We left Roscoff after 4 nights on Tuesday, having waited out some weather – nothing too violent but some rain and it was a bit breezy). We spent one day doing boat admin and laundry, another exploring Roscoff (very good Crepes and local Breton Cidre) and then testing out the Bromptons with a cycle to the next town on Monday. The bikes did well though there were a fair few hills, and whilst it turned out Monday was the town’s closing day we had a nice amble around and found another supplier of excellent crepes. Our neighbour in the marina was an émigré Englishman who’d spent 20 years building his boat, which he had set up for long distance offshore single handed racing – we had a good chat about boats.
Tuesday could have gone better. After a couple days of stiff northerly there was a fair sea running into the bay, and the northern Brittany coast generally. From Roscoff we had to get to the north of Ile de Batz before turning west to get to L’Aber Wrac’h. I didn’t take the opportunity to unzip the stack pack and hoist the mainsail whilst we were sheltered by Ile de Batz and once outside it got quite bumpy and rolly rather quickly and it wasn’t really going to be safe or wise to try and unzip the sailbag (which is above head height). So we did without – it was mainly a light head wind so the sail wouldn’t provide much drive if we motorsailed, but it would have damped our motion a lot and it was distinctly uncomfortable for a while. We were joined at a couple of points by more solitary dolphins, who lifted the mood on board. We very happy to get behind the shelter of the rocks at L’Aber Wrac’h entrance, which is watched over by the most improbably tall lighthouse (Phare in French). At 77m tall it’s apparently the tallest in Europe. The French do really good navigation marks, and lighthouses – there are lots of stone towers built to either mark rocks or form part of a transit (a pair of things you can see, a reasonable distance apart, that when aligned lead you along a fixed track, allowing you to correct for cross currents).
L’Aber Wrac’h river was gorgeous, the marina was friendly and helpful, though out of the main town, with just a sailing school and a few restaurants and bars. It did have what appeared to be nice clean showers, but with such a stench of sewage that without any real discussion we elected to shower on board. L’Aber Wrac’h was also the first new port of the trip: I’d never been this far west on the French coast before.
We left at 0700 this morning heading west to Chenal Du Four. This is an infamous bit of water in sailing circles and describes a safe passage through a warren of rocks inshore of Oussant (Ushant) with huge tidal flows and what can be extremely rough conditions.
Fair to say it didn’t live up to its reputation this morning when it was glassy calm, with no wind or really any waves. Which is as well as the computer navigation software lost it’s connection to our GPS somewhere off Le Four Phare and it took me a while to cobble together a work around, leaving Kathryn on deck with an ipad, with charting software and a GPS connection but without our planned track, and the remote control for the autopilot. She kept us in the right spot, whilst I got the location data back to the computer and from there onto the deck displays that show course and distance to the next waypoint. It’s the first time I’ve had such an issue with the software at sea in over ten years – normally it’s characterised by how reliable it is. Needless to say after resetting a few things once we got in it’s all working again.
Once we got round Point St Mathieu at the southern end we turned towards Brest and the outer approached of the harbour. Given that the Royal Navy kept the French fleet pinned in Brest for four years during the Napoleonic wars I was a bit self conscious flying our large blue ensign as we motor sailed in (the main went up early this morning – not making that mistake again). We elected to anchor in a bay to the north (we’re the green boat icon in the bottom right of the chart above) and, after lunch, went ashore by tender to purchase patisserie. I’m ashamed to say I think it’s the first time I’ve inflated the tender in about 18 months – it wasn’t used least season at all, and hardly the year before. It’s going to get lots of use this summer. I’m writing this at anchor, connected by a starlink dish lying loose in the cockpit, having had a steak dinner, washed down with Rose and finished off with the patisserie. The washing up awaits…