La Moira, Thursday

25 August: The saloon was a mess when we got up on Thursday morning. We had run out of fresh water the previous evening (the Mate having judged hair-washing to be a priority) and there were piles of dirty washing up all over the place. I decided this was intolerable, so we washed the lot in seawater (Buckets of same, that is. We resisted any temptation to chuck the lot into the sea.), which seemed moderately successful – a considerable improvement at any rate.  As for washing the crew, we were told that a portable shower block would be open for a couple of hours this morning, but we were heading to the luxurious facilities of Port Haliguen, so decided we could wait.

The grandads next door postponed their visit to the showers to help with our lines, as we wanted to get away early. (Needless to say, the five grandsons were still fast asleep.) This is one snag with the barrel-buoy system: if there is nobody on the neighbouring boats when you want to leave, and you are short-handed, you’ll really have your hands full! Our haste led in part from the weather forecast, which was not encouraging. We expected a warm front fairly soon, bringing heavy rain and perhaps gale-force winds. We had decided to spend the night at Port Haliguen to leave a short passage to La Trinité on our final day, as the boat then had to be hosed down and cleared of all our stuff by late afternoon.

La Teignouse light

We had a gentle sail across to Port Haliguen, made simpler by the fact that we were getting to know this end of the Baie de Quiberon quite well. It was lunchtime when we arrived and the Mooring Fairies were off having their nectar, but we were allocated one of a pair of adjacent free berths, and managed very well by ourselves. We met a rather shocked and distressed boat owner on the next berth. He had just made the alarming discovery that his boat had a broken sea-cock and could start sinking at any moment, and was desperately making arrangements to have it taken out of the water for repairs.

By this time the promised heavy rain had arrived, so, after filling up the water tank, we settled in for a cosy afternoon aboard. There were several polar fleece blankets in the saloon; I made myself very comfortable with a cup of tea and a book and very soon nodded off!  A while later, at the shower block, I came across the very useful information that a local weather forecast was broadcast continuously on VHF channel 63.

We had been carting around a large tin of cassoulet for just such an occasion, so we had that for supper, with chunks of the lovely bread from Hoëdic. We worked out a number of options for the next day. We could either have a good sail, if the weather was favourable, or just head straight for La Trinité if it was not.