50 down, several thousand to go.
09 May 2006 | St. Quay
Well, we made it to France, 51 nautical miles to St. Quay. That's 50 nautical miles & 6079 feet further than we got on our first attempt on long distance boating in 1980.
It was a fairly mundane passage with virtually no wind, so we motored all the way across. Well, we've got 350 gallons of diesel to use up. Unfortunately, there was a 5-6 foot swell, which produced a distinctly nausea-inducing corkscrew motion. As there was no wind we were unable to reduce the effect with the sails. Bob went an interesting shade of grey-green before rallying about halfway across. (see photo).
Only a couple of shake-down problems on the way over. The main sail jammed when we tried to unfurl it, but it soon succumbed to the blandishments of a bloody great wrench. We've now corrected the problem, caused by idiot-captain using too large a diameter line on the furling drum.
It is now bright and sunny in St. Quay, but we are pinned firmly against a leeward pontoon by a F5 northerly wind. Thought about using a fiendishly complicated arrangement of warps and judicious bursts of bow thrusters to get off, and then thought - "Nah". Never mind - what's the rush? From here we're headed to Trebeurden, then L'Aberw'rach and then round the corner to Southern Brittany. That's when the adventure really starts as L'Aberw'rach is the furthest we've been along this coast.