Welcome to France

L’Aber wrac’h – Camaret (39 Miles / 7 Hours)

L’Aberwrac’h itself was a quaint little village which was nice enough but with nothing around or nothing to do, except for a few restaurants (we couldn’t afford), a marina shop, a nice long dog walk & endless fields of corn. We thought we ‘d help ourselves & live of the fat of the land & all that, but unfortunately it wasn’t ready so we ‘borrowed’ it for nothing…. karma is a bitch! We stayed 2 nights due to the weather being pretty bad but it did give us time to relax and rest after crossing the channel. There was a huge thunderstorm the 1st night which lit up the sky with every flash & high winds the 2nd night. This meant we couldn’t moor on the buoys (half the price!) so left us with €1.50 a day to treat ourselves….which Holly spent on stamps!

Thu 13 Aug, 6 am came and went, we finally arose at 8am only to realise we’d overslept! We left just before 9 losing some value tide and got some good sailing but again the wind dropped & the mist swept in. We couldn’t see 50 foot from the boat & strangely we could only see the masts on other boats suddenly appear out the mist, lucky there were no close calls. We saw a handful of Dolphins, but even they were getting boring now……then we hit a very rough patch of sea where all water is rushed through a small bottle neck & ended up going 1 Knot for about 2 hours as the tide was against us, now we have realised the importance of not over sleeping. To cheer us up we saw some things we could only assume were huge dolphins? They we at least 3 times the size of the usual ones, so not so boring after all. We rounded the headland and just before we made our way into Camaret Harbour for the Night, the sun popped out & we managed to bag ourselves a few mackerel for tea…. Happy days!

Camaret – Audierne (28 miles / 5.5 hours)

We stayed another 2 nights here due to the poor weather, it was a severe gale and no way we were going risk going out to sea. We did manage to move to a buoy for the second night so it gave us some spending money. We are managing to keep quite well to our budget, but are looking forward to having more pennies to treat ourselves, this and an improvement of the weather. Camaret was beautiful in parts, there were 6 or 7 old fishing boats dragged up onto the beach left open to the elements. They were cool against the back drop of the harbour. Mostly it was just restaurant after restaurant along the front, none of which we could afford, so we treated ourselves to some goodies from the Patisserie ….how rock and roll.

However there was a beautiful white sandy beach, which looked like paradise with crystal clear waters when the sea was calm. Scrump Dog Millionaire enjoyed a few walks with his ball there, but we are looking forward to getting to real paradise one day in the near future.

Whilst perusing the waterfront bars, we stumbled on a Supermarket, this is like gold dust when all you have is over priced harbour stores. Holly stayed outside with the dog…as he comes everywhere with us and Simon ventured in. This turned out to be our first fatal error, with his lack of budget, French & culinary imagination he returned with a carrot & a Camembert! We reconvened & agreed Holly would go back in for round 2. This turned out to be much more fruitful, as much of her written French from school is returning to memory.

We packed ourselves up and set off at 13:30 on Saturday and left with the sun beating down on us, things were looking up. Learning from our mistakes, we made sure we had plenty of time to reach an extremely rough spot called the Ras De Sein (another bottle neck). We had a 15-30 minute window to arrive during slack tide other wise it is horrendous. We timed it spot on and slid though peacefully, only to have to motor the rest of the way to get the Audierne for the night as the wind dropped to 2 knots. The sea was perfectly still and it was sheltered so we decided to stay anchored up for the night (No buoy/or pontoon) much like everyone else. This was the first time we had done it and it was slightly nerve racking…..only because last time we put the anchor out, it fell off…….but due to the fact anchoring is free & it was calm we cracked on. Well I am off to bed, lets hope we are still here in the morning.