Wednesday 30th September – Day 78
Hoëdic – La Turballe
The night on the mooring buoy was calm, which was delightful, as hanging off a mooring buoy can be very “rock and roll”. The day dawned bright and sunny and Bob suggested that we go onto the pontoon (as there were now some spaces) and go ashore. I wasn’t keen – why? We didn’t need to and most of these pontoon berths are taken by local fishermen.
Talking of fishermen, Bob witnessed a small fishing boat lay a long net – 200m long? – right the length of the harbour. If we had set off that could have caught our propellor for sure. Totally irresponsible!
The wind was a very gentle southerly 4-9 knots, up went the (full) sails and we set off for La Turballe. At first our speed was only about 3.5knots (which is disappointing), but this soon came up, with the wind to a very respectable 5 – 5.5knots of boat speed. Izzy coped with the steering for quite a while (she likes calm), but the swell (which comes in from the Atlantic was quite big.
The 15 nmiles took just over 3 hours and we sailed pretty much the whole way, tying up at about 1330 – lovely sail. It was cool though – the temperature now is around 20˚ C, as opposed to last week’s 28 ˚ C; I had long trousers on and my fleece. By the time we got into port, the wind had increased to about 12knots, which made the visitor’s pontoon there quite bobbly, the fenders were creaking and the ropes snatched a bit.
We got the bikes out and cycled into town and out of town toe the Super-U (super market), returning via a Bar called Cap 270 ˚ , where we met a motor-cyclist who was making his way back to Caen, from Porto in Portugal!
Thursday 1st October – Day 79
Another very lovely day and time to investigate why the sky-light windows were leaking – well the one on the Starboard side, which sit underneath. The other day, whilst in Le Palais, I was rudely dripped upon. Port side was good, but it’s good to do a matching pair while we’re onto it. First gouge out the existing sealant, which had de-graded, then mask it off – retrieve masking (frog) tape from the tape box in the aft cabin. Uh oh! This threw up another problem – water on the plastic boxes and in the locker there… oh dear another leak to sort.
Once the skylight windows were masked, apply Sikafix (mastic), scrape off the excess and leave to dry. DO NOT TREAD ON IT! All good.
Onto investigating the next leak in the aft cabin. This was quickly diagnosed as the nuts/bolts of the crane fixing degrading; working together took everything apart, put in a load more sealant and replaced the old nuts and bolts, replacing the crane in situ.
The offending holes under the crane fitting.
What with the washing (just a bit of hand washing – mostly smalls) and the fixing it had been a bit of a morning; but the sun was shining and we were happy to fix leaks before the winter comes.
After lunch we took to our bikes and cycled the 8kms (5 miles) to the Medieval town of Guérande – along the coast and then a bit inland, passing many salt-pans as we went. This town has a walled city at the centre of it (reminding us a bit of Concarneau, but without the tourists).
Many very old buildings including a huge church, which is being renovated to the coast of €10M, but we were still able to look inside and enjoy the incredible stained glass windows.
We stopped for a refreshing cup of tea (how British!) and chose Earl Grey; this bore absolutely no resemblance to the taste of Earl Grey that we know!
Guerande Streets
Moated Medieval Town
Back in La Turballe (downhill ride) we shopped for our supper and retired to the boat – a meal of Saumon Parmentier – (salmon and mashed potatoes) with an anchovy salad to start with and an apricot tartlet for dessert.
Suddenly Bob said “Shall we watch The Traitors” – so we did – amazing how you can watch TV onboard!
Friday 2nd October – La Turballe – Piriac-sur-Mer
A bright morning dawned (sunrise is at 0812) so it starts getting light a bit before then. After breakfast we set off for Piriac under motor (about 4 knots of wind greeted us) – temperature was certainly no more than 10 ˚ C at first and I was pleased to have my waterproof bottoms on and fleece. (Bob was wearing shorts and wondered why he was cold…) This was the first time we could sail at all for quite a while, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
Skipper Bob – us leaving at sunrise from La Turballe
Fishing is rife here – trawling boats and pots
Breakers around N Cardinal Grand Norven, near Piriac-sur-Mer
The reason for coming to Piriac was that tomorrow we were expecting to have to go back into the Vilaine river, to catch the last emergency lock before our return home on Thursday/Friday.
However – this is complicated – please concentrate! The lock at Arzal will close on 4th November until 2026 until 26 March 2027 – so no sailing on the sea, once you are the wrong side of the lock, as you won’t get out. Going on this years’ experience, the lock did not re-open until May. If we had applied by the end of July (which we did) we would be given a winter pontoon berth in one of 5 ports, of which we could choose. Vannes was our first choice, and they would let us know at the beginning of October which of the 5 ports we would be allocated.
So, no email yesterday, and no email today. We need to know, so we can make the choice whether to go back into the river tomorrow or stay out. We went to see the Capitainerie here at Piriac to see what our options are here. We would be able to stay for a month from 7th October to 7th November at a very reasonable rate, then move to our new port in November (means coming out again in November, but that’s OK). Also, being in a different port over-winter means you will have to go away from that port for 7 days during your tenure (we can do that at the beginning and at the end, right?)
So – this means another 4 days sailing for us now (yay!) – and we get to keep the boat in Piriac for a month and out of the river for the winter on a pontoon berth in the beautiful, historic city of Vannes. It’s taken quite a lot of asking questions, finding out about car parking in Vannes, thinking about the how and when we come out – but by 1800 – there was still no email to confirm it all.
A few photos around Piriac – now very quiet:
