So we mentioned weather forecasts earlier. The forecast has been consistently predicting that the Mistral wind would blow today, in fact it came in early giving us a very windy night. This was the reason we were in the marina in Porquerolles not on our original plan of anchoring near the neighbouring island of Port Crow.

We had about 12 miles to cover to get the boat back to Port Pin Roland, the wind was blowing over 30 knots exactly from that direction. Opinions vary as to the exact wind speed, I saw 40 knots on the instruments at one point, but there were a couple of other things to focus on…

We motored into big sea, the mistral has over 100 miles of sea to pick up the waves and the island is in the full force of it. This makes it all rather uncomfortable as the boat slams into the waves. The odd thing is, we took various pictures and videos but none give any real impression of it. So here is a nice spray picture by Anya who has joined us for the last two days.

Once the coast allowed us to turn off the wind we got some sails up and speeded up. The engine that can push us at 6 knots on flat water struggles to get over 3 knots against the wind and sea but half our genoa can take that up to 6. We were never going to go anywhere near as fast as this guy through.

By the time these pictures were taken we were in the entrance to the harbour so the sea had flattened out but you can see the wind on the sea… but still this picture does not seem to convey its force.

That yacht was tacking upwind to the place we were motoring to and effectively keeping pace so we had to give way to him every time he tacked and came across us.

Anyway, we made it in and had dinner in a restaurant on the beach, while the wind whistled past outside.

… although you can’t see it in the picture….