25th June - Porto Ercole to Porto Azzurro on Elba

Sealion
Richard Martin
Tue 25 Jun 2013 16:54
42  46N   10 23E
 
Well we were right to have stayed an extra day yesterday in Porto Ercole - the wind blew harder than even forecasted. Looking out to sea it must have been a good force 7 - not a boat to be seen.
 
The forecast showed a window of calmer weather this morning but depending which forecast I looked at, it could still have been difficult. As it turned out the wind was very calm until about 1pm when it filled in from the SW at about 10/12knots (not the NW forecast by the Italians yesterday. Being Italian they wait until mid-day to update the forecast which isn't very helpful) - this gave us about two hours of great sailing getting us all the way to Elba rather than an earlier marina that I feared was all we were going to achieve. We still got some swell initially - coming from the stronger mistral winds in the west  - happily it improved, as anticipated, as we headed north in the shelter/East of central Corsica 
 
We arrived about 3.30pm at Porto Azzurro, which we have visited two years ago - our favourite spot on Elba.
 
The plan is to stay two days as a) it is nice b) its my birthday tomorrow and it is a great spot to celebrate in c) the weather looks difficult wind wise again to head North.
 
Weather wise it doesn't look great for going North for a good few days yet - but hopefully that might change.

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