It was blowing—not hard, but hard enough. In the shelter of the Vieux Port, it wasn’t so breezy as to make extricating the big Navetta from its impossibly tight berth any more awkward than it looked, but glancing up at the castle overlooking the harbor, I could see the flag on the bell tower straining at its leash in the stiff westerly breeze. It was a Force five to six by the looks of it. It had been blowing all night. Rounding the lighthouse on the end of the breakwater, we turned away from the rising sun and into the wind, loping easily across the four-to five-foot seas.
The hull’s fine forefoot sliced through the swells like a
