Friday 25th September
Arradon – Quiberon Port Haliguen Day 74
“We must leave by 0930, 0900, even better” said Bob
“What time is it?” I enquired as I awoke – “A quarter to 7” came the reply.
Indeed that was true if you were looking at the ship’s chronometer (clock), which reads BST and an hour before the actual French time. Oh good think I to myself, I don’t need to hurry, I can read another chapter of my book (The Touch by Colleen McCullough – famous author of The Thorn Birds). After my chapter was up, I eased myself out of bed. Bob had gone off on his bike into town to buy bread and a Pain au Raisin. Then I realised how late it actually was – eeek! Quick breakfast ensued and take the rubbish up to the Capitainerie, where you have to ask for a key to put it into the bin! The sailing school were setting up with catamarans and about 30 eager students bundled into the changing rooms to get ready for their day. This is a school day, right?
Then we were off at 0940; really no wind to speak of but this was exactly the right time to leave the Morbihan as we were leaving as the tide emptied the place out. I love helming in this situation as you get the rush from the tide which whooshes you down and much of time we were going along at 9knots – which is fast for us. The fastest was a whooping 11.6knots! It took just under an hour to reach the entrance and then we were out to sea!
Passing Port Navalo
Our destination today was Port Haliguen, the port for Quiberon – another really great sailing centre. As we came around near the small island of Méaban there were quite a few boats sailing, so I suggested that we do similar – it is a sailing holiday after all. We wouldn’t reach our destination on this tack though and the wind was a very light Westerly 9 – 11 knots.
Suddenly the unusual looking Phare de la Teignouse (lighthouse) was in our sight and we decided that rather than Haliguen, we should go to Le Palais, Belle Ile, despite having to wait for the tide to get in – the sailing was just perfect. That was until the wind died… and die it did to virtually nothing. Humph! Back to plan A, Haliguen, here we come!
On arrival we located and made use of the Fuel Pontoon; 36.69 litres of Gazole (diesel) set us back €92.83 (that’s €2.53/litre) – all the more reason to sail! We munched on a baguette ham and salad sandwich while we waited for the gate to open on the inner harbour. Getting off the fuel berth proved tricky and we had already observed another boat blunder its way off. Bob is usually a past master at springing off astern (backwards) but today Boni was having none of it. Maybe the current was pushing us wrong way – it was just odd. Monsieur Le Capitain had already been along to give us directions where to moor, port-side to and again this was also more dramatic than it should have been!
The depth gauge on the sill at Port Haliguen
The old lighthouse
The old port, now massively developed to include a greater amount of boats, still retains the old lighthouse and smaller original port basin. The Capitainerie is housed alongside well appointed Sanitaires and the Poubelles aren’t far away either. Also, a selection of bars and restaurants should you wish to imbibe.
We crossed the sill into the inner-harbour, close to all the amenities and tied up. A bit later we had our bikes out and went towards the southerly most tip of the peninsula, past the little airfield and then found a beach to sit on out of the wind for a little while; yes a nice wind that could have taken us over to Belle Ile. Hey ho, we were here now! Our return to the boat went via the local supermarket, where the fish counter took our eye. Monsieur Poissonier was a very skilful filleter of fish and we watched him in awe while we waited our turn at the counter. We asked for a selection of oysters, bulots and crevettes for our supper and found a cold bottle of prosecco.
Back onboard, we relaxed into our evening; newly found were these encased ice cubes to cool the G&T, which we store in a little slim plastic box in the coolest part of the fridge. We had, of course, turned the fridge up to get the right temperature for ice. The trouble was, now the lettuce was also frozen!