We left Cameret sur Mer at 7am in complete cloud once again
but at least we could see the headland today as the fog had lifted; we had
gorgeous ham and cheese croissants for breakfast and prepared to enter the
notorious Raz de Sein where tide can flow at 6 knots against you so we had to
take this tidal gate seriously. We didn’t have much wind – NW force 2 so motor
sailed through; Andrew had timed it for slack water but we think we maybe had
been a little early as we whizzed through at 11.2 knots over the ground – it’s
only short; about 2 miles but can be really quite mean. After we got through
that gate and entered south Britanny, we saw two dolphins and them amazingly
the sun came out and the wind increased so we had a perfect sail south with
wind on the back quarter – I loved relaxing on the bean bag on the back deck
whilst Andrew took charge of the boat – yes this was what I had signed up for.
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| Glad we were going with this tide |
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| Bean bags out - yes we like South Brittany |
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| Great sail to Isles De Glenan |
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| Approaching Isles to Glenan - just look at that water (just like Rotto) |
We had long been keen to visit Isles de Glenan, an amazing
archipelago of islands with white sand beaches just off the coast from Benodet/Concarneu
– the pictures we had seen reminded us of our favourite island back home of
Rottnest. However the tide range is wild, much of it dries, the anchorages are
few and far between due to moorings that are too small for us, on top of that
the islands are exposed to the swell in Biscay and currents – yes sounds like a
perfect spot! Andrew spent most of the day studying the charts and we arrived
an hour before high water and had enough water to gingerly explore right
through the centre of the island groups. There is a couple of sail schools on
the island to everywhere there was crazy fast dinghies zooming around, we
considered a couple of anchorage spots before settling on a spot on the south
east on Isle Penfret – complete with white sand and a gorgeous outlook.
We had not been settled long when a customs boat came an
anchored right behind us – we have heard all sorts of reports of French Customs
arresting boats without VAT paid and imposing fines for all sorts of things so
we decided on our best friendly approach we they came over in their tender.
We welcomed them in and presented all our
papers – they were very impressed with our crested registration document and a
bit puzzled by our two passports but otherwise were very happy and went away
having giving us a clean inspection certificate to show to any other French
customs boats we meet.
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| Our anchorage |
Our spot was totally perfect until at dusk to small boats
came in and anchored right on top of us one in either direction. Then about 2am
when the boats swung around they had far less chain out than us and we were
about a metre off of one of them, the result was we took it in turns to be on
watch and we had an awful night in this great spot. What’s so annoying is that they
could have gone much further in than us and didn’t seem to care they were so
close to us.
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