Day 3-2. Le Bono. We arrive at Le Bono in a fiery sunset. The village fans out up the hill from the harbour, and the smell of grilled saucisse mixes with the seaweed and the pastis. We eschew the village barbecue for some moules au gratin and a delicious trou normand, which is apple sorbet sitting in a little pool of Calvados. But we have a supplementary mission tonight.

We have to walk up to the church where Bernard Moitessier is buried. (For the non ocean girdlers among you, he was the chap who won the single-handed round-the-world race against Robin Knox-Johnston, decided not to come in, and carried on half-way round again, ending up in the South Seas.) His grave has a rough slate headstone with his boat Joshua (which is racing here with a school crew), a seagull, and a rising sun scratched onto it. It is festooned with necklaces of shells, maritime odds and ends, bits of rope, an empty bottle of rum, all under a sheltering palm tree. It's a place of pilgrimage for yachties like us who would never have the fortitude, perseverance, let alone skill, to do what he did. A fine resting place.

And so to bed, and the sound of snoring, similar to that of several male lions fighting in a thunderstorm while a steel-booted army breaks step to cross a wooden bridge.

Pic of the fleet drifting up to Le Bono.