St Malo to River Rance
08 July 2014
We had a good time in St Malo. It's a great town with good shops and restaurants and a small market. We also caught up with the washing and restocking the boat. On Monday evening we had a nice meal in a restaurant that overlooks the sea.
We left on Tuesday to go up the River Rance as we have not been into this river before. The River Rance eventually joins the River Vilaine and out to the Bay of Biscay. We went into the River Vilaine in 2012.
There are two locks to get through to go into the River Rance. We untied from the marina only to see a ship on the opposite bank also untie. It was heading to the lock as well! This meant none of the yachts could enter until the ship was securely in the lock. 30 minutes later, we entered and tied up. The photo above is of us in the lock. After motoring up river to the next lock, we also had to wait an hour there to enter.
The second lock is through a tidal barrage used for electricity generation. Once through there you arrive into a nice tree lined river with a few smart houses and a number of oyster beds visible at low tide.
However, there are still dangers around. There are many hidden rocks, only exposed at low tide and very strange tides. The barrage is used to generate electricity and to do this they need a differential in water height. They therefore fill the river while the tide outside is rising, hold the level for 2 hours while the level outside drops and then start the generators. This creates fast moving tides where the water level drop is visible. The rise and fall of the tide in the river is still 8 meters or more.
As we have been here a few days, the low water has been getting lower each day as we approach spring tides. We were just contemplating re-anchoring further out into deeper water, when all hell broke loose as the low water anchor alarm went off. We needed to move immediately! A yacht with a fin keel cannot go aground in any circumstances.
It was difficult to get the anchor up as it was in shallower water. Eventually we got free and moved further out to deeper water for the night.
Friday we are planning to sail on to Binic.
Time: 3:00 hours Miles: 5nm Total Time: 62:30 hours Total Miles: 386nm