Day 123: Friday 13th September 2017.... should have expected bad luck!

I should have listened to my inner voice when it told me to set a trip line on the anchor last night, but the anchorage was so crowded when we dropped the anchor I thought it would confuse things. We awoke this morning around the normal time and by 8am were ready to pull up the anchor and start on our full day to SanRemo. The view of the anchorage in the early morning was very different. As it doesn't get light until about 7:30am the mornings are quite chilly and autumnal with jumpers and long trousers being required. However usually by noon it has warmed up and we are back in shorts and t-shirts in a temperature we would feel lucky to have in and English summer.

Frustratingly at 9am we were still trying to get the anchor up! It had caught round something and we had tried motoring in circles and various other techniques. I had disappeared below to try to figure out the gopro rip off I had bought Patrick for Christmas but he had yet to use.... perhaps we could use it to see what was happening on the sea bed. By now Patrick had dug the little grapping dinghy anchor out of the forward locker that his sister had given him in a house clear out and had managed to hook the bar on our Rocna anchor. He gave me a shout and together we hauled on it and managed to raise the anchor onto the deck. Unfortunately it was the chain that was stuck! As we sat and contemplated Patrick came up with the idea of disconnecting the anchor from the chain and seeing if we could pull just the chain free. We played around a little and felt the chain move so he went to get the required tools while I held onto the anchor to stop it falling back into the drink again. Suddenly I became aware that we were moving... we were free! I yelled for Patrick, we swapped places and I started the engine. Esmé then took the helm while I went forward to help Patrick sort out the mess on the foredeck. At last we were on our way.... just an hour and a quarter late on what was already going to be a long day, but at least we hadn't wasted a whole day there and a bunch of Euros getting a diver. I'm not sure either of us could have dived down the 4.5m needed to get to the bottom!

The journey after that was largely uneventful. The sea was like glass as we motored towards Italy.

After lunch and the usual several chapters of James and the Giant Peach we cut into Esme's model of earth and saw the different layers down to the core.

It was now getting quite hot so the kids and Patrick retired below decks for electronic time and I rang our friend Bru for a much overdue chat. He thought it surreal that during our 40 minute phonecall I was in 3 different countries: Monaco, France and then Italy.

On crossing the border into Italy I called the kids on deck who then changed our courtesy flag. Our arrival in Italy was long overdue, we planned on being here a month ago. The long anticipated pizza, pasta and gelato was getting closer.

 On arriving at San Remo we were a little underwhelmed. No welcoming committee and it took a bit of mulling around and asking fellow boat owners before the transito (free) berths were pointed out to us. Esmé and I took a short walk to try to find the coastguard just in case he was around after 6pm but returned non the wiser, but having spied a kids arcade and plenty of gelato shops for tomorrow.

Dinner on board followed by a film and then admiring the lights of San Remo.