Living in EcstaSea: May 2013

After a very long, but easy flight over to Alghero, Sardinia, we are once again re-united with EcstaSea. The day following our arrival, she was actually hauled back into the water and we were living aboard. We tied up to the old city wall and once again enjoyed the little town of Alghero--visiting our favorite restaurants for lasagne, pizza and great wine. This wonderful old walled village has been EcstaSea's winter home for 4 years now, and it feels like home to us also.

Then we began the work of getting her ready for the season: hanging sails, cleaning, tune-ups on the engine and provisioning with our favorite Italian goodies.

And of course, taking time to just sit back, relax and take long walks on the ocean wall. Becoming once again familiar with Italy: it's customs, it's language and it's relishing of life.

One day the town had a recognition of WWII. The youth of the town wore German, Italian and American uniforms and displayed American jeeps near one of the old bunkers used during WWII. We found it odd and we didn't quite understand the concept, but it was interesting.

We were finally ready to leave Alghero and knowing that we may not be back, we said "Thank you" and moved on....

We were hoping to take some time to anchor out and get our sea-legs back, but found that we only had a small weather window before a big Mistral (wind) hit and so made straight away for France. It was a rough passage--big seas, big wind and cold and once again we were so thankful that EcstaSea is so powerfully strong.

As we came into view of Nice, we noticed all of the snow still on the French Alps in the distance. Beautiful !!!

And the sea puppies (dolphins) came to play with us about this time too.

What we didin't realize when we decided to head straight away to Nice was that the Grand Prix car races were happening in Monaco and the Cannes Film Festival was in full swing. All wonderful happenings but also made every port crowded and full. So we had to stay in a port on the outskirts of Nice for a few days before coming into port at Cannes. We had only 1 day in Nice and enjoyed it as much as we had a few years ago when we were here. We also enjoyed full moon in Nice. The weather so far this season has been unusually cold, rainy and windy, so we have been very thankful to have found refuge in the port of Cannes for now. Especially with the fun of the glitzy, star-studded Cannes Film Festival happening at this time.

The marina we are staying in is right next to the Auditorium where it is all happening. So we, as many, many others have enjoyed standing and looking up at the red carpet as the limos arrive with the various stars. We saw Steven Spielberg, Uma Thurman, Bruce and Laura Dern, Nicole Kidman, Orlando Bloom, Forest Whitaker and many more French stars that we didn't know. They had a tribute to Jerry Lewis one evening and he entertained us all with funny faces on the red carpet. It was all much fun and very different than our usual casual time on the boat---in fact, since we failed to bring Richard's tuxedo and my ball gowns, we couldn't participate in the least little bit. Just curious onlookers with thousand's of others....