On Thursday the weather front with its associated gale warning was still blowing though so, after dodging the showers in the morning we had a great walk along some of the coastal path, heading west. We also stopped to visit Dartmouth Castle – an English Heritage site that was a fortification from the 13th Century and was still in use defending the port in WW2.
On Friday we were up at 4.30 and off the mooring just after 5.00. The wind seemed ominously light at first but, after clearing the shelter of the land, we had the predicted north-westerly – perfect for a broad reach. We had the spinnaker up for a couple of hours but the wind and sea state continued to build so, to prevent another crisis, we dropped it and carried on under white sails.
Though we crossed well to the west of the Traffic Separation Scheme, there were plenty of large ships to worry about, the longest being over 700ft. It’s their duty to keep clear of sailing vessels so we watched our AIS system (which receives digital broadcasts of their speed, direction and identification and send out similar details of our own) to see when they altered course to avoid us. The nearest CPA (closest point of approach) for one ship was less than a third of a mile so if he hadn’t altered course we’d have been onto the VHF to make sure he’d spotted us.
Once past the shipping, we had the sea to ourselves and made a steady 6-7 knots to the entrance of the Treguier river. The coastline here is incredibly rocky and very tidal so it’s not at all clear from seaward how the entrance should be approached. However the red Basse Crublent buoy appeared ahead of us as planned and we followed the dog-leg route into the river (which is absolutely beautiful) just as the sun set.
The marina is about 3 miles up-river and the pilot book warned that the tide runs strongly through the pontoons so it was very pleasing that we arrived almost exactly at slack water and motored straight into an empty berth. 6 hours later 9 racing yachts from Guernsey arrived but it was a sign of our tiredness that we didn’t hear a thing!
Today we’ve been exploring this medieval town, had a great lunch of galettes (savoury crepes stuffed with all sorts of good things, including an egg), with local cider, and are planning a meal out this evening. Tomorrow we plan to do a 5-6 hour coastal passage eastwards round to Binic – plenty of rock-dodging navigation required so we’d better not overdo it tonight!
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