Day 49 - Leg 4 Day 1 at Sea 'Departure from Reunion Island'

Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Wed 12 Aug 2015 11:54
We have all been most impressed with Reunion Island and
we all agreed that we would like to revisit one day.
It is a volcanic island created some 350,000 some years ago. The
volcano is still active and very much a tourist attraction. We hired a car
for a tour of the island and visited the volcano en route but, due to low
clouds, access to the summit was prohibited.
The island is very French and, where we are moored in St
Pierre, amongst other things there are boulangeries, pattiseries, pavement
cafes and French supermarkets. We managed to complete a pretty
comprehensive provisioning while we had the hire car. There is even wifi
available in many of the cafes.
We decided to stay for an extra night to make sure that
everything was completely shipshape before we departed. However, it is
time to go so we paid our marina fees yesterday and immigration came to the boat
to clear us out, to enable us to get an early start this morning.
There were one or two hangovers this morning but we
still managed to finish off the last minute preparations and slipped our lines
at 07.30. We motored out of the very tricky entrance to the harbour and,
as there was no wind, resigned ourselves to motoring for the start of this leg
. However, once we cleared the lee of the island, the wind changed
direction by 180 degrees so, by 11.15, we had the sails up and the engine
on.
The rest of the day was pretty leisurely with people
catching up on their sleep and getting back into the routine of passage
sailing.
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