Trouper’s Blog

Category: Ashore

Cherbourg in May

It was all looking so good – we just got onto the platform at Waterloo on time to catch the 1705 to Southampton Airport Parkway and on to Universals where we had a table booked for dinner at Riverside Social at 1945. We put our bags in the rack and sat down, just in time for the guard to announce that a person had just been hit by a train near Vauxhall and the power was off all lines out of Waterloo to allow the emergency services access. Someone else and their family was clearly having a much worse Friday evening, but it left us replanning.

We decided to head back to the flat and drive to the yard and then we could relocate the car to Birdham on Saturday. We were even only 20 minutes late for dinner. Saturday saw us take the morning tide round to Royal Clarence in Portsmouth harbour, where we get a free berth as it is the sister marina of Birdham. Once Trouper was tied up we took an taxi back to Universals to collect the car.

From there we headed to Gosport and Waitrose to provision for the trip to France we had planned. Unfortunately as we left the car park I realised that we had a flat front nearside tyre. I used the BMW supplied temporary repair kit to get the car drivable, dropped Kathryn at the boat, and headed to Birdham to leave the car, and where Graham was going to pick me up and take me back to Gosport. The reason for the trip was to deliver Graham and his partner, and a load of stuff, to Cherbourg to join her eldest son’s new boat on its delivery to Valetta via Lisbon.

Temporary tyre repair

Saturday evening saw us have dinner in the Marina with another friend who lives on the Hamble and we left for Cherbourg early on Sunday morning. It was a motor to start with and then the wind built with the second half of the trip hard on the wind with 20kts over the deck, and a reef in the main and a few rolls tucked away on the genoa. We got in early evening to be met on the pontoon by the delivery crew and proud new boat owner. We went for an excellent dinner in the yacht club on top of the marina office. I’d never been before as it always looked closed from the outside. The furniture was a bit dilapidated with torn covers on chairs, but the food was excellent and there was a super hot charcoal grill that delivered me some fantastic lamb cutlets.

The new boat was in Cherbourg for a 1000nm service by the Nautor Swan Global Service team from Hamble, who’d been working on Trouper the week before. A couple of minor problems had been found during the delivery from Finland, and the rig was due a check. They were due on Tuesday.

Monday saw fair weather, although Kathryn who’d just finished a course of antibiotics for a chest infection was really quite unwell and stayed in bed all day. The rest of us took the new boat, a Swan 51, out for a couple of hours for a quick sail. It’s a beast – and effortlessly quick, but huge.

Big grin whilst having a drive

Swan 51 Deck

Tuesday saw the weather turn with drizzle and over 20kts of breeze. By the time I was heading out for Croissants at half past eight the Swan team were already most of the way through the rig check with one of the team up the rig. Later in the day they were also able to fix the nagging electronics issue that had put the bow and stern thruster out of action – much to the relief of the delivery skipper. I was really impressed by him – he runs a sailing school in Montenegro, and does a few new boat deliveries every year. He and I had a bit of a laugh on Monday when we met heading for the same rope in anticipation of the same possible problem (that never came). He was saying that he wants to come back to the Channel area to cruise as it is unfamiliar ground for him but looks really interesting and demanding. He said, much to my entertainment, that you can have too much sailing in hot weather with no tide. He’s got my details and I’ll be happy to offer him what advice I can if he does come back.

The Swan guys also had a look at our dyneema backstay as it seemed to have stretched a bit – it’s due to to be replaced with new rod once we’re back in the UK, but in the meantime we do need to get back home! They checked the splices, which seem secure and I then wound the bottle screw so that we could get some tension as we’d hit the limit of the backstay hydraulic ram’s range.

On Wednesday and Thursday we were very definitely weathered in – although the local sailing school was still taking out fleets of 10 year olds in Oppies. The harbour steadily filled with broken boats: a Class 40 race took a bit of a pounding from the weather. We took it easy, did some boat chores, a Carrefour run, and I reworked this Website. Pâtisserie might have been consumed.

Excellent Pâtisserie

One of the boat chores was making up new leather covers for the lifeline bottle-screws where they join the pulpit at the bows. These protect the headsails from being damaged by the sharp edges. I cut two but only stitched one in place before the rain returned – the other is next weekend’s job.

Friday saw a weather window for both crews. The new Swan left at about 0200 French time for Roscoff, going north of Alderney and tacking back just off the Casquettes TSS. They got into Roscoff at about 1800, having motor sailed. We left at 1000 French time and made Chichester at about 2000 UK time after an uneventful passage also motor sailed, in an about 12-16kts of SWly. It wasn’t quite enough breeze to keep up a decent passage speed under sail… If we had the top down furling asymmetric that’s on my wish list it would be a different story. We steered 020 from the Cherbourg breakwater until past Bembridge, when I thought we were a bit too far to the East for the west going tide to sweep us home.

By 2030 we were on the Itchenor walk ashore pontoon, and could see the wall of cloud as the next weather system rolled in. Saturday saw us go for a short walk along the harbour path before being discouraged by the rain and returning to our books, and this website. It was properly windy. We saw over 40kts in the gusts and the Nab reported over 50kts. We elected to stay where we were given the weather, as trying to get Trouper into Birdham’s lock, which is a bit of a squeeze at the best of times, seemed like an unnecessary risk with huge gusts beam on – especially once the lovely Sara, the duty lock keeper, had offered to come in early for us on Sunday. She very kindly came in at 0530 so we could lock in an hour after HW. There wasn’t a lot of water under us, and I felt vindicated in my rule of thumb of not trying to get in after HW+1, but we were secure on our berth by 0550 and back to bed for 90 minutes.

June 16, 2026
Lessons learned and what to change
This post has taken a while to be published so describes the autumn 2025 position, on our return from the Brittany trip.

This trip had a few purposes:
- To give Kathryn and I a proper break and step away from the normal pressures of our lives.
- To test out if living on Trouper for extended periods was comfortable and what we might want to do in future.
- To test out Trouper’s systems and see if they needed any changes for future longer trips.
So how’ve we done? The first two I think we’ve achieved. We’re still talking to each other, and talking about future trips, indeed we’re both very clear that we’d like to spend more time on the Atlantic coast and explore further. There’s an awful lot to like about this coast, and whilst I would like to explore the Mediterranean in future I can see why this might make a better long term home for us. Neither of us feel a huge need to go crossing Oceans, though I did point out to Kathryn this afternoon that it’s only 155nm in nearly a straight line from Chichester to Roscoff, so we could leave one evening and be there the next afternoon, and that in the right weather that would be easy enough with just the two of us.

I think that for longer term trips I’ll need a sense of purpose and mission. Even just writing this blog helped, but simply wandering about exploring won’t quite do it for me – I need a bit more purpose. I think that getting involved in producing pilotage will be the answer – it will provide that sense of mission.

We bought Trouper 12 years ago and she was a very good fit to my tastes and needs, but we have made a few significant changes to her in our ownership. Before we launched her for the first time in our ownership we had the hull coated in ‘coppercoat’ which is a long life alternative to antifoul. It’s meant to be less polluting and doesn’t need annual reapplication. Ours has need some patches where it has come off but is otherwise working well. The pre purchase survey had spotted some issues with the heating system. Unlike most modern yachts that use a diesel fired blown air heating system ours heats a water circuit like a domestic radiator system. Rather than radiators we have two electrical thermostatically controlled blower units, one forward, one aft, which each deliver four hot air outputs. The surveyor had identified that the blower units were leaking, and we’d had them replaced. Trouper, like most boats, has a colorifier (hot water cylinder) that has a mains powered immersion heater element, and a heat exchanger coil from the engine’s cooling system, so engine heat is used to generate hot water at sea. The problem is that the calorifier is small at 25l, and if we at in an anchorage for a day or two we run out of hot water very quickly. During the first season of ownership I realised that we could use a two coil calorifier and connect the diesel heater circuit to the second coil. We had this done and it’s worked brilliantly – the 10kw heater heats the tank very quickly and showers at anchor are now much more comfortable. These diesel heaters have a very distinctive roar and we do get the odd strange look as we fire ours up on the middle of a hot summers day.

We’ve renewed the sails with the latest in high tech cruising sails (North 3di Nordac – a white seam free moulded sail more like flexible fibreglass in structure than traditional woven fabric), and in the process installed a new sail track on the mast to accept the batten cars needed for the fully battened mainsail. They still set beautifully and really do make a difference.

We also replaced the engine a couple of winters ago. That was an ambitious project on several fronts: finding an non turbocharged marine engine that would fit in the space available was tricky and then adapting that engine to fit with the boat’s systems and controls was quite fiddly. I must have been a nightmare client for the guys who supplied and fitted the engine (supplied by the lovely James French of French Marine, and fitted by the brilliant and lovely Dick Woodruff) But, aside from the last few teething problems the engine is working well and the integration with the boat and its systems is excellent. The old engine was becoming difficult to maintain and some parts were become unobtainable so whilst it ran well there was the real risk that it would pack up at some inconvenient moment never to work again.

The year before the engine work I’d also replaced the batteries and charging system moving away from the four big 6v golf cart batteries that were the original system design, to two Victron Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries, and associated charging, management and monitoring equipment. This was another big project, which was only really finished when the new engine went in with a new secondary alternator (another of those difficult client requests for James, that he rather overachieved on) capable of delivering the sort of charge that big LFP batteries demand. This has been transformational. We used to get anxious about power after a single night on the anchor, unable to plug in. Two was really the maximum possible. We’ve now doubled the available power and massively increased our charging capacity from the engine, added a small hoistable solar array and halved the weight of the system. We also have lots of lovely data telling use about how much power we use. Our usage has gone up as I’m much less abstemious than I used to be – for example the boat’s instruments have been on for nearly two months, and the starlink dish draws more than we could have supported.

Power consumption data from our Victron system.

So what would we change on Trouper?

We agree that a washing machine would be the biggest creature comfort. There appear to be more options opening up out of the motor home market, so for the future we might need to do some research on the possibilities, but we don’t have room for a traditional mini domestic machine – even if we had the power and water.

The Starlink mini dish has been really useful this trip and has made an always on internet connection just work, with very little effort (mounting bracket aside). I still baulk at spending money with a Musk company but there is nothing else like it. It’s allowed us unlimited access to large weather data files, to stream podcasts whilst on passage, and to even stream HD TV to our Samsung portable projector whilst at anchor in remote spots. We probably used the projector about 15-20 times over the 9 week trip.

Before we left I knew I fancied a larger tender, with a hull shape the would allow better seakeeping. Truthfully we’ve not really needed it, and our existing bombproof Avon has attracted admiring comments from people who are less impressed with the durability of modern PVC tenders, so that’s probably on hold until a proven need.

A water maker (most likely a Schenker Zen 30) is on the upgrade list. We didn’t struggle for water at all (and carry about 350l), but there were hose pipe restrictions in place for most places, and one might expect water supply issues to get worse rather than better due to climate change – so being able to turn seawater into drinking water, now that energy recovery water makers have pulled the power demands down seems sensible. Before these cleave energy recovery units were around it used to be said that all water makers did was turn diesel into water as you needed so much power to operate them! However they are maintenance intensive and need to be used regularly or ‘pickled’ as a consequence it’s probably something to leave until we’re spending longer periods on board.

Trouper’s rod rigging dates from 2017 and needs replacing – that’s going to get done overwinter, and the analogue Furuno radar will be replaced at the same time with a modern digital Doppler radar – though likely still a Furuno.

The minor issues with coolant leaks from the new engine need sorting out to ensure we’ve a robust and reliable set up. That should be easy. What’s a bit more tricky is the steam we get from the exhaust at higher power settings. The engine and exhaust don’t seem to be overheating. The steam isn’t coolant (the levels don’t drop, aside from the leaks) so it must be related to the raw water injection and cooling of the exhaust. But it’s got both engineers involved and me a bit puzzled.

Our anchor has served us well, but is a CQR design and original to the boat. CQRs were revolutionary high performance anchors in their time but they date from the 1950s have been overtaken in the last 20 years by higher performance designs. Ours is also showing some signs of wear and is starting to rust in a few places where the galvanising has worn off, so it might be time to consider a replacement. Trouper has a very nice clamp mechanism to hold the anchor secure in its roller, which will need adapting or replacing to cope with a different design so this won’t be a simple swap. I favour a Vulcan as the replacement – it has the same virtues as the Spade, but is reportedly less prone to corrosion (I think it’s a solid casting, where the spade is fabricated with a hollow shank, at can rust from the inside out) and it doesn’t have the significant failing of the roll bar anchors like the Rocna that are prone to clogging with mud and then not resetting if broken out by a wind or tide shift. Personally I’d trade a fair bit of optimum condition peak performance for reliably reseting after being broken out. Anchors and anchoring techniques are one of those things that people get very exercised about with very clear views on what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ – for me in this (and almost all things) there are many shades of grey. The first thing to do is make a template of the Vulcan and see if it will fit on Trouper’s bow roller. Our chain seems to be in good condition – so hopefully that’s good for a little while yet as 60m of 10mm chain isn’t cheap. I suspect I might ultimately change the chain at the same time as renewing the windlass (so hopefully far in the future) and maybe step down a chain size, whilst using higher strength steel chain, to enable me to stow more chain in the locker.

The last thing on the wish list is top down furling gennaker. A big asymmetric spinnaker optimised for sailing really deep (so close to dead downwind) with a small demountable bowsprit. The sail would let us make progress under sail in lighter airs – which is often my favourite sailing. The top down furler technology grew out of the Open60s where solo sailors needed to be able to safely handle large downwind sails. Essentially the sail is rolled up around a torsion rope from the top which has proved to provide much neater stows and to work much more effectively in stronger conditions than early simpler bottom up designs. The confidence of knowing that we could easily furl it would encourage us to use the sail much more. We have two big (one vast) symmetric spinnakers but they require quite a few crew to handle effectively – and are certainly not suited to just the two of us.
December 31, 2025
And Trouper is back on her home berth.

We left Poole on Monday afternoon and headed for Lymington, where we arrived in time for some excellent fish and chips. We stayed in the Yacht Haven, rather than the Berthon, as they had room. My father used to keep a boat here in the late 90s that I used to sail regularly. The marina has expanded somewhat since then and is now the home to a lot of charter power boats as well as the local sailing boats. The size of the boats, especially the powerboats is surprising, especially after the French coast where we were on the big side, and big powerboats were very scarce. Not so here…

After a day in the marina (avoiding the 25kts blowing in the western Solent), and some grocery shopping, we made our way across to Yarmouth for a night, and dinner at the Beach Hut.

The plan had been to anchor in Colwell Bay, which is opposite Hurst spit on at the western end of the Island, just before the Needles. the restaurant runs a tender service and will collect you from your boat and deliver you ashore to your table. We’d been texted the day before our booking announcing that in light of the weather forecast they’d not be running the tender service, but would collect us from Yarmouth using their minibus or landrover. This was no surprise – in the forecast weather there was no way I was going to anchor in Colwell Bay, let alone spend a night there after a nice dinner.

The Hut, Colwell Bay

The meal was lovely but twice the price of our Michelin starred meal in France, and whilst well prepared Kathryn thought that her fish was not as fresh as she’d become used to. It was, however, a lovely experience and a nice closing chapter to our trip.

We spent another day, Thursday, in Yarmouth to avoid more weather – a steady 38kts in the western Solent at one point, and made a very quick passage back to Birdham in 14-20kts on Friday. We arrived with just enough water to get to the lock and were on our berth by early afternoon. We did a quick tidy, grabbed the essentials and took the train back to our London flat, where we had a take away from our local, and excellent, Chinese, the River View.

Saturday saw us drive back down to the boat so we could load up with all the stuff to come off the boat and give her a proper clean before heading back to London on Sunday morning. We’d meant to have lunch at Itchenor sailing club with a friend from the club, but due to an ambiguous message exchange we thought he’d had to cancel and heade home. He’d meant that he couldn’t have lunch but would meet us for a drink… so we had a FaceTime chat once we were all back at our homes. He’s just had a hip replaced so I feel a bit guilty about having made him walk to the club and back. Nonetheless he’s invited me to apply to become a member of the Royal Cruising Club, which is a great honour. I may not make it through the selection process, but I’m rather pleased.

September 1, 2025
The Rose Coast and timetables.

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.

Ile de Batz, and the inside passage

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.

Perros-Giurec, and its approach

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.

A place in which I could get comfortable (and fat)

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.

Kathryn’s picture of the dome.

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.

Inside the dome, with the huge horn shaped antenna, and machinery.

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.

August 19, 2025
Risk perception and back in the English Channel

As someone who has spent a lot of time teaching people to use powerboats safely it is interesting to see the French approach to risk management and safety. The UK has a sad history of accidents resulting in deaths and serious injury from using powerboats, especially RIBs. That’s resulted in an approach to managing them and ‘good practice’ standards that are far removed from what I see here. To be clear I see no evidence of the French approach being dangerous, and indeed I suspect that they don’t have our history of accidents, suggesting a higher standard of safety. But what I see would have many of my UK colleagues tutting: no kill cords in use, sponson riding, indeed driving the boats from the sponson and driving whilst standing, even with tiller steered boats. And yet the standard of boat handling is consistently very high with a casual and unconsciously competent displays of excellent boat control.

More generally I can’t help but notice that the French approach tends towards less physical infrastructure and more towards people being encouraged to be sensible. Walking on the wave screen wall at Trinite there was no railing either side – just an obvious edge. Walking around an old castle there was no fence to the drop into the dry moat, just a band of about a meter of larger pebbles to delineate where the safe footpath finished. I must confess I do like the approach of expecting a bit more from people, although I’d still favour the use of kill cords – once you’re used to them they really aren’t much of a pain and are a simple mitigation to a low probability, very high impact event (ie falling out and being mown down by your own boat and propellor).

When, in a former life, I did my professional training in Occupational Health and Safety we were taught a clear hierarchy of desirability of risk mitigations: safe place was far preferable to safe person. the thinking was that in a workplace you should not need specialist knowledge or equipment to stay safe. In a controlled environment that still seems to me to be the preferred solution: you provide effective dust or fume extraction, not respirators to anyone who enters the space. But I wonder if that culture has bled out from making factories and laboratories safer workplaces into the wider public assuming that their safety will be managed for them and that they don’t need to worry about it. That might be one of the reasons why the construction industry has long struggled with its safety record – construction sites are usually difficult to control fast changing environments.

There’s been a lot of research showing that risk perception can have an outsize impact on risky behaviours: across London railings have been taken down around pedestrian crossings, and pedestrian injuries have been reduced. Car drivers are slower and more cautious around exposed pedestrians, yet the old railings afforded little real protection to the pedestrians. I wonder if the French approach to boat handling and education is more effective. But then every town we’ve visited has had huge sailing schools taking all the local children out, so familiarity with the environment is deeply ingrained knowledge.

Cameret proved to be a nice little seaside holiday town that was having a Fete for the local lifeboat, complete with helicopter winching exercises off the quay a little after we arrived. The visitors berths a quite a walk out along the breakwater (no railings…) and the sanitary facilities are a bit basic. We elected to shower on board for the two nights we were there.

Whilst in the Morbihan we’d used the boat’s black water holding tank to capture toilet waste and then pumped out in Port Du Crouesty. The boat was built with a holding tank for the aft head, and you can choose to flush to toilet into the tank or over the side. When built the only way to discharge the tank was to pump it out (by hand) back through the toilet’s normal discharge over the side. For our trip to Holland some ten years ago I’d also fitted a deck pump out fitting allowing the tank’s contents to be pumped ashore. That turned into a bit of a mission. I couldn’t find a pump out deck fitting that visually matched the existing deck fittings for water and fuel. Finally I contacted Nautor, the makers of Swans, in Finland and they explained that the fittings on our boat were custom made to their specification. They offered to have a pump out fitting made to match. It cost about 500Euros in the end, but I felt it was worth it to keep the boat (and Swans of this vintage are sort of iconic) looking right. Anyway in the end it all seemed a little excessive as we never found anywhere on the Dutch canals with a working pump out station, despite all the warnings before we got there that it was mandatory to pump out ashore. I’ve never regretted having the option but had never actually used it before. We connected it up and pushed the button and could see liquid being extracted through the window in the hose. It took a good ten minutes to suck the 120l tank dry. Carteret saw the tank put back into service, though I pumped it out by hand once suitably offshore.

Bespoke Pump out Fitting from Nautor – it weighs about 4kg!

We had two nice dinners ashore in Carteret, and a much needed trip to their excellent SuperU to stock up before we left this morning to head North and up through the Chenal Du Four. After filling up with fuel (215l, the first since Brest) we sailed for a bit to start with before the wind died away. It was grey all day, though not at all cold.

Pte de Saint-Mathieu at the Southern entrance to the Chenal du Four.

By later afternoon we were working out way into Aber Benoit where we picked up a visitor mooring, put the kettle on and tidied up. The harbour master popped by, took 18Euros for the night and offered to take any rubbish ashore if we needed, which was welcome, though not needed.

Tomorrow sees us head east to Roscoff.

August 16, 2025
Starting to Head Home

We left Trinité-Sur-Mer on Tuesday heading for Etel. Etel is to the North of the Quiberon peninsular and this marks the start of our progress back towards home and the end of our trip. But that’s not till the start of September so there’s no time pressure and we plan to meander our way back.

Etel is interesting as the entrance to the river has a shifting bar and there is a huge tidal flow that can create difficult conditions. The deep water passage moves around too much to be marked in the conventional way, with buoys, so they have a novel system with a semaphore tower. The tower is manned when there is enough water in the channel and talks you in by radio, though they retain the old pointer system for boats without radios.

Semaphore Tower at Etel, note the big red pointer on the rear tower.

The guy was very friendly and helpful, apologising that his English wasn’t great. It was better than my French – using a radio in a foreign language adds a whole new set of specialist vocabulary, and is a bit intimidating.

We had a lovely couple of days in Etel, with a nice meal out, where Kathryn had her first ‘fruits der mer’ of the trip. We took the tender across the harbour to the beach on the other side of the entrance on the second afternoon (whilst the morning’s laundry dried), and Kathryn had a swim in the rather chilly water.

Etel is a holiday town, with a long fishing history, and still has a fleet of tuna boats that head out into the Atlantic. It’s not a big racing centre, but a measure of the French obsession with offshore racing is that even here, in the fishmongers, there was a framed set of foul weather gear from a Vendee round the world race, in much the same way that you might see a football shirt in the UK.

Waterproofs from PRB’s 2020 Vendee Globe

Entertainingly I use the same foulies (probably OTT for my use) and picked up the matching jacket in Trinite-Sur-Mer where there was a North Sails store I could try them on in. North’s run a mainly mail order model and it’s hard to get the sizing right and pick over the features. I was a bit concerned that the jacket didn’t have fleece lined handwarmer pockets, which are much loved on my existing Mustos as they weren’t listed on the features, and the pared down racing ethic might have gone too far for my tastes. Happily I was able to establish that there were hand warmers, and that I needed a large (normally a medium) so a purchase was made. The colour is not to everyone’s tastes but it’s chosen to be visible in the water.

North’s are primarily a sailmaker (and made our funky high tech moulded seam free sails) but have an apparel line which in the last few years has started to include foul weather gear. Until then, in my view the best kit was made by Musto, who used to be a sailmaker (Musto and Hyde) in the 70s and 80s before the sail and clothing businesses split. My first generation HPX (their top of the line, and the first Gore-Tex sailing gear – normal Gore-Tex can’t cope with salt water) from 2000 has arguably lasted better and is more robust than my later stuff (which is a bit lighter weight, which has its virtues) and I still use it in London on the Thames. Keith Musto, the son of the founder, who I think had been an Olympic sailor, ran the clothing business which had been an awesome firm to deal with – their service team in Southend put new cuffs on my first HPX jacket in the mid 00s when I wore through them for about £30. Famously HPX came with a lifetime warranty – which has replaced both trousers and jacket of my second set when they delaminated. Manufacturing later moved abroad and in my experience the quality dropped a bit, ultimately Helly Hansen bought up Mustos in the late 2010s at some point. Last time I looked both were actually onwed by a Canadian teacher’s pension fund. Keith Musto has however reappeared, presumably after some non-compete clause had expired, as the designer of the North’s range, complete with his trademark collar system that keeps water out and your ears warm. The Norths stuff feels like the next evolution – it’s very comfortable and pared down to keep it light without sacrificing the features you actually need (like the handwarmers!). A ludicrous purchase on a sunny day when it was heading for 30Deg C, but should last me a decade or more.

Whilst in La Trinite, on 1 August (the half way point), we finished the first gas bottle on board. This has been the source of some thought when coming away. Trouper carries two 6Kg Calor Propane bottles. You effectively buy the bottle and then pay an fee to exchange it for a full one when empty. Camping Gaz operates in a similar way across Europe using a mix of propane and butane, but does not have any bottles as large as 6Kg. We have a ‘universal’ gas regulator that will accept propane, butane or a mix – essentially it’s a compromise that does all of them equally badly. We have adaptors for different bottles on board, and could switch over to Camping Gaz. But I’m not sure there is room in the locker for both and I’m loath to throw away a Calor cylinder – they are expensive and it’s hardly very green. Gas is very dangerous stuff on boats and has led to a number of nasty explosions, including one in the 90s in Poole harbour that cost someone I used to know a little their lower leg. The problem is that the gas is heavier than air and if it leaks accumulated in the boat forming an explosive mix with air. Then it just needs a spark to ignite it. We keep the gas in a sealed locker (together with the outboard fuel) that has a low level drain over the side. There is a solid copper pipe from the regulator to the cooker, and an electrically operated isolating valve at the regulator that means that the gas pipe is only pressurised when the stove is in use. There is a gas detector mounted low by the stove and it is connected to an alarm that also cuts the gas at the isolating valve. Ideally I want to have one cylinder in use and to swap the empty for a full spare as soon as possible. But Calor isn’t available here, so I was relieved that the bottle that was in use for a few weekends before we left made it to the half way point. It should mean that we can get back to the UK without needing any more – though if it starts to feel too light I might pick up a Camping Gaz as a backup – I think I can stow it safely and the prospect of not being able to make tea (or cook) is unappealing.

We left Etel on the late afternoon tide, you’re advised to leave just before high water, after two nights there and headed 10 miles (all distances are in Nautical miles – the distance described by 1 minute of arc of latitude, so a bit longer than a stature mile and about 1.8km) or so down the coast to a bay just past Lorient that had looked like a good place to spend the night before heading on a further 20 miles to the Isle Glenan the following day. Sadly the sheltered bit of the bay was now full of mooring buoys, which all looked too small for us, and outside the shelter it was a bit rolly and wouldn’t have been a pleasant night. We had backup plans, either heading into Lorient or over to Isle De Groix. we chose Port Tudy in Isle De Groix, which was about 40 minutes away, and arrived early evening. The harbour master met us in little rib (tiller steered sitting on the sponson, or standing, as is the custom here) and led us into the outer basin where boats moor rafted secured fore and aft to mooring buoys. He said once we were alongside he’d run the lines for us, though we were towing the tender so we could have been self sufficient. However the gap he led us into proved to be such a snug fit that we ended up secured alongside on both sides connecting two rafts. There was no need for lines to the buoys, which was as well as with breast ropes and springs on both sides and one longer line tied up towing the tender I was running out of mooring lines. Those who have sailed with me will know that this is a bit of an extreme event – I do like to make sure I’ve enough rope for any circumstance, as indeed did the previous owner of Trouper. Whilst I’ve retired one of his lines due to chafe damage, I’ve only added two long lines in our ownership. Following this trip and a bit of chafe in places I think one of this winter’s jobs will be making up a new set of mooring warps.

Port Tudy, before another couple of people arrived behind us.

August 11, 2025
Morbihan

We’d chosen the anchorage on the Auray as it was the spot favoured by George Millar in his book Oyster River about a summer cruising the Morbihan. It’s a lovely read (though out of print) describing a summer on his 50′ wooden yawl sometime in the late 50s. Both he, and his wife Isabel, are extraordinary characters. He had been captured in North Africa during the war, escaped during a prisoner transfer during the collapse of Italy, and made his way on foot across France and Spain to escape back to the UK from Portugal. Once back in the UK he joined the SOE and was dropped back into occupied France to support the resistance. He’s spending the summer recuperating following a riding accident that left him with serious internal injuries when his horse fell landing on him… so they sailed from Plymouth to the Morbihan to take it easy.

Sunday saw us gently sail back down the river under headsail alone and across the entrance to pick up a mooring that was across the headland from Port Du Crouesty on the inside of the gulf. We’d agreed to meet our friend there in the morning, and to spend the day with her on the Morbihan.

Monday morning saw me in the tender picking her up from the slipway, before we spent the day doing a lap of Ile Aux Moines, following a lunch stop at the head of Ile Ilur. One of the innovations of Sunday afternoon had been discovering the SHOM Tidal Stream Atlas that covers the gulf could be purchased as a PDF online. Having navigated the checkout and download process in French we now had the tidal information that made Monday’s tour possible. The tidal flows are huge and being only a few minutes late or early for a turn of tide can stop you in your tracks – and it did on Sunday when we were a little early at the entrance and motoring at 7kts saw us stand still until we could slide sideways into slower moving water.

SHOM tidal stream atlas of the gulf – 1 hour before high water

We spent another night on the mooring buoy before heading up to Vannes up a river off the North of the Morbihan. It proved to be a lovely town and we spent a couple of nights there, we did some laundry, and had a great meal at another happy Michelin. On Thursday we headed down the river, across the gulf and out to Port de Croesty once more. Our local friend had picked up a new electric dinghy pump for us, as our current one had died when inflating the tender up the Auray at the weekend. The old one was ten years old and a bit of research identified had been rather overtaken by technology. The new pump of choice was stocked nearby and she’d offered to collect it for us. We met up on Thursday afternoon and she announced that we’d been invited to her brother-in-laws for dinner. He is a sailor and keeps a boat in the marina. We had a lovely evening in a French home, and drank a little too much.

On Friday we headed to Trinite sur Mer, which is only a few miles away and a yachting mecca. Our favoured pilot book (written by the late Peter Cumberlidge) raves about the marina, which is an oddity as the author clearly prefers a night at anchor whenever possible. We got a snug berth tucked behind the wavescreen which has pontoons for race boats on the seaward side. There are two Ultimes, an Ocean 50 trimaran, a 50′ Offshore racer of a modern scow design, an IMOCA and half a dozen Class 40s all tied up there. I’d been struggling with a cold for a couple of days and rather crashed for a few days. We have had a little wander around the place and it is lovely – there’s the gallery of the famed French sailing/sea photographer Philip Plisson and some great gear shops, as well as sailmakers and all the usual fantastic food shops of a French town.

Class 40s (all with Starlink Mini dishes)

Scow bowed 50’er

Some more of the fleet

One of the Ultimes moving into her berth (with Trouper just over the wall).

The local lifeboat has been busy. They are just down the pontoon from us and were out at 0130 on Sunday for a search, then again for most of the day on an exercise (seems like Sundays are lifeboat training days the world over), and then again on Sunday evening for what looked like a Medivac from Houat, one of the offlying islands. Today (Monday) they were out again in the evening to tow a boat back into the harbour.

Sadly I also got the news this week that after about a year doing battle with cancer one of my team back at work had died. He was a lovely man whose sense of fun belied his age: he was the antithesis of the grumpy old man. Murray Stephen: you will be greatly missed.

August 5, 2025
Baie de Quiberon (and Fastnets)

We left Concarneau for Lorient on Tuesday, with Trouper making an easy 6 knots in a gentle breeze. Lorient is a huge harbour, behind a narrow entrance and we elected to moor in Port Louis, tucked in on the eastern side of the entrance. There’s a water taxi into the centre of town and we spent a happy day on Wednesday exploring the town. There’s a big sailing exhibition in a building named after Eric tabarly the great Breton sailor who in many ways established offshore sailing, especially short handed in French culture. The museum is adjacent to the enormous submarine pens built during the Nazi occupation. They were essentially a huge maintenance facility for U boats that were engaged in attacking the Altantic convoys resupplying the UK from the US during the battle of the Atlantic. That made their maintenance facilities a bit of a target for Allied air attack. The German solution was to built them with so much concrete that there were effectively indestructible. Reportedly the roofs are over 7m thick steel reinforced concrete. They are very imposing structures to this day. After the war the French Navy took the site over and used it to support their submarine fleet during the cold war. In the 1990’s they moved out and the area was redeveloped with the pens becoming homes to a number of marine industries and a centre for the construction and maintenance of extreme high performance composite (mainly carbon fibre) structures. Now it is home to many of the most famous French offshore sailing teams.

As we approached the back of the submarine pens we came across a canteen style cafe with a queue beginning to form at midday in the ground floor of a nondescript commercial building surrounded by industrial units. The portions were huge, the prices very fair (about 25 euros for two with hot drinks) and the food was excellent. As we munched through our lasagne and green salad the queue grew and the t shirts on display became the who’s who of high end composites manufacture and offshore racing team. Nearly half, of the now extensive, queue had IMOCA class logos on their tops. It was a nice bustling place where people had convivial lunches together. We visited the museum, and then walked down onto the public access pontoons where most of the IMOCAs had departed that morning for England and the Fastnet Race. The race runs from Cowes to the Fastnet Rock off South Western Ireland, and then back to Cherbourg (these days, it used to finish in Plymouth, but was moved to accommodate the every larger number of entrants – over 400 this year). The race runs every two years and this is its centenary edition.

Charal remained with some work going on on her rudders, and we’ve been following her since on Marine Traffic – she left on Friday morning and by Saturday morning had been hanging around going in circles at 2 knots just south of the Needles Channel for some time – clearly waiting to take the tide up the Solent, start the race, and charge back out again on the west going tide. Fastnet starts are timed to get the west going tide at the Needles. For me the challenge was always if we’d carry the fair tide to Portland on the first night, or get stuck trapped by a foul tide at Portland Bill. If you thought you weren’t going to make it, and were beating into a south westerly (the prevailing wind) the tidal strategy was to get offshore, often almost to Alderney, to avoid the foul tide and the tidal gate. But that would mean giving up the acceleration from the fair tide over St. Albans ledge that can easily put you an extra mile or so down the track… As I write this on Sunday morning the big mulithulls are approaching the rock and the IMOCAs are passing the Scillies. When I’ve done it on rather slower boats we’d expect to have been somewhere between Start Point and the Lizzard by the first morning, if all was going well. On slow races (2005) by the morning of the third day we were still off the Scillies.

Thursday saw boat admin – some laundry and I cleaned the bilges, which needed it – most boat smells can be tracked down to things lurking in the bilge. We did round the day off with a trip to a local restaurant – which has a Michelin star. the food was very good: three fixed menus, and no a la carte. We had the cheapest, 65 Euro menu and a couple of glasses of very nice wine. With the two amuse bouches there were 5 courses, though the main was too shellfish based for my tastes. Presentation is what you’d expect, and the savoury pea ice cream was exquisite.

From Lorient we headed South East on Friday, mainly motor sailing as we were heading dead downwind in a gentle breeze, until we rounded Quiberon and once through the gap between the off-lying rocks and Ile de Houat we hardened up a bit and had a nice sail in towards Port du Crouesty at he entrance to the Gulf du Morbihan. Whilst I’ve tried not to set deadlines and fix a timetable for this trip in order to luxuriate in the freedom of the time off – to Kathryn, the inveterate planner’s frustration – the Morbihan has been a target from our earliest research. It’s a bit like Poole Harbour, in that it’s a big harbour with a narrow entrance and islands, but it has much stronger tidal flows, and much more deep navigable water, and many, many more Islands (at least 60, I’m told).

We spent a night in Crouesty, meeting a French friend, we know from London, who has a house nearby, for dinner. It’s vast, congested and industrial, but had a good supermarket. We were allocated a berth rafting on alongside a big, unoccupied, Bavaria on the end of one of the hammerheads. It would have been a 2k walk to the marina office, but the harbour master boats (there are at least three) will act as ferries, and gave me a lift both ways. Dinner was in a restaurant overlooking the entrance to the gulf.

We left on Saturday morning for the entrance to the Gulf, aiming to be there at low water, and to carry the rising tide up the Auray river, on the western arm of the gulf to an anchorage off Le Rocher. We found a spot in a little pool just clear of the moorings and got the hook down and set, with a tripping buoy as I was worried about the possibility of fouling the hook with something on the bottom.

The entrance to the gulf.

After a few hours, and a turn of the tide, I was confident that we were secure, which was the cue for some locals to tun up on a small mark laying launch and make it clear that we couldn’t anchor there, despite the pilot book’s recommendations. We pulled the anchor up (it hadn’t fouled anything) and Kathryn held us alongside an empty mooring a little further up river whilst I managed to post a mooring line through the eye on it’s top by lying on the side deck at full stretch. A little while later a guy turned up to charge us for the mooring for the night, but who was also concerned that the mooring wasn’t big enough for us (which was one of the reasons I’d anchored in the first place – you never quite know what’s under a mooring buoy). He showed us to a more substantial mooring, adjacent to where I’d anchored in the first place, and helped run the mooring lines from his rib – which at least helped with all the stretching.

July 30, 2025
Weather

The weather has dominated the most of the last week. Douarnenez was lovely but the swell into the visitors’ pontoon for the second and third nights resulted in lot of groaning warps, if no actual discomfort (Kathryn might disagree as the groaning warps kept her awake). On Wednesday we left reasonably early and headed out for a passage through the Raz du Sein. It was a long motor sail to windward to get to the headland and drop south through the Raz. The Raz du Sein is a notorious tidal race, but other than a bit of slightly confused seas on the approach we passed through smoothly – though we did test out our newly recanvassed cockpit spray hood – which provided a very warm an snug spot in the cockpit. It only saved us from one wave’s worth of spray – but that’s quite enough for it to have earned it’s keep.

We ended the day in Loctudy, a marina in a small town south (and east) of Pointe de Penmarc’h. The pilot books and almanac all observe that the Pointe de Penmarc’h is the gateway to better weather as you move into South Biscay. It was glorious in Loctudy though the first morning we were there is was very foggy ’till about midday.The marina had nice facilities and an excellent chandlers that had stock of all sorts of specialist parts: needless to say they had the belts that I’d been looking for, and had several interesting looking brackets for clamping onto stainless tube, and lengths of tubing. I was hopeful I’d be able to cobble some sort of temporary starlink mount, so I took the bits of the broken one in, and with a fair bit of gesticulation explained the issue. This is when things took a turn for the better: the bits were whisked off into a back office, there was a bit of a discussion, a man in overalls appeared and joined in. I was led into a workshop behind the chandlers where they clearly fixed outboards and the like and went someway to explain the stock: these were people who made things… 20 minutes later my new friend in overalls had drilled a hole though the fitting and installed a nice big bolt to hold it together. With the addition of a little glue to stop it rotating around the new bolt the job was done and our Starlink is back in its spot on the aft rail.

Starlink back in it’s spot

On Friday we hopped across the bay to Concarneau. There was little sailing to be had, as it was very still, and there was a little bit of a deadline to get there before the market shut down at 1300. This is also a TransEurope marina (a federation of independent marinas that offer a 50% discount for up to 5 nights to berth holders from another member), which was sort of planned as it looked like we’d be staying a few nights, to wait out some weather. It’s been moderately windy, but has rained hard on and off for the past few days (I write this on Monday afternoon) and there has been some serious (over 5m) swell offshore. We’ve explored the town, it’s fishing museum in the island citadel in the centre of the harbour, and taken the bus to Pont Aven on a sightseeing trip whilst dodging the worst of the weather. Assuming the weather forecast delivers then tomorrow should be fine, a bit on the still side, but will let us move on to Lorient and towards the Baie de Quiberon. This bay looks like a truly lovely spot with lots anchorages and the Gulf de Morbihan, an inland sea full of islands accessed through a narrow entrance which has been on my list of places to visit ever since we started researching the trip.

July 21, 2025
A long weekend

Friday evening saw one of Kathryn’s former work colleagues and her new partner join us for a few days – carrying two very welcome spare belts for the engine. Whilst chasing the coolant leak I’d noticed that the belt that drives the coolant pump and engine alternator was looking a little frayed and discovered that I’d not, as I thought, got a couple of spares on board. In the end the simplest solution was to have a couple delivered to them.

We’d moved the boat into one of Brest’s main two marinas on Friday morning and after a bit of boat admin had set off across town to have lunch in a restaurant I’d booked via the Michelin guide. It didn’t have a star, which I can find to be a little too fussy, but did have my favourite designation: bib gourmand (or Happy Michelin in our house). Fair to say it was stunning; and extraordinary value at 35 Euros a head, including all drinks, plus an extra 5 Euros for a glass of wine. If they did this in London there’d be a queue to Brest! We ate at a bar facing into the kitchen and watched them prepare our meal. It was stunning. Kathryn took some pictures:

Happy Michelin

Starter: Seared water melon with frozen ricotta

Main: Hake, green beans, mash and sauce with capers

Desert: Baked apricot with apricot and thyme sorbet (amongst other delicious things).

If you’re ever in Brest try and visit Peck and Co: you’ll not be disappointed. The afternoon was all glamour with the laundry to do before our friends arrived. The boat just ahead of us in the marina was another Swan – a Frers designed 53′ from 1988. One of the crew had had a chat earlier in the day, and it turned out the nice woman I’d befriended at the laundry earlier was the owner’s wife. The owner popped round to Trouper as we we all sat in the cockpit and we did reciprocal tours. His boat is a beast and cosmetically it needs some work. He’d only bought it last week, it having completed the Ocean Globe (round the world) race in 2023 as ‘Sterna’, and all the important systems and structures were well maintained and in good order. They were taking her home to Finland over the next 3 weeks to tackle the cosmetics, get to grips with her, and then potentially cruise around the world in a year or two, as I write this they are in Guernsey, so making good progress.

Sterna – A Frers Swan 53

Saturday saw us leave Brest and head out into the bay where we had a lovely gentle sail to Morgat, where we anchored off in the bay and inflated the tender and SUPs. A trip ashore by tender saw us reprovisioned at the SuperU and allowed us to have a BBQ on board and a lovely evening in the cockpit rounded off by a game of Quirkle at the cockpit table. Morgat had a very busy beach and sailing school and was apparently established as a resort town by the founder of Peugeot as a holiday destination for is executives.

Anchored off Morgat

Sunday morning saw me dash ashore before the others were up (yes really) to obtain fresh croissants and bread for breakfast, before a leisurely sail across the bay to Douarnenez. After a quick explore ashore it became clear that there was a bit of a festival on that evening and our dinner plans shifted to sausage, tuna and moules (all with frites and Bretton Cidre), eaten at communal tables and benches filling the square whilst bands played. To round it off there was then an improbably long firework display, from a barge. It just so happened that our boat was perfectly positioned to provide the prime viewing platform for the fireworks.

On Monday are our guests left, heading back home, and we did some boat cleaning (a cockpit locker and some blocks). I was somewhat distracted by the very French, and excellent, sailing school operating around us with strings of optimists and a fleet of catamaran dinghies – it brought back lots of happy memories of spending summers working further south along this coast for Rockley Watersports in my early 20s. I also found and, I hope fixed, the source of the nasty smell in the forwards heads – the bolt that attaches the pump diaphragm to the motor system was loose and some effluent was dribbling out. So that was a bit more cleaning. In less good news the engine coolant level has dropped a bit further – which suggests I’ve not yet fixed the leak.

Optimists being towed out

July 14, 2025