Pius, a special floating house

On Monday June 1st 2020, the Pius crew finally leave Cogolin harbor after 75 days of lockdown; with our destination the bay of Portsman in Port Cros Island.  A Paradise! (especially in June ). One last big hug before leaving our lockdown friend's  Alex, Cecile and the cute Helios on their wonderful Swan65 Seaside. A nice SW breeze of 15kts welcomed our start and meant  tacks to get everyone used to sailing again :) Emma at the helm finally...   Dolphins welcoming our cruise! ...and our first anchorage in Portsman bay, Port Cros. Emma offers some vegetables to the sea...

Feb 1st  - With the new Genoa, storm Jib and the FFR (new generation Code 0) on board...let's have  a test sail on a cold, grey winter's day! March 1st -  It was time to load up everything we needed to live on board full time. Our neighbour Alex tried to tempt Emma to cheat on Pius ... his Swan 65 Seaside is really wonderful after 2 years of work done by himself.   Emma and her best fisherman friend Alex and... ...Helios, the nicest Lahsa Apso you'll ever meet. March the 16th -  the first lockdown stopped our departure! So we began a  home schooling program with Anna, including piano sessions...always be happy :)                                                       And what about me? How did I spend my days?  What a question....Pius's care of course!   Teak sanding after having cut the rubber New power alte...

After engine works, cleaning the tanks and sanding the hull for new antifouling I sailed to Chiavari to do some plumbing works, take measurements for the new sails and installed the washing machine....big jobs and a big mess. Too deep to fit into the left side of the kitchen, the washing machine now fits perfectly in the middle. We decided to trade the freezer previously in its place for the advantage of being able to wash on board.  New lockers in the aft cabin... New halyards and sheets... ....and measurements for the new Genoa, Storm jib and  a revolutionary OneSail FFR a new kind of Code 0,  performant from 50° to 140 TWA and up to 20kts TWS. Once we finished our last works on Pius it was a nice sail from Chiavari to Cogolin in St.Tropez Golfe where Emma was waiting for Pius and me :)

November 4th, hauled in Genova Sestri for a big month of works. Sailing fast from Cogolin to escape from a F8 SW,  I reached the yard in Genova Sestri. Pius was longer than the quayside ! :/ We began with the hull, sanding 15 years of antifouling. My friend Bepsi is #1 Then we started working on the powerful VOLVO Penta TAMD 41, 6 cylinder Turbo compressed. You never know how a boat has been maintained previously so I decided to change: - Raiser - Engine oil exchanger - Engine water exchanger - Engine turbo air intercooler - Gearbox exchanger - Fisher Panda 8KW generator water exchanger - Cleaning and maintenance of the engine starter, power alternator 100A/24V and alternator 12V            Then we proceeded to filter the diesel from algae and bacteria for 6 hours, after leaving antibacterial in the tank for 24 hours.  After 15 years of use the Gori propeller did not want to break away from its shaft. She needed some sophisticated repair work...

Sailing from Portofino (Italy) to St.Tropez/Port Cros/Porquerolles (Fra). Portofino, a real pearl. Here we spent some days admiring the beautiful Italian towns of Portofino and Santa Margherita. After that - we set up sails heading west across the Gulf of Genoa, where weather is often unforeseeable but this time was really mild. Anna and Emma joined me in Cannes and finally we could share our family's floating house....here are scenes from the big party with Emma dancing (the beer bottle is empty)! The Sorba family joined us in Cogolin for a long weekend in Port Cros and Porquerolles. 22°C on November the 1st....great fun, sailing and biking!