Leaving Marseille

Tuesday night Scott checked the grib files and saw that a Mistral was coming our way and if we did not leave Marseille the next day we would be trapped until the winds let up.

Mistral is the name of a vicious wind that comes down from the Alps following the valley of the Rhone River. It is very strong and cold and dry. It occurs mostly in the winter and spring and is the main cause for the trees that you see bent to the south along the coast. Because it follows the Rhone Valley, Marseille is frequently affected.

Scott and Armando suffered much from the Mistral as they came down the Rhone.

We could see it on the grib map, coming down and filling in, but if we got out of Marseille that afternoon we could duck around the corner and be protected from it.

As I said before, the boat was not really in sailing order. So Tuesday morning Scott worked on rigging while I made use of those cleaning products we purchased earlier.

We took off shortly after noon. You can see by these pictures that it was very stormy.

That huge ugly condominium looking thing is a cruise ship. Behind it you see the beautiful church in the center of Marseille.

The castle that was looming over us when we were in the harbor. This is the castle from outside of the harbor.

The coast was very rocky – gorgeous in the sunlight, threatening in the storm clouds.

When we arrived at the spot the Germans had recommended it looked very forbidding and we decided to keep on going.

About an hour later we arrived in Cassius.