BON VOYAGE CRUISING THE FRENCH MEDITERRANEAN COAST
Travelling the Mediterranean, or the Middle Sea as the early Arabic traders named this nearly land-locked waterway, is a voyage through the very beginnings of western civilisation, a fact among the many others that induced me to live on its shores for nearly eight years and return regularly since then.
Its weather changes can be severe due to famous winds that include the north/northwesterly Mistral and Tramontana, the westerly Poiniente, the easterly Levante and the southerly desert blasts of the Sirocco – to name only a few.
These systems can generate short, steep seas when angry winter time gales blow but, in the summer when thousands of yachts arrive from Europe and beyond they are generally serene, as they were during September when I double-handed a new catamaran along the length of the French Mediterranean coast.
The guidebooks, like Rod Heikell’s excellent Mediterranean Cruising Guide, tell us that the French Med is about 2000km long (1100nm), beginning from near the major city of Nice in the east and running west to just beyond the last large town of Perpignan near the Spanish border.
During my 30 years of visiting and sailing along it, including
