Slowly edging South
13 June 2006 | Lorient
Getting more tropical
So - we finally got out of Trebeurden on the 31st May after a 17 day sojourn. We left Trebeurden about 9 a.m., expecting 0.5 to 1 metre waves. Hah! What we got was 2 to 3 metre seas right on the beam, rolling us from 50 degrees one side to 50 degrees the other. This proved a good test of our stowage system, which failed in a particularly noisy fashion.
We'd forgotten to secure the computer screen (luckily noticed & rectified before any damage done). The diving bottles started banging around, which necessitated Liz being poked out onto the aft deck to effect a temporary lashing. 27 litres of gas, compressed to 300 bar, is not what one really wants crashing from one side of one's boat to the other. The dinghy was swinging back & forward, the toaster took a successful suicidal dive off the side, rapidly followed by the kettle, in a less successful attempt. It has been offered counselling and is now under 24 hour surveillance.
The aft cabin held out at first but finally succumbed. Drawers flew open and books flew, but it was fairly minor stuff. The major disaster was the breakage of the full length mirror. How is Liz to judge her final ensemble prior to the Commodore's Ball now?
So, not the most enjoyable of trips, but at least:
a) The sun shone all the way.
b) Neither of us were sick
c) We did manage to have some food, and (most importantly)
d) We made it to L'Aber Wrac'h.
Thursday June 1st - made it from L'Aber Wrac'h through the dreaded Chenal de Four to Camaret. We went through the Chenal de Four in very benign conditions, made even more benign by cowardly Captain timing it to go through at slack water. It was easy, though, to see how it might have looked in less clement conditions.
We stayed in Camaret until Sunday 4th. A very picturesque little place, the marina toilets are in a dungeon below the little castle. Probably the original toilets. A sobering diversion was a visit to the museum commemorating the battle of the Atlantic: odds of dying during WW II -
Infantryman: 1 in 48
Royal Navy: 1 in 54
Merchant Navy: 1 in 34
German Submariner: 4 in 5
On that cheerful note, on we went to Audierne, through another fearsome passage, the Raz de Sein. This is the one you always see in photographs, with the waves crashing over the top of 60 metre light houses. This day, though, it was a pussy cat. Again sliding through at slack water neaps like a thief in the night, and so little wind, we didn't even bother to raise any sail.
It was turning into another perfect day until the chartplotter went down just as we were making our final approach to the anchorage. That'll teach Bob to get complacent and take electronics for granted. After deciding that the jetty we were heading for did not meet any of the defining characteristics of the one to which we should have been heading, we executed a sudden 90 degree left turn and ended up in the right place. The big give-away was the large number of other boats anchored there, and none in the place to which we were heading.
Attempting to look casual "Hello, just pottering in here. Thought we'd pop over there and have a look at the very interesting example of French Civil Engineering over there & now we'll come back & pick up a mooring buoy." We might have carried this off had Liz not cocked up by missing the first pass. On the second attempt the mooring hook broke.
Once moored Bob started several diagnostic sorties on recalcitrant electronics. First, hopefully the chartplotter would prove to be just a fuse, but no such luck. After just 35 hours use it looks like it needs to go back to Raymarine. Luckily, a fuse proved to be the problem as to why the radio had failed. Unfortunately, the problem seems to lie in the Navtex, which is built into the radio and still refuses to work. Any attempts, so far, to cajole it into earning its passage result in a major sulk and it then takes the radio out with it.
Just to put the tin hat on it, Liz put the willies up Bob by innocently enquiring mid-passage "Should the engine be making that noise?" He was now a man driven to the very edge of madness. Every noise, every vibration had him freezing, ears cocked & eyes swivelling. So, one moored, the overalls were on and all the engine covers off. The engine bilge pump hose had come loose & took a while to sort, but everything else seemed OK. He prodded, poked & waggled everything thing that could be prodded, poked & waggled (and quite a few others that really couldn't). Finally we got out the remote underwater camera (Ooooh - get her!) to check out the prop. Not too impressed with that. We crouched on deck with our heads under towels, peering at a murky image on a minute screen, a bit like Victorian photographers, but without the birdie. Overall, everything looked OK. Bob wanted to put the engine in gear and run it against the mooring buoy to see how the prop shaft felt and looked under load, but Liz managed to dissuade him. She felt, quite reasonably in the circumstances, that the way things had gone so far we'd rip up the mooring buoy.
The next morning we did aforementioned checks and everything seemed OK, so we set off for Loctudy. An enjoyable, if windless trip, the high point of which was an extended visit by a pod of about 10 porpoises. They stayed with us, diving under the boat and surfing the bow waves, for about half an hour. We managed to get some of it on cine, so if you're ever at a loose end with nothing to do one night..
Loctudy is a beautiful place (see gallery), probably helped by the absolutely glorious weather we had. The folding bikes were dragged blinking out of the locker and started to earn their keep. This was handy as the nearest supermarket was about 4 Km away up hill (as usual). In an act of unbounded optimism the winter clothes & duvet were vacuum packed and stored. Just as well - it was really hot and fiercely sunny. We had to resort to using Liz's sarongs as shades to keep the evening sun out of the cockpit. (late entry - as we write this in Lorient it's peeing down with rain but is, at least, warm).
On the 8th June sailed from Loctudy to Lorient. The forecast was for a force 5 to 6, from the NE. As we were heading SE this would have been ideal, giving us a good wind on the beam and a relatively smooth sea as there was no fetch from that direction. What we got was a 5 - 6 alright, but from the SE. Dead on the nose and with a long fetch to build up some seriously interesting waves.
Not a pleasant trip, but quite educational. Lessons learned (albeit belatedly) when ploughing into wind & sea, taking solid water over the bow, down the deck and thumping into the wheelhouse windows:
1 - Shut the dorades (ventilators) and turn them away from facing straight into the green
water.
2 - Ensure all hatch seals are watertight to solid green water, not just a light hosing.
3 - Shut the door and hatch to the aft cabin unless you want great dollops of salt water on
your bed & clothes.
The scuppers seemed permanently full of water. This caused Bob some consternation as he wondered whether the diesel filler caps would be watertight against an 18" head of water. Diesel engines resolutely refuse to run on salt water. Luckily, there was very little water in the tanks when checked on arrival.
The trip up the river Scorff was interesting, consisting of dodging various sizes of shipping and trying not to get run onto large metal buoys by the considerable ebb current. This led to our present position in the Port du Commerce, Lorient. There seemed to be a some sort of festival on and the place was jumping. We had to negotiate a flotilla of barely controlled dinghies zig-zagging erratically across the entrance. Having squeezed through these we found the visitor pontoons full and were directed to raft up against one of those large, old wooden fishing boats of which France seems particularly full. We managed to hit that quite effectively, splitting our capping rail, having put the fenders at the correct height for a dinky little pontoon, not a thundering great hulk of wood that towered above us. That learning curve continues to steepen.
We found ourselves in the middle of a competition. To our Port side we were assailed by an amplified selection of finger-in-the-ear and diddley-eye music, whilst on our starboard side (and unfortunately winning) was France's answer to a less talented, louder and less tuneful version of Slipknot.
The next day, things musical continued to fail to improve. We were subjected to what seemed like a contest in which all the local schools sent their pupils to sing French versions of 'What shall we do with the drunken sailor" and "Blow the man down" in batches one after the other. This caused much grinding of teeth from a certain retired teacher. It has to be admitted that it was pretty tuneless and out of time. In fact it was more 'shouting' than 'singing'. We suspect it was judged by a technician with a decibel meter rather than a musician. Later in the evening, though the organisers redeemed themselves with an excellent jazz/blues group.
Lorient is interesting and lively, but hardly quietly rural. There is frequently the soothing sounds of late night revellers and so we started to feel a little homesick for St. Helier marina. This was complimented by the hammering and banging as the stalls etc for the recently ended festival were dismantled. In addition there appeared to be some irate Frenchman on the quay. Whilst he and a couple of others were packing away their equipment from the festival, something about the packing of the van seemed to have set him off. There was much shouting and yelling, and the sound of things (pots, pans, furniture etc) being thrown. The two of us sat there being terribly British and pretending it wasn't happening, whilst silently praying we didn't end up with a selection of heavy objects raining down on the deck.
We were also next to a very noisy ramp, which moonlights as the local pissoir. Liz has seen more willies here than she ever did at work. Mind you, being ENT that's probably not so surprising. Liz also found another use for the ramp. If you can't be bothered to actually fold away your foldy bike, simple place under the ramp at the appropriate time and wait for the pontoon to rise with the tide. Et voila! One compact bike. In fact we were lucky and spotted the potential problem in the nick of time. Bob did a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation and worked out that the pressure in the bikes would have been in the region of about 1.5 tons per square inch. He really must try to get out more.
Took the bikes on the ferry to Locmiquel, which has a fairly large marsh area, designated an ornithological reserve. Saw lots of duck, herons, and many other birds we didn't have a clue about. Rhona & Mel would have loved it. Must get a "What dat birdie?" book.
It's now Monday 12th June and the met for the next few days is unpleasant, once again 4 - 5s on the nose. I bet when we get to cross Biscay and want a South Easterly it'll swing to the South West. Have had a partially successful series of telephone calls to Raymarine UK & Raymarine France regarding the chartplotter. The next time you end up stuck in one of those infuriating automated call queue thingies, just think how much more fun it would be if it were in a foreign language.