We have finally made it back to Blighty after an amazing eight weeks in France. The weather this year has been mixed, some fantastic hot sunny days, some glorious sailing days and a some windy, stay in harbour days. Despite this we have only had to change one changeover location and have been able to stick pretty closely to our preseason passage plans.
Our last blog finished with us squeezing into the Victoria marina in Guernsey (above). The Harbour Master insisted we were the largest boat they had had in the harbour since the liberating landing craft 80 years ago! Our next stop should have been St Malo via St Helier on Jersey. After much difficulty we managed to contact them by e mail to find their harbour dues were both eye wateringly expensive; £200 per night in Jersey and E340 a night in St Malo. This compares with St Peter Port at £97/night. While St Malo is a pretty special harbour it does not justify this price and especially as we were going to be there for a week. So we extended our Guernsey stay and got to see King Charles receiving the solemn oath of allegiance from the Bailiwick, a ritual every British monarch had taken part in for 800 years.
After some careful manoeuvring we extricated ourselves from the marina and headed south first to a delightful anchorage in St Aubin’s Bay on Jersey where we were entertained by playful dolphins eating breakfast around the boat and then to the idyllic picturesque anchorage of Isle des Hebihens. Once the local day trip ribs had gone home the anchorage settled into a tranquillity rarely found around the Channel; yellow sand, granite outcrops and pines overhanging the fine trimmed lawns of the ancestral second homes. Sadly, we didn’t have time to explore ashore as we needed to get on to our next port of call, Binic, before some strong winds arrived.
It is a truth that the smaller the harbour the more welcoming they are and the more we enjoy our stay; and Binic is small! It has suffered from competition with its near neighbour Portrieux, which can be entered at any state of the tide and has lots of modern facilities, Binic by comparison only has a four hour entry window each high tide. It also has a very narrow lock just 1m wider than Snark with fenders down.
We had to anchor outside for two hours waiting for the tide and then wait for lots of boats rushing in and out before we were cleared to enter, we squeezed in without touching the walls, (I’m pretty proud of that) onto a perfectly adequate visitor’s berth. We had to divert our guests from St Malo to Binic by train and cab but that worked out okay. Since we were wind bound in Binic for a day and in compensation for the diversion we booked Sunday lunch at the five-star rated restaurant Goutu which gave us by far the best French meal we had all summer.
The wind abated and we set sail up the coast to anchor in amongst the rocks of Brehat, the weather was a bit grey and to add to our misery we were boarded and questioned by the douanier, thankfully they didn’t search us and find our stash of contraband Guernsey potatoes! The coast north of Isle de Brehat is scattered with rocky outcrops and famous for its strong tides. The persistent winds had raised quite a swell and we battled through the resulting confusion for three hours before we entered the tranquil waters of the Le Jaudy and the calm berth at Treguier.
A very special town with strong sense of place, a huge well stocked Wednesday market that runs right through the old town (above) and plenty of good cafes and restaurants. We spend a touristy day here before making a short hop around the coast to the pretty little harbour of Port Blanc, anchoring in shallow waters surrounded by pink granite outcrops and pine covered islands.
The next day we threaded our way through the rocks to Locquirec where we dried out on the flat sand at low tide, with access to the beach and shallow warm water down our ladder. This was also a chance to do a little underwater maintenance to the rudder and propellers and give the hull a quick scrub to keep the summer fouling under control. We ended the leg in the Port Vieux in Roscoff, drying out in the inner harbour wall right in the middle to the Old Town (below). It is a fascinating place with its own maritime history and strange connections to the UK (Bonnie Prince Charlie sought refuge here having escaped the English after his ill-fated attempt to seize the throne, the house he stayed in still stands in a quiet back street.)
Roscoff is as far as we planned to go along the Brittany coast, after that it gets a bit too Atlantic for a coastal ship like Snark. So after a couple of days we set off back to home via Lannion Bay, Treguier (again), St Peter Port (to refuel at tax free rates), back through the Alderney Race, Cherbourg (to get our passports stamped out of Schengen) and then the long sail back across the Channel to Portland Harbour. We are currently waiting for the winds to ease off a bit so we can sail back to our home port, Topsham to get ready to start our last two Channel voyages, the West Country rivers followed by the Isles of Scilly.
The Scilly trip is fully booked but we do have space on the West Country rivers week boarding in Topsham on 17 August and disembarking on 25th August.
If you would like to join us we are offering a last minute discount of 40% on the remaining tickets, so seven nights all inclusive for £1050!
If you are interested just send us an e mail to bookings@snark.limited
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