RIVIERA RUN
Paul Adriaansens recounts last season’s dream cruise through Spain, France and Italy
nowing what we know today, 2019 was still a “normal” year, but keeping our boat, a Princess 49 called 4 Sea Sons, in Valencia for the winter was a wise decision.
At the beginning of April 2019 we flew to Valencia to prepare the boat and get her moving again on 3 May. The temperature was on the low side for the time of the year but it did not prevent us from using the flybridge and enjoying all the beautiful stops along the northeast coast of Spain. The best thing about these ports is the quality of food on offer. This, together with the Spanish friendliness and good organisation of waste management, makes Spain a better cruising option than France or Italy in my opinion.
Barcelona’s Port Vell was the ideal spot to celebrate my 60th birthday. This glamorous, centrally located marina offers a high level of service and of course location from which to explore the city. Further north, towards the Spanish/french border, there are many small picturesque harbours. The disappointment comes once you have passed Argelès-sur-mer, a beautiful place well worth stopping at and visiting. If the weather forecast is unreliable and you want to stick to the coast to avoid crossing the Golfe Du Lion, the best thing to do is avoid all the big marinas along the coast and head straight for Port Camargue. If you have a fast tender, go to Le Grau-du-roi and take the river to Aigues-mortes (meaning dead waters in French), a medieval walled commune. Our trip continued further along the French Côte d’azur.
Personally, we felt a lot has changed in the past 20 years. It has become crowded, is very expensive and packed with tourists. The authentic feeling came back a little bit more once we passed Nice towards the Italian border, with places such as Beaulieu and St. Jean Cap Ferrat still possessing bygone charm.
After picking up friends in Genoa, we headed for Portofino where we were lucky to have a reservation in this illustrious port. You would expect to pay a fortune, and in July a berth is certainly not cheap, but the money was well worth it. With so many nice restaurants, bars and a few very big yachts, the vibe is utterly unique and special. Further south are the Cinque Terre, which again were bustling with crowds. All the villages have buoys where you can tie up and take the tender to visit them so access by boat couldn’t be easier.
Portovenere, the sixth pearl of Cinque Terre, is the last port before you reach the bay of La Spezia. Not as beautiful as the other five, but we feel it has more to offer and fewer tourists. The bay of La Spezia has many marinas but we chose Fezzano as it had the best comments on Navily. Navily, by the way, is a fantastic app that has provided us with great tips about anchorages and marinas.
Due to a technical issue with the boat and spare parts not being in stock locally, we left the boat in Fezzano for a week and rented a car to explore Tuscany. It was a very pleasant intermezzo, having lived on the boat for more than two months. Nevertheless, we were very happy to be back on board again to continue our trip south to Pisa. The town of Portoferraio on Elba is a must if you are in the area, it’s a lively place with some interesting sightseeing.
The next stop was Corsica, a beautiful crossing where on occasion you may see whales. It didn’t happen for us this time but we
did see a few dolphins. Campoloro was our first obvious Corsican port. Once you start manoeuvring with your engines, the smell is awful because of all the dirty mud that comes afloat. But, that aside, you can’t help but be seduced by the laid-back Corsican vibe.
I think it’s well documented that you either love or hate Corsica. The nature is absolutely beautiful, with many deserted bays with lovely beaches and from time to time a marina in a nice village. But for some reason the Corsican inhabitants are less open than the French and, despite all of the ingredients being present, there can be a lack of savoir-vivre. Bonifacio is a must, with lots of activity and it’s always fun to watch all the big boats having to manoeuvre through the narrow channel to the back of the marina. The town itself is beautiful, too, and there’s an excellent selection of restaurants.
We had a bit of a bad experience visiting Ile Lavezzi, just south of Bonifacio, when we hit a submerged rock which bent 1.5cm off our two starboard IPS propellers. When we hit the rock we were doing 6 knots and the depth sounder showed 11.8m! In these very unfortunate situations you appreciate good service and kudos to both Princess and Volvo Penta who ensured we had a new set of props fitted within six days. We were extremely lucky that the props were the only thing to be damaged – thankfully the pod unit was left untouched.
Having lost a few days, we had a new set of friends with us again and were only able to visit the northern part of Sardinia for the remaining two days. This, for certain, is an area where you should try and stay for at least a month as there is so much to see, do and enjoy. We continued our round trip of Corsica, going via the west side and up north but we had a deadline to be in Rome to drop off one set of friends and pick up another. We based ourselves at Porto di Roma, which proved an ideal spot to explore the area from with the help of a rental car.
We then continued our trip south towards the Naples area, as we had to be on time arriving at Marina d’arechi, where we planned to stay for the winter. Obviously, we took the time to visit the beautiful island of Ischia, Procida, Naples and the Amalfi coast on our way South, and because by then it was the end of September 2019, we had no difficulty finding berths in the more popular marinas.
Although we had spent more than 160 days on board that season, we left 4 Sea Sons with a sense of melancholy in light of such an incredible voyage. If we had known what 2020 had in store, the feeling would have been even more acute.
If we’d known what 2020 had in store our joy would have been more acute