North Brittany

Friday 11th May... So we will call this 'Leg 2' of Thésée's Big Adventure, entitled North Brittany. At 8.30am we let the lines go and slowly motored out of St Malo passing the Brittany Ferry 'Bretagne' that goes to Portsmouth and back. The main shipping channel is quite straightforward.... it's called the Chenal de la Petite Porte. We followed it North West on a 310 degrees heading. There was a fair blow and we sailed under genoa alone making over 8 knots towards St Cast, then put two reefs in to make the ride a little comfier.  The approach to St Cast was easy, just keeping clear of the lobster pots, and Dean berthed Thesee really well again, reversing between C & D pontoons into a lovely little spot. 

Nice selection of welcoming flags in the marina

We took a quick walk about to find 4 restaurants on our doorstep, all with good reports. Then Dean set up the folding bikes with Saffy's new basket and we all went for a ride around the lovely coast path into town. It was Saffy's first time and she was so good, and didn't try to jump out of the basket....well only once anyway.

That's it Saffy, you're doing great

Keep peddling Dad

Time was getting on when we returned, so we had a quick tidy up and also managed to find Dean's lypsyl under the bed bunk (it went AWOL the other day when the boat was heeled over). We celebrated Friday with our usual Rum and Coke, but now we have special Friday Thésée glasses too don't we?

On the evening we ate in one of the local restaurants to celebrate our Wedding Anniversary, courtesy of the staff at Midtherm Laser. Thank you so much guys. 

Bon Appetite

Saturday 12th May... Today's blog entry has been written by Dean..... For those of you that have been following the blog and especially the exploits in preparing Thesee for the big adventure I have put together a few notes on how things are performing so far. With approximately 200 miles under our belts things are shaping up quite nicely.

Just as we left Sark I noticed that one of the sail sliders had popped out of the sail track on the mast, not a big issue and once we had arrived in Jersey I put this right and now will have to keep a keen eye on the blocking plate that stops the sliders coming out of the sail track. I assume that all the motor sailing had caused the locking screws to come lose and the plate dropped. Luckily the locking screws were still in place and not lost.

On arriving in St Malo and putting the sail cover on I noticed that the nut from the back of the second reef block on the sail had gone missing. Once again I was lucky not to have lost the rest of the block (bolt, pulley and spacer) I replaced the 6mm nut and applied some Loctite to the thread. I did the first reef block too.

The battery charger is working fine, along with the inverter, the solar panels and the Duogen (wind charger) and the alternator. While we were on the buoy in Alderney the solar and wind power kept the batteries topped up nicely even with the fridge and freezer working. It looks like the keel coolers fitted last year have started to earn their keep.

The bilge remains bone dry after the install of the new sea cocks and skin fittings last month. The gas alarm let us down on the day we left but through a process of elimination over the past few days I think I have an answer so as soon as I have an opportune moment I’ll have a look and see if that can be repaired.

Saffy’s new bicycle basket has proved to be worth its weight in gold as she was off her feet for a few days and with her age catching up with her any long walking days are over I think. We picked up the basket by chance in Alderney, I had not found anything suitable in the UK before we left. The metal hooks drop over the handle bars just nice and with a piece of old pallet wood modelled to suit, the basket now sits nice and flat. Although the steering on a small wheel bike is a little iffy to say the least. She seems to enjoy the ride though.

Sunday 13th May... A quick update on yesterday first.... We tried out the marina launderette to do our bag of washing. It was quite expensive 10 euros for a wash and dry. Then went out on the folding bikes for a few hours, and it was great. The town is so quiet and there are hardly any cars about so we cycled on the roads really easily. We visited a couple of bays and then found our way into the main square where a lovely waitress helped us with our coffee order. We ordered 2 cafés and they turned up as espressos. That's fine, but not really what we expected, so she told us that to get a white coffee we should order café au petite créme.  Here's some of the sights we saw on our travels.....

Overlooking the Baie de Fresnaye

Ooh la la.... how very francaise

In the main square at St Cast

The Flag of Brittany... officially called the Gwenn-ha-du

Today (Sunday) we left St Cast at 8am to cross the Baie de Saint Brieuc as our next destination was Lezardrieux (pronounced Les ar dro). The wind didn't materialise and we motorsailed the whole way...approx 35 miles. It was pleasant but we still haven't caught any fish.

Passing the impressive Fort la Latte

We realised that we had just passed 3 degrees West as we entered the Riviere de Trieux and headed upstream to Lezardrieux. Berthing was a nightmare. To cut a long story short, as usual the unhelpful helpers that were around on the pontoon took a line and cleated it off causing Thesee's bow to scrape against the pontoon. Only a minor blemish but so annoying. I think Linda was more annoyed about it than Dean! And that's saying something. We had to have a rum and coke to calm down. 

Look....we're on 3 degrees West

Now we're entering the Trieux River

Then we walked Saffy into the little town, it was just like Henley-in-Arden we thought. On the way back we stopped off at the Yachties Bar (wooden shack really that reminded us of The Watershed in Squamish where we frequented quite often a few years back). 

Church bells chiming in Lezardrieux

What an unusual road name

Oh well, lets drink pink beer

Harley Davidson parked inside the Yachties bar

It's 9.50pm now and still light....don't forget we are one hour ahead of the folks back home.

Monday 14th May… Treguier here we come! This is the place you apparently just have to visit according the manuals. But you have to arrive at slack water and prefererably high tide. So we left Lezardrieux at low water and motored downstream to anchor for a couple of hours in a small inlet off the Trieux river called Anse de Pommelin. We were a bit nervous, having never been here before but all went well and Dean dropped the hook in 4m of water. In fact it turned out to be a super anchorage. We knew the tide was rising and by the time we left at 3pm there was more than 6m of water. The tide range today is 10 metres and so we are not happy to anchor overnight at the moment.

Sunny morning in the marina

This looks like a house, we were expecting a cuckoo to pop out

Goodbye Lezardrieux

Oyster beds we think

Yes, we can't miss this red port marker

You can see how high the tide rises here

Saffy tied to the jackstay so she can wander up and down

From there we took one of the channels exiting the river mouth at Lezardrieux. We were only popping around the headland as we thought even though it was a 4 hour trip, but the sea was quite confused and bumpy.  Unfortunately Saffy doesn’t understand what’s going on and she was rather panic stricken. Dean helmed Thesee through it with the tide against us for about 2 hours or so, he did such a great job. 

After passing the massive lighthouse called ‘Les Heaux’ we religiously followed a heading in towards the Treguier river mouth. This channel is called ‘Passe de la Gaine’. There was one section where you have to go through a gap in the underwater rocks, and there is one red and one green marker which you must pass through. The gap was not very wide and it was a bit nerve-wracking even though it was getting on for high water. We reckon that all the practising in the Solent going through the small gap in the submarine barrier has proved its worth today. 

Once we were in the river proper it was beautiful, and reminded us of the River Fal in Cornwall. We arrived on time and performed an excellent berthing, with a little help from a couple of Brits who saw us coming.

Tuesday 15th May... Happy Birthday Thésée! It was 4 years ago today that we became your Mum and Dad. We got up to find a couple of boats had already left on high water so it was a little deserted around us. After breakfast we walked up to the Cathedral here in the little town of Treguier. This place is so unique, the narrow cobbled streets felt so full of character and history. We tried to buy some cream in a little shop but they didn't understand what we wanted. Linda thought it was straightforward.....la créme. Maybe they don't do 'créme' here?? There's a really nice food shop in the marina but it's all organic stuff with organic prices to match. Here's some photos we took in the town. 

A fabulously carved front door

Oh little town of Treguier

Saint Ruelin, one of the many Breton Saints

How quaint is this walkway

Rue St Yves....he's very famous here

This Sunday he's getting 'pardoned' again in a big festival

One of the Cathedral spires...we've never seen anything like it before

If you can zoom in you will see heart shapes

The local Post Office

Afterwards we went back to Thesee and had an easy afternoon. Dean managed to solve a problem we were having with the internet. Well done Dean. During Saffy's teatime walkies we had two different dog owners stop and talk to us....Oh dear.... Je ne parle pas Francaise. But Linda did reckon she had a two sentence conversation with one of them, the second sentence being.... Oui!

We were having our dinner onboard when a 17 metre motorboat came in and berthed alongside us! The harbourmaster had told us earlier that they were due yesterday, but told us to stay put on our berth. As it happens they fit in just nicely next to us. They had only been here for about 5 minutes when Customs Police turned up and boarded their boat! It seemed really odd for that to happen in a little place like this. Anyway, all seems to have been OK and they left about 20 minutes later. We thought they might decide to come onboard Thesee too but they didn't.

Wednesday 16th May... It was market day here in Treguier so we took advantage of stocking up on veggies. We also came across a fancy lace stall, some of the designs were amazing....

Not sure what you would do with these artichokes?

Dean eyeing up the Olives stall

Now he's got a basket full

Back on board....doing our bit for the plastic free world

The first time we've used our veggie hammock....how exciting

Don't know what this is but we just liked its character

At the lace stall

We returned to the boat for a bite to eat. Dean tried to sort out the faulty gas alarm, and so far it seems to have worked. There looked like one of the wiring connections may have got trapped....let's see how it goes. There wasn't much else to do apart from a bit of cleaning so we walked up to the big supermarket a kilometre away with Dean's folding sack-truck and a couple of shopping bags. We managed to get almost everything we needed....even cream! Apparantly it's called Creme Entiere. We also came back with a whopping apple pie and a tub of ice cream...yum yum.

Here's a couple of photos we took when we left the marina to go shopping... it was low tide and the ramp was almost impossible to walk up, it was so steep. It's spring tides at the moment.

Thursday 17th May… Today was the planned day to move to Roscoff. The weather forecast last night was predicting 26 knot winds gusting 30 knots, but we were glad to wake up to a fairly calm morning with an improved forecast so we decided to go for it. We left at 8.45am almost high tide and it took an hour to reach the river mouth where the wind was picking up. We had the main sail up with 3 reefs to be on the safe side and it was ok. Once we were in clear water we rolled out the stay sail but our planned course wasn’t good for the sail set up, so we ended up putting both sails away and sailing with just the genoa.

There was about a metre of swell following us with the wind in the same direction, so it wasn’t too bad and Thesee was handling it well. After a couple of hours we passed the small archipelago known as ‘Les Sept Iles’ (although there are actually only 5 islands and not 7). Entry to the islands is prohibited as it’s a designated bird and seal reserve.

 Was Linda really having too much fun at the helm?

Pot Noodles for lunch - supplies from the Bad Weather locker

As we crossed the Baie de Lannion and neared Roscoff we spotted a Brittany Ferry ‘hanging around’ at sea, seemed like he was waiting for another ferry to exit so he could get into port. He was there for ages, and in the end started circling to kill time. 

It was quite choppy and we entered the marina about 3pm under the guidance of the extremely helpful harbour staff who were out on the water in their rib. The wind was 22 knots and the rib helped nudge us in the right direction when we got blown off course and missed the berth. Dean had to give it some welly to get in, and we ‘landed’ with no damage done to us or anyone else. We’re tied on by about 6 lines at the moment! Our carrots and radishes tried to escape through the hammock netting too. 

The ferry actually managed to get into port about 7pm, that’s 6 hours or so after we first spotted him hanging around. I bet there were a few unhappy passengers. 

Friday 18th May... There's a couple of boats that are going the same way as us, and we've seen them at the last few marinas. However, they are a day or so ahead of us and some left Roscoff this morning. Also leaving this morning was a 30 metre superyacht called Cartouche, flying a Swedish flag. It was still blowy but a nice sunny day. Thesee had a wash down this morning and Dean impressed himself by using his special hose connector and spray nozzle. Off we went after lunch and had a walk about around the headland and into 'Centre Ville' where we stopped and sat outside at 'Bar Ty Pierre', Dean ordering deux café au petit creme very professionally. I must say we have been impressed with Roscoff and its marina. Here's today's photos...

Cartouche departing the marina.

Pont Aven ferry at the terminal awaiting departure to Plymouth

Pont Aven again, taken on our walkies

Beautiful house up on the headland

Dean checking out the Ile de Batz channel for tomorrow's journey

Roscoff old port, drying harbour with its fishing boats

Linda getting tropical along the seafront

Our café stop

Oignons Monsieur?

Tree trunk table tops at the marina

Where's my dinner?

Saturday 19th May… Last leg of our North Brittany journey today, and what a lovely day it was too. Heading out of Roscoff it was very calm and we didn’t need any help leaving the pontoon this time. We took a left turn and entered the Ile de Batz channel. It’s really narrow in places and shallow too, but we had high tide and also about 6 or 7 other boats with the same idea, so it was a bit of a mass exodus from Roscoff. We had done our homework and knew all the cardinals and buoys to look out for and an hour later we were through with no trouble whatsoever. 

Navigating the Ile de Batz channel

With 10 knots of wind behind us we decided to fly the Cruising Chute. Everything went perfect, even when we gybed it to get a better heading. We were getting 5 knots plus the tide so were well happy. Most of the other boats overtook us but they were motorsailing, and we didn’t care, we were having a great sail. Even Saffy was lapping it up. 

Orange Saffy, Orange Chute

Dean attached it to the ATN tacker 

Now what's he up to?

Linda spots two aircraft above

There was a huge tall ship on the horizon, and our AIS told us it was called Belem. Dean got excited because he reckons the picture above our fireplace at home is of this very ship. 

The Tall Ship - Belem

When we reached the Libenter west cardinal at L’aber-wrach we headed into the river. It’s crazy, we had 10 knots of wind all day and now it was suddenly 17 knots. We think we’ve read about the wind picking up in the afternoons, we’ll have to do more investigations on this. Anyway we reached the marina and there was only the outside pontoon free so we headed straight for it, getting blown on but it was a good arrival. The cleats are big but not many of them so we’ve had to do our best with what there is. 

Our neighbours tonight are two British boats, and we invited them onboard Thesee for drinks at 6pm, where we opened a bottle of Champagne to celebrate today’s Royal Wedding. We’ll be here for two nights before we say goodbye to North Brittany, head around the corner and set a 180 degrees heading.

Le pot de beurre....love this name

The Champers didn't last long

Sunday 20th May… What a brilliant day today in L’aber-Wrach. A lot of the boats left this morning but we decided to get the folding bikes out and go for a spin around the area. It’s so beautiful, truly delightful, we weren’t really expecting it to be like this. Some of the houses are very pretty, not big, but just idlyllic with cracking views and countryside. Oh and the sun was out which makes all the difference too. We even found sand dunes at Sainte Marguerite. 

Gorgeous little place... the residents were having Sunday lunch in the garden

Helmet on, ready to go again after lunch stop

On the dunes at beautiful Ile Sainte Marguerite, just like Brean Sands

Just after lunch we arrived at Landeda and stopped for a lemonade sitting outside next to the unique church. We think we must have covered about 10km, there were loads of walkers about and even a group of ramblers! The main roads are just like our country lanes at home, so it’s really not an issue when we’re on the bikes. You do get a bit of bum ache though… When Dean cycles downhill fast with Saffy he says her ears flap about in the wind, lol. 

The spire at Eglise Saint Gongard, Landeda

So we got back about 4.30pm to find the gas alarm was going off again. We just can’t work out what the problem is, it’s so annoying. We were just having an ice-cream and beer (yes almost at the same time) when the Harbourmaster asked if we would move Thesee along abit so that a big racing yacht called Hubert could come alongside the pontoon.

Hubert.... our neighbour tonight...

Today we’ve caught up with everyone at home, Jade, Claire, Angela, and Pete so they’ve all been telling us how hot it’s been in the UK. We think there’s a conspiracy going on and it’s raining really?? The fog has rolled in tonight but there's still long range visibility. We've read it's quite common in this area but doesn't last too long. 

This is the last post from North Brittany before we head around the corner and steer south along the Chenal du Four. The next post will be entitled The Races.