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| Eric - Anna - Martha May 2013 at Pont des Arts - Paris |
Anna & I will meet our Parisian friends Eric and Martha in Marseilles in early May 2014 to sail across the Mediterranean Sea to the Aegean aboard their 12 meter aluminum sloop, Le Raz de la Merciere.
Presently, Le Raz is in drydock a few kilometers West of Marseille.
I wrote to ask Eric of his planned route remembering I had sailed the crossing to Ajaccio Corsica with him in 2000. That crossing took 33 hours (189 nautical miles). This is quite a different matter. Here is Eric's response: "We do not have a preferred route and as usual we will adapt to the weather. The basic choice is to run directly towards the Corsican side Ajaccio if possible or northern Sardinia and enter the Strait of Sicily, southern Italy and Greece last ratings. Again the weather conditions are paramount and can hugely change our parcour. Obviously if the weather is against us, the stops will be encouraged because we are not brutes! For example if the westerly wind regime is important then you could go through Elbe. In Greece, the idea is to take the Corinte canal and lead in Pénopolese towards the islands. To summarize, reaching Greece there are three crossings to negotiate with méteo: France / Toulon / Porquerolles → Corsica / Sardinia == Northern Sardinia - → Lipari Islands / Detroit Messina == Messina → Greece."
Then I ran across the presumed (by some) route Homer describes in
The Odyssey.
