQ&rel=0

Skiing in this kind of variable snow when you can’t see clearly absolutely kills your legs, you are constantly having to adjust your balance. This is why it is a good idea to get fit before going on a skiing holiday… it is just a shame I always remember that when I get here!

Feeling 47 miles of stiff legs…..

The forecast for tomorrow is for sun, sun, sun. Let’s hope this one is as accurate as the previous ones.

Sadly, the weather forecast was correct. We woke to find it snowing steadily. Snow is good of course, once it is nice and flat on the ground, but on the way down it is annoying.  Two of the crew were  suffering the remains of a cold so decided to sit out skiing today. You can see the sense in this when you consider this was the typical view through my visor for most of the day.

Our skiing nearly went hideously wrong before we even started. We had skied down to the gondola and as I picked up one of my skis I noticed something odd. One of the 2 pins that hold the binding plate (and thus me) to the ski was half out, the retaining screw had sheared. This would have been interesting if I had not spotted it! We trudged up to the nearest ski shop and after much gallic sucking of teeth and ” ‘ow long ‘ave you had deese” it turned out that I was “very lucky” and they did have a replacement pin. After further searching of the shop for the appropriate tools the replacement pin was fitted, and the cost was negotiated down to “worth at least 2 large beers” so we settled on 10 euro.

So finally we got to do some skiing…. Top of Saulire to the bottom…

Then back to the apartment for lunch and to see how the others were getting on.

In the afternoon we stayed below the treeline. The problem with falling snow being that it flattens the light and makes it impossible to see any contours, this means you have to ski by feel, rather than being able to actually see which way the ground is sloping. As it was snowing, there were lots of lovely piles of soft snow building up (which of course you can’t see) which become ever more annoying. If you are skiing runs cut through the trees then they create shadows, which mean you can see the contours a bit. There are two nice tree lined runs nearby, so we played on those for the afternoon.

43 miles of not seeing where you are going is enough fun for one day.

Forecast for the rest of the week is much better!

Our apartment is right by the piste. Here is the view from our balcony

As you can see. No shortage of snow.
As predicted, it was cold…. -18degC kind of cold. We did some limited testing with our new gopro chest mounted camera… here is Sarah skiing.

We have lots of handy video of me peering into the lens saying …”is it on” and some of people trying to put skis on. Will try harder tommorrow!

Luckily we have lots of other technology cluttering up my rucksack, so I have an app that can tell you all about our ski runs after our afternoon coffee stop ( we went over to St Martin de Belleville). Here you go.

Now isn’t that helpfull?

All in all relaxing days skiing sticking to the easy stuff… still cold, and snowing by the end of the day.

Now which of these gadgets can get me a weather forecast……

We are going Skiing in Meribel soon. A blog of our adventures will appear here.

Today dawned bright and sunny, with not much wind… this was the theme of the weather for the day….

In the morning we had a play witn the cruising chute…a type of asymetric spinnaker made of light cloth to go fast downwind in light winds… just because really…..

The afternoon was the end of season race… a truly insane startline with far too many boats far to close together.

Once again we worked hard all afternoon in order to fail to win a prize of any kind….. except we did manage to beat Knight Odyssey’s indentical twin, Knight Star, which was being helmed by one of the flotilla company’s instructors…….

The wind died and not many boats actually crossed the finish line. We stayed out far too late and motored into the marina in darkness…. quick change and off to the end of season party, which is still in full swing as I type this, but we have a flight to catch in the morning.

This brings to an end an awesome week of sailing. Some interesting weather, but we had loads of fun, and, just like every other time I have stepped on a boat, we learned a lot before we stepped off again. A bad day on the water is better than a good day anywhere else.

Until next season.

The skipper.

A brilliant days sailing, which needed an early start as we had 30 miles to cover. We needed to get to our final destination this evening, as tommorrow is the end of season race.

We headed for Corfu in light southerly winds, with some gentle swell in the open sea between the islands, which disappeared once we were into the Corfu channel, between Corfu Island and the mainland. The wind died at lunchtime, so we motored for 30 minutes while we had lunch, then it returned, a little stronger than last time and now from a little North of west. This meant we had to sail close hauled, with some short tacks to reach our destination, Gouvia Marina, North of Corfu town.

With winds between 10 and 16 knots we had Knight Odysseys full sails up for the first time, sailing at up to 6 knots in almost perfect weather.

Knight Odyssey uses traditional slab reefing, we can hoist the main sail fully, or reduce it by three different amounts. In the picture above you can see the different coloured ropes that control this. The red rope is for serious winds (it has seen lots of use this week) it pulls the sail down to fold up all the cloth below it, leaving not much above it, with amber and green ropes below it that reduce the sail progressively less. We are probably carrying 5 times the sail we were on Sunday!

By the time we got to Gouvia it was nearly dark, otherwise you would have a picture of the hundreds of boats moored around us, we have acomplished our goal of bringing the boat to it’s winter home…..

Tommorrow is the race….

The promised storm arrived early in the morning……

There are no measurable astronomical tides in the mediteranean,  however atmospheric pressure has an effect on sea level, and with no daily tides, it is much more noticable here. So with a big low pressure storm coming through, the water level was a bit high. Wellies only in this taverna…..

By lunchtime the storm had passed over but there was not enough time to sail to another port so we stayed in Lakka for a second night. Fortunately Knight Odyssey has  tender so we were able to head over to the North side of the bay for the afternoon and hang out with George and his friends…..

The afternoon was spent swimming and listening to lots of teenagers charging around in tenders…. although some of the teenagers were quite old…..

A beautiful morning….

We sailed South (beating upwind) to AntiPaxos to check out some good swimming bays, but didn’t like the look of anchoring in any of them, so we headed back North towards our evening destination. We arrived early, so in lively 18 kn winds we just went sailing for an hour, enjoying pushing the boat quickly just for the fun of it. All together a great days sailing in plenty, but not too much wind and glorious sunshine.

We anchored in Lakka bay, just a few hundred metres from our berth for the evening to do some swimming. The kids have come up with the idea of throwing breadcrumbs into atract the fish…. this even works with someone swimming in the water… so I got some good pictures…. meet George….

The day was rounded off with a party on the beach for all the yachts in our flotilla, where punch was drunk, and many sailing yarns were exchanged. There is a storm coming through tonight, so may be delayed in the morning…. forecast after that is sunshine all the way.

Early start, breakfast in the kind of weather promised by the brochure….

In order to get from the South Ionian to the North Ionian, you have to at some point sail a slightly longer leg from the Nothern end of the “Inland Sea” marked by Lefkas, to somewhere near the southern end of the Corfu channel, a stretch of about 30 nautical miles without any Islands or handy mainland ports… Well it turned out we needed to do that today.

First we had to queue up for the “floating bridge” to open to let us out of the Lefkas cannel. Apparently this is not a bridge, but a boat you drive over… this keeps Lefkas an Island entitled to lots of EU grants….. It opens every hour, so we had to be lined up ready.

You can see the raised ends of the bridge… sorry, boat…..

Once out of the canal we were in open sea, and annoyingly the wind was dead against us, so we were slamming into 3m swells running on the engine. The promised shift in wind never showed up, so we ended up doing this all day, covering 35Nm to Gaios on Paxos island in 8.5 bone shaking hours. Still the sun was out the whole way.

Tomorrow we only need to get to the other end of Paxos, so a day of fun sailing and snorkelling awaits, just as soon as we have put all the stuff back on the shelves in the boat…….