The Home Strait

In order to leave ourselves a short hop on our last day we had decided to spend Thursday night at Port Haliguen. Having at first dismissed it as not especially pretty or interesting, we have come to appreciate this little town at the tip of the Quiberon peninsular for its modern and spacious marina, friendly mooring fairies and superb showers. There are a couple of decent restaurants around the old harbour and it's a short walk to the supermarket. Also it is easy to get in an out at any time or tide, and the fuel pontoon is spacious and rarely busy. Put like that, I begin to wonder why we were ever less than besotted with the place. Oh yes, it's also totally sheltered from the prevailing westerlies. But we haven't got there yet...
We went ashore at Sauzon after our ritual morning coffee, to get some bread and inspect the facilities. Suffice it to say that the bread was perfectly acceptable. We paddled back, beginning to understand why the charter company felt that an outboard for the dinghy was essential. It doesn't take much breeze or current to make paddling any distance really quite tedious, and far too much like hard work for someone of the Skipper's delicate constitution. For some reason that I can't remember, the Skipper didn't want to raise the mainsail until we were outside the bay this morning. No, really can't imagine why that should have been.
Anyway, we had a pleasant sail in just about enough wind, and it was the Skipper's turn to helm through La Teignouse, only this time it was downwind and the aim was not to gybe. Skipper was determined to sail between the markers at the eastern end of the passage, even though there was plenty of water outside the channel. He succeeded, passing the red Basse Nouvelle within, as he put it, "the toss of a biscuit". (He reads far too much nautical fiction - Ed.) He deemed it appropriate to celebrate this feat with a biscuit. Taken, not tossed. A McVitie's Jaffa Cake, if you're interested, purchased on a special provisioning trip to Luxembourg which the Mate undertakes prior to every sailing holiday, along with Plain Chocolate Digestives and Custard Creams. If you're wondering what the hell Luxembourg has to do with all this, then I can only admire your spirit of inquiry and attention to detail.

Basse Nouvelle

Happily, the wind picked up and we had a jolly beat up to Port Haliguen. We decided to fill up with diesel so as not to have to bother at La Trinité, where the fuel pontoon is squeezed into a little corner and always crowded. Yet another "character-building" aspect of the place. Nara's fuel guage had shown full at the start of the week, but it took 55 litres to fill it up. Having consulted our rough engine hours log, we were certain we couldn't have used more than half that. However, there was a sort of justice to it, because last year we found it hard to fill the tank on the Bavaria because the fuel just kept splashing out, and we only put in about 15 litres before we gave up. Moreover, on the scale of the cost of a week's holiday, we weren't going to start a war over 30 euros worth of diesel.
The visitors' pontoon at PH is easy enough to access, but a very long walk round the marina to get ashore, so we called them up on the VHF to ask if there was a more convenient berth available, which there generally is. Sure enough, a Mooring Fairy arrived to lead us to a free berth just in front of the Capitainerie. We were therefore not in a position to complain when we realised that we were going to get blown off this pontoon, so we'd have to approach it in a pretty aggressive manner! The boat in the neighbouring berth was covered with a huge tent, so the skipper could see nothing as he approached, especially as the Dufour's throttle was down by his ankles. After failing to get in at the first attempt, we reversed for another go, and the quick-thinking MF tied up his rib and leapt onto the pontoon with remarkable alacrity. Our second attempt was much better, and the MF took a line from me before I was close enough to jump down. Unfortunately, he did not use that line to stop the boat's forward momentum. Fortunately there was a bloody great fender fixed to the pontoon at the bow. We didn't hit it THAT hard. Anyway, what are fenders for?
It was only late afternoon, so we lazed about, availed ourselves of the aforementioned facilites, and dined well at the Hotel Port Haliguen.

Hotel Port Haliguen

Friday's trip back to La Trinité was a little disappointing, as there was just not enough wind to have a sail round the bay so we motored straight in. In the end we were tied up soon after 1pm. That wasn't such a bad thing as it turned out, as it took a while to unload all our stuff and clean up the boat. We had planned to have dinner in La Trinité, but decided to go straight to Rennes, where we were to stay overnight on our way to visit friends near Boulogne-sur-Mer. As we drove out of La Trinité the car thermometer showed 29°C. To be honest, there had not been enough wind during the week for us to appreciate the Dufour at her best, but we had had a real Summer Holiday, pretty lucky in the context of Summer 2012.
Overall, we were delighted with the Dufour 34E, and would certainly rent one again. I had expected comfort to be sacrificed for sportiness, and if this was the case it was very marginal: a slightly smaller shower, a tad less headroom in the forepeak, no cockpit table. On the other hand, the saloon was spacious, the galley excellent, and I liked the drop-down bathing/dinghy deck. Also the huge wheel looked pretty stylish! (Next year I'm bringing the little plastic picnic table, though. Ssh! Don't tell the Skipper!

Blustery Day

The advantage of mooring buoys, as opposed to those complicated cram-as-many-boats-as-possible-into-a-small-harbour arrangements, is that you can leave when it suits you, without negotiation or cooperation. The Skipper also conceded that there is no shame in raising the mainsail before casting off from the buoy. His initial reluctance is easily understood, however, when you consider that, as the boat points into wind without the aid of a helmsman, there is no reason why it shouldn’t be the Skipper who does a bit of work for a change – ooh, yuk! Won’t that rope make my hands dirty? Taking the management aspects of skippering very seriously, he was delighted to have the opportunity to experience at first hand the challenges faced daily by his crew. Once.

Aeolus was most cooperative today. We had a steady Force 4 from WNW all day. Given the Dufour’s amazing enthusiasm for upwind sailing, we managed the Passage de la Teignouse on one tack, with the Mate enjoying herself immensely at the helm. (You don’t imagine I’d have been allowed to helm had short tacking been the order of the day, do you?)

Our destination today was Sauzon, a pretty little port on Belle Ile which we had not previously visited. We had intended to moor in the outer harbour, but of course when we got there it didn’t look like the plan in the book, so we picked up a buoy in the bay known as Port Belloc, at the river mouth outside the outer harbour. There was more fretting about Skipper’s beloved secondary port calculations, but after some squabbling about arithmetic we managed to agree that there was, and would be all night, plenty of water. I will take criticism from the Skipper on a lot of subjects, but maths is not one of them.

Sauzon's dinghy park

Nevertheless, when we went ashore (quite a long paddle, this one, and the Mate broke a flip-flop clambering out of the dinghy – catastrophe!) the Skipper sought reassurance from the Harbourmaster. In addition to confirming that there was no danger of running aground, he also kindly explained the procedure for mooring in the outer harbour: you simply raft up to anyone already tied up fore and aft, and then string a couple of lines to the buoys afterwards. He claimed they tie 20 boats up to 4 buoys. Here again, though, if you want to leave at a time of your own choosing you’re better off outside in the bay.

We considered eating ashore this evening, as there were several tempting restaurants. However, I was tired, and didn’t fancy rowing back to Nara after supper. Worth remembering that had we moored in the outer harbour that would have been a very short dinghy trip – another time, perhaps. Anyway, yet again I sat in the cockpit with an aperitif in broad daylight well after 9pm. I don’t think any restaurant terrace could have afforded a better view. Unfortunately, we only saw Sauzon at low tide, when the inner harbour is dry, but nevertheless it is charming, and well worth a visit.

Sunny Sauzon, plus Mate

Over the Wall

Tuesday 29 May

We effected our Steve McQueen-style escape from Piriac without attracting unwanted attention, and set sail for the little island of Houat. The pretty bay just outside the harbour is liberally seeded with mooring buoys, but rather exposed to the north-west.  The forecast was for light winds, though, and it’s a charming little place.

We had a gently easterly breeze behind us, which gave the skipper chance to play with his preventer stay. (I think this 20m length of red string is one of his most treasured possessions.) It also gave him yet another reason to dispatch the poor long-suffering Mate to the foredeck and yell confusing and frequently contradictory instructions.

 In the end we got bored with drifting slowly downwind, and turned on the engine. (We had told the charter company to keep the spinnaker. The Skipper has a good grasp of the limits of the Mate’s patience with string.) Anyway, we needed to heat some water and give the fridge a burst of power, as we were going to spend the night on a buoy. There was a spot of navigational confusion, as the current was much stronger than we had calculated from the chart. We found ourselves approaching the wrong bay, wondering dimly why it didn’t look familiar. Like, why had the harbour wall mysteriously disappeared? Oops. At least we’d got the right island. Comfortingly, we weren’t the only ones surprised in that way, from what we could see of other yachts’ manoeuvres.

We’ve got the picking-up-a-buoy thing pretty well sussed now, as long as I remember to yell loudly enough to cloth-ears on the helm. It’s the only time I get to give the orders. (Except on land, of course.) This probably won’t be news to anyone, but if you’re interested, I take a line from the bow cleat and lie on the deck amidships where I’m nearest the water. I don’t try to grab hold of the buoy, but simply push a line, with a bowline on the end, through the ring on top of the buoy. Usually it’s easy enough to grab the end as it comes through, but if the deck is high above the water line (or if the buoy is small) the bowline makes it easy to snare the line with the boathook. Skipper then reverses the boat and I take the line back to the bow. When we’re secure, Skipper usually decides a second line would be a good idea, and goes swimming in his undies to attach same, having forgotten yet again to bring any swimming shorts. He has now gone off this idea (having spotted some startlingly large jellyfish in the area this year) which is a shame as it did give us the chance to show off the luxury hot-and-cold-water shower on the luxury bathing deck of the luxury Dufour, although I’m sure most people would have preferred not to watch.

The dinghy inflating routine was less embarrassing this time, as nobody was close enough to witness our clumsiness, and we paddled across the harbour in search of provisions. After the cheerful chaos of the holiday weekend the French had returned to do another couple of weeks’ work before the long summer holiday, poor things, and everywhere was very quiet. It took us a while to find an open bar or café, but I did eventually track down a cold beer, thankfully.

Downtown Houat

We met an English couple sailing a beautiful old Kentish fishing boat. They were about to return to their holiday house on an island in the Golf du Morbihan. Sigh. One day…

Back on board Nara, I set to work on the supper. It was a beautiful, calm, sunny, evening, but the few other boats on the moorings were taking their leave, one by one. We asked one couple if they were worried about the weather, and they said they thought it might be uncomfortable if the wind backed, as forecast. We persisted in our view that, even if the wind was from the north-west, it was not likely to be strong enough to make life really unpleasant, so we would take the chance. The harbourmaster chugged up alongside in a rib to collect our money. We asked his opinion, and he said there was space available inside the shelter of the harbour wall if we were concerned. There you can either tie up to buoys bow and stern, or with a buoy at one end and a line to the harbour wall at the other. He suggested if we wanted his help we should move straight away – fair enough as it was already evening. I had the distinct impression that, in his view, we would be well-advised to move. We thanked him, but decided to stay put. Was this hubris on our part? Stupidity even? I don’t know why I should have felt uncomfortable about being in a minority of one - it’s not exactly a novel experience for me.

Cheese-eating surrender monkeys

In the event, we were right … and wrong. We spent a comfortable night, with almost no wind. However, by morning such breeze as there was came directly from the west. We slept in the forepeak, but the headroom is very limited so our habit was to leave the cabin door open for air. This meant that the next morning the sun rising in the east came straight in through the open door. This is the trigger factor for the Skipper’s migraines, which last for several weeks once they get a hold. Sure enough, the first headache started later that day. We hadn’t thought to rig any kind of curtain across the companionway, because there was nobody anywhere near so privacy wasn’t an issue. We won’t forget next time though. That turned out to be a serious error.

Put Out More Fenders

Monday 28 May: Up bright and early, and already feeling energized from being at sea, but still grubby after yesterday's ablution fiasco. The Dufour has two huge water tanks, and there would certainly be plenty for a hair-wash and a shower, but would it be warm? I took a chance, and realized how little water you actually use for a shower on the boat. Maybe that’s why they don’t bother building any at La Trinité?

So, complete change of plan: Piriac sur Mer.

Warm, sunny and not a breath of wind this morning Well, in a way that suits: engine on, autopilot engaged, 2 ½ hours to Piriac at 6 kts or so. At least the autopilot works: we seem to be having trouble with the speed indicator and the log as well as the depth sounder.

We entered the harbour at Piriac at midday with 3m of water over the sill, and were given an easy downwind berth a short walk from the quayside. The entrance channel is very narrow, so you have to be really wary if there’s nobody to lead you in.
Having got the boat tidy, we sat admiring the view and watching as boats continued to hurry in before the closure of the harbour "door". Piriac is quite exposed to the prevailing westerlies, and whilst the water in the harbour is very sheltered, the breeze often makes berthing tricky. The local technique for tying up to an upwind berth soon became clear: Turn confidently in, just a little upwind, bounce gently but firmly off the boat in the neighbouring downwind spot, and ricochet in a more or less controlled fashion towards the desired finger pontoon...
The moral of the story being, when tied up to a downwind pontoon, leave a generous share of your fenders on the opposite side. If you're of a nervous disposition, it's probably also better to go ashore for your apéritif and leave the locals to their own devices.

Walled in. Piriac's moveable barrier.

I had put in a request for a bit of touristy stuff somewhere along the way, and this was looking very promising. It was a public holiday, the sun was shining, and the setting very pretty. OK, it was a bit candyfloss, but the atmosphere was really relaxed. Also we didn’t have to sit in traffic to get home, just amble back to Our Yacht. Tee Hee.

Piriac's pretty town square

We had lunch, walked around the lovely little town, bought a few souvenirs and withdrew for a civilized supper on board. One thing I love about Brittany is that the time zone means it stays light really late in the evening in summer. I never tire of watching the sun go down whilst sipping a glass of chilled white in the cockpit of a boat, and I don’t suppose I ever will. Smug.
While I cooked the supper, the Skipper made himself useful. One of our mooring lines was very badly frayed, and this had been annoying me, so Skipper got out his little mending bag and set about whipping it. Very neatly done it was, too.

Love the hat.

We asked at the Capitainerie to check what time we could get out of the harbour. The answer was readily forthcoming, but nobody seemed to be able to give us the information you would need to work it out for yourself. Most frustrating!

Underway at last

Sunday 27 May : The Mate rose early, feeling enthusiastic, and set off for a shower, something which can usually be relied upon to improve my mood immeasurably. This is to reckon without the mind-bogglingly poor facilities at La Trinité. The marina is without doubt the biggest I have ever seen - there must be well over a thousand yachts berthed here. Hidden at the back of the launderette is a room with a few toilets and four or five pleasant, clean shower cubicles. And that’s it. For the whole marina. This is supposed to be France’s answer to Cowes. (The French undoubtedly consider it to be the other way round, and with some justification.) Is this utter disregard for personal hygiene a reflection of the seriously sporty bent of La Trinité’s boats and their crews? Is washing for wimps?

At 7 am on a Sunday the launderette is closed and locked, with no indication of what the opening hours might be. I trudged grumpily around to the other shower block shown on the map, but that proved to be totally imaginary. Apparently there is at the Capitainerie a shower for disabled users, accessible during office hours if you ask for the key. Presumably you also need to know the secret password and have at least three grandparents born within sight of La Teignouse. Cross and still grubby, I bought some bread and marched back to the boat, muttering quietly as only Mates can.

More importantly, there was a gentle breeze and watery sunshine, so we set sail straight away for the little island of Hoëdic, one of our favourite spots from last year.

Ah, now that’s better! Nara wastes no time in showing us she’s a much more lively sailor than La Moira. The wheel is huge, and the winches are pretty beefy too. I had bemoaned the lack of a cockpit table. (My suggestion of bringing a little garden table was summarily rejected, the racing purists amongst you will be relieved to hear.) I can see now that tacking is going to be a lot less painful with an unencumbered cockpit across which to fling myself at the sound of Lee-ho! in the Skipper’s best Edward Heath bellow.

The only minor irritation is that the depth alarm keeps sounding, when we know we have 20m of water. A functioning depth gauge is rather more than a luxury in the little harbour at Hoëdic, so skipper frets over the tide tables and taps at his little calculator. The answer, of course, is that it will PROBABLY be fine. Almost certainly, in fact.

It is Pentecost weekend, so everywhere is packed. Even arriving at Hoëdic at 2pm we aren’t sure of finding a place. Happily, there is an ageing Mooring Fairy buzzing about in his little rib, being officious in a fairly genial sort of way, and he reckons he can squeeze us in. We told him our draft but he didn’t seem very interested. (If you’re having feelings of impending doom, relax. This isn’t a disaster movie.) The MF is cross because a little flotilla of motor cruisers have tied up to one of the huge barrel buoys in a line side by side, instead of forming a circle. It’s a bit like the petals in the title sequence to The Good Life suddenly going off at a tangent. Buggers up the system, anyway.

With a bit of nudging and juggling, we are wedged in to the circle. We are all tied to each other, but nobody can reach to put a line on to the central barrel. A space is made by pushing two boats apart, and the intrepid MF ventures into the little channel so formed. Rather him than me. He patiently takes our lines, one at a time, passes them through the buoy’s rings and hands them back. He emerges, still in 3D, and we devote ourselves to a happy half-hour of tinkering with lines and springs. Did I mention that the Skipper is a mooring-obsessive?

By now, the sun has routed the clouds, and we decide to paddle ashore. Nara being a smarter, more sporty boat, the dinghy has been evicted from its home on the foredeck for reasons of style, and must be inflated each day when needed. After some confusion about nozzles, we completed this task (normally delegated to seven-year-olds) and paddled ashore for a much-needed BEER!
Boats continued to arrive in the late afternoon and evening, dropping anchor around us when there was no more space on the barrel-buoys. We were fascinated by one 50-footer driven round and round the little harbour at terrifying speed by its burly midle-aged skipper. Eventually, he picked a spot and the anchor was lowered. On sticking my head up into the cockpit fpr a squint around at about 3 am, I notice his was the only boat showing an anchor light, obviously considered superfluous by everyone else as the bay was well lit by streetlamps on the harbour wall and the flashing markers at the entrance!

We had been hoping to include Piriac sur Mer on our itinerary, because the town is reputed to be very charming, and the marina has good facilities, but the harbour is only accessible for a couple of hours either side of high tide, and our problem was going to be getting away early enough the next day to go somewhere else nice. The Skipper was discussing this with our neighbours, a very cheerful couple with 2 small children on a scruffy old boat. It turned out that Piriac is their home port, and they were sure we could get in there the next day, because even though we drew more water than them we could motor there quickly if necessary. The mother offered to call the harbour and check on the access times for a boat of our draft. Yet again, we had found ourselves with charming neighbours at Hoëdic!

No Sailing Today

Saturday 26 May : A momentous decision has been made. We are just too kn***ered to go sailing today.

Not that we slept badly our first night on Nara. We were delighted to find sheets and duvets provided. I cannot bear being cocooned in a horrid nylon bag that twists and wriggles all night until it achieves its aim of digging the end of its zip into my ribs, just as I’ve managed to nod off. I sleep superbly well on boats if there’s a spot of bobbing, but the night was calm and the berth totally sheltered. Be careful what you wish for, I know.

Ted found his stateroom to be quite satisfactory

Getting up was a bit of a struggle nevertheless, but we got ourselves organized and waited (some time) for a technician from the charter company to come and explain everything to us. We did our best to take it all in. When the chap had left, the Skipper directed an unfocussed gaze at the jammers, and you could see the analytical process hadn’t progressed much beyond “string, coloured string”.

Furthermore, the weather was gloomy – not stormy, but drizzly and certainly not up to the challenge of inspiring us to take to the seas. We decided to do some planning (yes, I know, you thought we did all that months ago), have a stroll around, a leisurely siesta, a spot of supper on the boat and an early night.

The 60-mile passage business had by now been definitively abandoned. I don’t like wimping out, but what the Skipper really needed was a relaxing holiday, and not to get back to the office more exhausted that when he had left.  It became clear that it’s not charts you need to prepare for a sailing holiday, but rather a very firm line with anyone trying to cram your diary with trips and meetings the week before you go!

Not going sailing does have the advantage that the day actually goes to plan, and a pleasant day’s pottering ensued. A visit to a ship’s chandlers is something of a novelty when you live 400km from the sea. We needed absolutely nothing, but managed to make a few modest purchases nonetheless. We were both pleased to sample our favourite Breton delicacies at lunchtime in a quayside brasserie (crêpes for him, cider for me).

I love cooking, and never more so than in strange or difficult circumstances: tiny holiday flats, picnics, unexpected power cuts - all adds to the fun. I am still learning about cooking on boats, but I have a pretty good system of lists now, a large plastic crate and a coolbox, and a suitable repertoire of hearty meals for hungry sailors. (You do have to like curry, though...) Nara's galley is pretty posh - double sink and a proper waste bin. Well fed, we tucked ourselves in early - perhaps tomorrow we can finally get our sailing holiday started!

Brittany, one year later

Friday 25 May 2012: To La Trinité
So much for the best laid plans. Well, plans at any rate. "Let's go on holiday" is about as detailed as it needs to be, for my purposes: the rest can be left until the last minute. However, I do appreciate that you can't go sailing that way. We had chartered exactly the boat we wanted, checked the calendar for neap tides, and the Skipper had cajoled me into taking an interest in his 60-mile passages, as the attentive reader will recall.
The Skipper's new job has been pretty hard work since the beginning of the year, and his idea of taking it fairly easy the week preceding our holiday fell more into the category of irrational optimism than planning. Fate (based in Pittsburgh, I believe) intervened, and the poor old Skipper was quite exhausted by the time he snuck out of the office and fell onto the train on Thursday night.
It would be fair to say that the skipper is not a “morning person”. In fact, the very use of the term makes him flinch. However, he generally makes an exception for sailing days, and well, no, leaps is the wrong word, let’s say, hmm, lurches, yes, lurches, relatively enthusiastically from his pit on days when a spot of skippering is in prospect. Today at 8 am: silence. Silence like you have to hold a mirror to his nose to make sure he’s still breathing. By the way, I wouldn’t generally advocate using a mirror to look up people’s noses: a) it’s not very polite, and b) it can make you feel quite queasy.
Best we cut a long story short here. We eventually got underway at about ten, didn’t forget anything of any importance, didn’t hit any traffic, and arrived at la Trinité almost without incident. (The qualification refers to a spot of bother finding the supermarket in Vannes, which is so large you can probably see it from the moon.)

The Mate looking sheepish, or perhaps just peckish

We were delighted to find the Nara very conveniently moored near the centre of the marina and easy walking distance from the free, unlimited stay, car park. We dumped our stuff on the boat, had an excellent dinner at l’Arrosoir and crashed out, to dream of the exciting week in prospect…