9th july 2022
This was the colour of the water this morning, just heavenly.
Today we struggled with the sails as there wasn't much wind but we did learn enough to realise that its just not worth putting the mainsail up with wind below 10 knots on Phantomas. We just had the headsail out and mooched along and motor sailed at different times throughout the day.
These conditions gave us plenty of time to look out for and look at all the mega yachts and not so mega but "still pretty impressive" yachts that were passing us. We were in the zone - St Tropez, Cannes, Antibes and then Nice. The French Riviera was showing off with all the boat traffic along with the huge number of private helicopters buzzing around the skies. At one point I looked up and there were four helicopters in my view. Apparently, according to Claude (who we bought the boat from and who also used to own his own planes), there is only a very low and narrow altitude that private aircraft can fly along the coast in this area.
There was almost plague proportions of jet skis or "Smokers" zipping around and at one stage we counted 15 in one "mob". Not sure if there's a collective noun for a group of jet skis! Some boaters would and do call them pests. They don't bother us, they're only young people having fun and all too soon they will be old and whining (Tony's words!!!)
