We spent a single night back in Roscoff, having arrived via the passage inshore of Ile de Batz. This was a recommendation from my friend Andy who had enjoyed my account of getting caught out on the outboarnd journey, having done exactly the same himself. With a decent rise of tide the passage is simple, but you don’t want to be plugging a foul tide, as it fair whistles through the gap. Once we’d got in I found a nice description of the passage in the pilot book. I’m pleased to report that that is exactly what we’d done, figuring it out from the charts.
We headed on on Thursday morning for Perros-Guirac which we’d not been to before. It’s a lovely little town with a marina tucked behind a headland and with a newly installed automatically folding sill, to replace the old lock, that lets you into the inner harbour. The approach dries entirely. In the chart extract below the underlined numbers in the green patches are the height above the lowest tide that the land is, in meters with 10’s of centimetres in the subscript.
Friday was spent exploring ashore where we found an excellent butchers, supermarket and patisseries. I love that even the kerbstones are made from the local pink granite.
Friday evening saw us eat a steak supper on board, and as I was wrestling with getting the VPN working (so we could stream Bookish to our little Samsung projector on board) Kathryn discovered that there was a free concert going on just across the street. We rather liked what we could hear so went to have a listen, and bough a couple of petite beers. The band were modern Breton folk, with a pair of pipers, as well as guitar and a couple of traditional percussion. I’m not sure that I ever thought I needed amplified bag pipes in my life, but they were rather good and there was a distinctly north African feel to aspects of their music. We didn’t enjoy the main act so much so returned to the now working VPN and Bookish (which was a Marina Hyde/Richard Osmand recommendation of their podcast).
Saturday, saw the wind blowing fairly firmly from the east. It’s hardly a gale but it would be hard work to go upwind in, and our next stop is around a headland with a lot of off-lying rocks that would need to be given a respectful distance in an brisk onshore breeze with a little bit of a sea running. Sunday looks no better, but Monday did. I went to the Capitanerie to pay for an extra couple of nights to discover that it will be three nights: there is not enough water at high tide on Monday to open the sill, so we’re stuck here. It’s very much a gilded cage though (see Patisserie above).
We do now have a bit of a timeline – we need to be back for the Saturday afternoon tide at Birdham in two weeks. Plenty of time, as we keep reminding ourselves: a whole summer holiday, but nonetheless we are now starting to plan to a timeline. The other constraint is needing to get to a French Port of Entry: there are a few options but the favourite option at the moment is Carteret on the Cotenin peninsular, and on to Alderney before crossing to Poole/Studland.
Sunday was lost to books (see bibiliography) and boat cleaning. On Monday we caught a bus to Lannion, and then another on to Citie de Telecom, and the museum set around one of the first satellite ground stations, built in 1961/2 for the original Telstar. It revieved the first TV satelite broadcast from the US. Telstar 1 (and 2) was a very small low powered microwave relay satellite that took in a revieved signal and rebroadcast it on a different frequency. It was on an elliptical orbit which meant it was only in sight for 25 minutes every 2.5 hours and was spinning to stabilise itself, meaning that it could not have directional antennas. The result was the very weak signal from a fast moving source, which necessitated a very large antenna to focus the signal of a receiver, and that antenna had to track the satellite with great precision, from horizon to horizon in 20 odd minutes.
The resulting machinery was in use for 20 years or so, before it was retired and declared a national monument in the late 1980s. I’d love to know if the machinery still works – our French isn’t good enough to have established it on the tour. It does look as though it might. France Telecom have a number of other ground stations near there, many retired, but still maintain a large R&D facility. The dome is clearly visible from the sea, and we’d known about it as we’d spotted it on the outbound trip and looked it up. The dome is huge enclosing a large horn shaped receiver and tracking gear. In order not to have any physical dome support structure, that might interfere with the signal, they had built the dome out of a plasticised fabric, which is held in place by air pressure. Effectively a big balloon. During the tour they were at pains to demonstrate the airflow, and you could only leave or enter via air lock type arrangements – one neatly integrated into a rotating door. Until the pressure is equalised you physically cannot open the inward opening exit door.
It’s a rainy Tuesday at the moment, and our current plan is a head out at 1530, when the sill opens (only for 30mins today, due to the small tidal range) and head round to Treguier, where we’ll likely spend two nights.