Captain’s Blog - Stardate: Samedi, le 28eme Juin. Port de Primel, Bretagne.

We like it here. It’s free! We had three nights in the marina at Trebeurden, which was great. We could walk ashore to hot showers, toilets, shops and had wifi internet without even leaving the bateau. However, the trouble with marinas is that you always get some twonker parked near you who keeps running their generator in order to power their fridge, DVD player and plasma screen. Chacun a son gout, as they say over here, but that doesn’t stop me having my own opinion. You get new neighbours frequently, with whom you have pretty much the same conversation. "Where have you come from?" "Where are you going?" "How long are you away for?" When we tell them that we’ve left work, sold the cars, rented out the house and are away indefinitely, they ask, "When are going back?" "We don’t know," we answer. When they leave, they say, "Enjoy the rest of your holiday." Well, der.
The bikes came into their own at Trebeurden. We went on cultural tours of the area looking at ancient megaliths and "Allees couverts", wine drinking and cake eating. The local specialite, kouign amann, which is a bit like a lardy cake, but made with butter, is divine. We gave the one from Trebeurden, with apple in it, 7.5 out of 10. It was very good, but we have to keep some points in reserve.
The wind was in the west and we wanted to go west. The forecast said it would be in the west for the next 5 days or so, so we decided, as there was quite a lot of wind, but not overmuch, that we would go to Primel which was only about ten miles further west. We reefed down the main and had to tack to beat the wind. Some boats, sleeker than ours, will sail at about 45° to the wind, but Sally is only willing to go at about 60°. It’s to do with the shape of the hull and the sail plan. The advantage of Sally is that we can stand up in the cabin, stow two folding bikes, sleep in a double bed with almost enough room to stretch out our legs, and the added advantage of having a toilet about two feet from where our pillows go! To have all that in a sleek, fast boat, we’d either have to sleep curled round the anchor chain, or have to buy one much bigger and costing about ten times as much. I digress. We had a good sail here, tacking between the rocks close to the shore, and the rocks further out. We managed to entertain a sailing school boat full of adolescents by oversteering on one of our tacks and heading straight towards them. Luckily our French is not good enough to interpret the chorus of shouts which emanated from said teenagers. However, I managed to execute the next tack to perfection just after they had overtaken us.
We managed the very narrow and rocky entrance to this fishing port and moored on a buoy, which is costing us nothing. We’ve only seen the harbour master once. His office is closed every time we’ve tried it. The weather forecast on the notice board is 4 days out of date. It’s a wet dinghy ride ashore and an 8 kilometre bicycle ride to the nearest shops. That’s also where we can get internet access for 50 centimes per 20 minutes, in the Tourist Info. We rock and roll all night from the swell, but it is tres tranquille. Kouign Amann a la Pousgenu = 8.5 out of 10.
Plan is to go on to Brignogan and then L’Aber Wrac’h Monday and Tuesday when the wind is supposed to be from the south.

The Longest Day

Well Guernsey seems ages ago now. We had 4 days there during which we explored on our folding bikes. The trouble with Guernsey, like the rest of the world, is that there are too many cars. There's no excuse there, though, as you can never be more than about 4 miles from St Peter Port! However, the TouristInfo supplied us with a map of the Rouettes Tranquille which give priority to horses, pedestrians and cycles and we found them to be eponimously tranquille. We also found several cottages selling excess garden produce very cheaply and availed ourselves of peppers, aubergine, green beans and the most sweet and flavoursome strawberries, which we ate sun-warmed straight from the punnet, while we watched kite surfers at Vazon Bay.

On Midsummers Day we set off for the Brittany coast, having carefully planned our passage to take about 13 hours and get us into the marina at Trebeurden by about 9.30 pm, well before the sill would close for the low tide at midnight. However......this is sailing, where nothing ever goes according to plan. With the wind on the nose for most of the way, and no help at all from the tide, by 8pm ish we were quickly revising our passage plan. As it got dark we decided not to take the shorter route inside La Crapaud (aptly named for yachtsmen who don't take kindly to huge lumps of granite directly in their path) and thus ended up coming into a strange harbour in pitch dark, knowing from the chart that there were treacherous lumps of not very bouncy granite all around. We couldn't see them, but knew they were there. We had to find the sector light which would guide us up the safe channel, amongst the multitude of street lights, navigational lights and buoys. By taking bearings and counting the number of flashes per minute we got the right one. By the time we reached the harbour, it was after midnight and the sill was closed. There was also a lot of dried out ground where the sea had been and, of course, the rocky islands. We were unable to see the buoys which were meant to be available for boats waiitng for the marina sill to open so ended up dropping our anchor in the fairway and while Andy drank coffee and sat in the cockpit to make sure we didn't bounce off any of the said granite, I had a lie down below, listening to the grinding of the anchor chain as the boat bobbed and jerked in the wind.

At daylight and with the new tide, we got safely into the marina, where we celebrated with scrambled eggs on toast followed by a sleep. Ah, the life at sea!

So we've got the French dictionaries out and have stocked up with vin rouge. Had drinks aboard a big new yacht with a couple from Bournemouth that we'd met in Guernsey. Their galley was about as big as the kitchen I've left behind in my cottage! Off to explore on our bicyclettes now.

Between a rock and a hard place

That was our first passage through the Swinge channel north-west of Alderney. Rocks to the right of us, rocks to the left of us. Scarey. Still we managed to get to Guernsey after a cracking sail, and with the weather falling apart a bit now, we thought we'd stay here for a few days and relax. We are managing to relax now, after the emotional and physical wrench of leaving home. I have to admit there were a few tears on leaving my little house. I'm still worrying about the lawn growing and no tenants in there until 1st July.

Anyway, I'm having trouble writing this because we're having a conversation with another couple from a boat and it turns out she is from the Isle of Wight and went to the same grammar school as me.

Off the the Patisserie Victor Hugo now for the best cakes I've ever had.

The last few days

The last 6 weeks has been a mix of hard work and mild partying, fueled by the fact that we have a lot of friends to leave behind and a lot of dusty bottles in the cupboard which have to be emptied, as storage space on board is minimal.

It's been pretty stressy at times and emotional, putting my life away in labelled boxes and stacking it in the shed. Saying goodbye to my children. Becoming Grandparents. The worst has been spending hours on the phone pressing buttons and listening to music trying to get stuff organised. We have shunted out an enormous amount of stuff to charity shops, freecycle, the tip, even sold some, but it's the decisions about what to keep, where to keep it and how to dispose of the rest that have been more exhausting than the redecorating, digging out footings for the shed and heaving furniture.

This is the last push of our six year campaign to let out our house and go and live on the sea.

I keep telling myself that it will all be worth it once we've gone.