A good Channel crossing and back to Brittany

 After our aborted night-time attempt, our second go at the 100nm passage from Dartmouth to Lezardrieux was a much more satisfactory affair. It wasn't all plain sailing of course - the first three hours were hard on the wind and in horrible, heavy rain but after that the skies cleared and the wind backed to a much more favourable angle. 

We were able to sail up most of the Trieux river in the fading light and completed the trip in almost exactly 15 hours. Here's a very short video of some of the highlights:

We moored up for a couple of nights on the mid-river pontoon in Lezardrieux, familiar territory for us which made it all very easy. The online 'Protocol' Customs system is still operating (in spite of the new fingerprint / face recognition system supposedly being in place for all non-EU visitors) so we were able to get our customs clearance emailed to us by the very efficient marina office even before we arrived.

With the winds now too calm for much sailing (this trip is beginning to challenge us, weather wise!) we decided to motor an hour up river and through a large lock into the little river port of Pontrieux where we spent a couple of nights. Here's a video of the trip on YouTube - click HERE: 

The visitors' pontoon in the river at Pontrieux

The village square and one of the few remaining C15th timbered houses

The return trip down river was easy, though the top of the mast looked terrifyingly close to the bottom of the suspension bridge as we passed through. We celebrated with a brilliant meal at the Auberge de Trieux, where we ate with Barbara and Steve last year.

We returned to a very calm mooring, ready to move west the following day.

The calm overnight conditions didn't suggest that we'd get much sailing the following morning but we rigged the spinnaker lines anyway and we motored out of the estuary.

Passing La Croix navigation tower

Lovely sailing with the Parasailor

The breeze gradually picked up from a gentle 8 knots to a very respectable 16 knots so we covered the 37nm in just over 5 hours to arrive at Trebeurden which has a large marina with a flap gate which only opens for about 2.5 hours either side of high tide. We picked up a mooring to wait a couple of hours for the tide to rise and made our way in. The marina was fine but the town didn't have much going for it so we just stayed for one night.

The marina at high tide. At low tide all of the water in the foreground disappears and the marina retains its water behind a wall and the flap gate (which can just be seen on the right, with its red and green markers).

Our departure the following morning looked a bit in peril as we were greeted by thick fog and less than 100m of visibility. We crept out of the marina just before the flap gate shut and picked up a mooring just outside for a second coffee to wait for the visibility to clear. Thankfully we only had an hour to wait and enjoyed a good beat to windward to the big marina in the ferry port of Roscoff. More to follow!