Alarm rung at 7AM (Tides- tides, remember?). Breakfast, and then over to the fuel dock to bunker diesel and fresh water, then off at 9 with some 20 other boats that had been waiting for this opportunity to go south. All of us motorsailing in a convoy against the last two hours of incoming tide, to get through the Chenal with a following tide. Needless to say, the conditions can be extremely nasty, and even dangerous there with winds against the tide.

Chenal du Four (four=oven) is the inshore passage between the mainland and Ile d'Oessant. to go inshore saves some 20 miles and avoids the heavy commercial traffic in the Traffic Separation zones that meets outside Ile d'Oessant. The Oessant (Ushant in English) is one of the most infamous shipwrecking areas in the world. From the western side of the island there is absolutely nothing except the open ocean until the US east coast on the other side of the 'pond'.

Today, with the sunshine and the calm seas, it was a child's play to go through the well marked and quite wide channel.

After successfully negotiating it, we turned eastward after Pointe S:t Mathieu towards Brest. Viewing the map of Brittany, it looks like a Dragon's head facing the Atlantic Ocean. l'Aberwrach could be the eye of the Dragon, the Chenal du Four part, the nose, and then a divided penisula outside Brest could be the tongue. We anchored for the night outside Camaret sur Mer, on the top of the tongue.

The next step will be to go through the Raz du Sein (the jaw of the dragon). A short, narrow passage that should be navigated in settled weather AND at slack tide. This means that one has to plan the departure, the speed with regard to tidal streams, to pass the Raz within a timeframe of one hour. Interesting! or? Slightly scaring aswell, but it saves 20 miles offshore since Ile de Sein has offlying rocks and dangers many miles to sea.

So tonight we will do our homework with the charts, the divider and the tide tables to get it right for tomorrow.

The picture today shows 'La Vieille' (the Old) north of l'Aber Wrach, arguably the highest lighthouse in the world