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!