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!