02/04/2016
Well, we made it!! The last leg from Elba to Menton was a pretty hard slog, we checked and checked and checked again the weather before we left and everything said between 10-15 knots of wind maybe touching 20 knots for a couple of hours always from either the south east or south. Needless to say that's not what we got.
When we left Elba it was a pleasant 10 - 15 knots from the south east (behind us) we had 1 reef in and the sailing was lovely, but it didn't last long!!! After about an hour the wind died, then increased, then died then increased and so on and every time it came from a different direction. Then by early morning it started to build from the south east, first 10 knots, then 15 then 20 then 25 and soon we found ourselves with 30 knots, gusting to 35+, we were screaming along, the only thing was that we were not really expecting so much wind, so at 4am found ourselves reefing down in the dark in a steep sea.
One of the biggest issues we've had for a lot of the trip is that the weather systems around Italy at the moment are not very stable, this means that the wind is constantly changing direction, of course this means an eagle eye on the weather is required, but it also means the seas have been very confused, with waves coming from numerous directions. Last night was no exception, we had a building swell out of the South East, but also an old swell out of the North (from the previous day), this meant that even though we were sailing with the wind behind us we were beating into steep choppy seas and Neraida was taking a pounding.
By day break the wind direction had changed again and was now out of the East North East and we were on a close reach, but still with a swell behind us and in front of us and now a new swell from the beam. We had gotten too tired to sail hard with the main and headsail, so dropped the main altogether and reached the last 40 miles or so with just a reefed down headsail.
It wasn't until we were within a couple of miles of the south coast of France that we received a bit of restbite and the wind and swell died down.
We were all tied up and finished at around 1300 in Menton and although extremely tired, ecstatically happy that we had completed over 1200 nautical miles with just the two of us in some pretty challenging conditions.
