Marseille and beyond

After spending 4 nights in Marseille with some daytime visits to churches, forts, museums and bakeries, we sailed off for Port Miou. The sailing was a mixed bag of tacking, motorsailing then reefing (too tilty!) and finally an easy comfortable tack to the harbour. The coastline has steep limestone cliffs with crags, holes, pinnacles and ridges with pine trees growing from the crevices at gravity defying angles. The entrances to the Calanques (fjords) are well camouflaged until another boat appears seemingly out of the rock wall! There were mooring balls for us to tie up to fore and aft but other boats had to tie up to rings in the rocky wall either by paddling their dinghy over or swimming! We watched the comings and goings of boats in and out and kids jumping from the cliffs into the clear, cold water. The night was so different from Verdon 😁! In the morning, we hopped into the dinghy and motored up the harbour which goes far back and is full of boats. We headed back to the Calanques outside Port Miou and ran out of gas halfway! 🤦‍♂️🤦🏻‍♀️Bob rowed us back to Sea la Vie where we filled up and set off again. I'm sure the hikers on the cliff were laughing at us! There are lots of hikers, kayakers, stand up paddlers and, near the beach, rock climbers. 😬 We took a hike then set off sailing. Interestingly, the geology changes from the white limestone west of Cassis to brown rock full of striations and recesses east of Cassis, and the hills become forested. It was lovely sailing and motoring to Île des Embiez where we anchored off the beach. The island was built up by Paul Ricard (liquor) and it has a marine research centre, aquarium, and is a nature reserve. The flora is beautiful. The harbour and shops around it are lovely, clean and well maintained. A desirable and popular place to visit even in a misty overcast day.Read more