goatsarahPreparing for phase 2 of operation “Oui Oui Baguette”.
When last you left our heroes, @zoe, @thelocalecho, and me, we had snuggled Scarlet down in the marina at the delightful Brittany town of Tréguier, and turned off everything including her 12 volt system because the marina there doesn’t like you leaving boats connected to shore power unattended. Whatever.
On Saturday we fly to Nantes which a slightly different line-up: me and Zoe again, but also joined by Sara, who comes from the land of the bouys being the wrong colours.
Anyway, our objective is the French yachtie town of Bénodet, at the northern end of the Bay of Biscay. There s basically an end of level boss between the English Channel and Biscay called the Raz de Sein (pronounced RAAAAAAAAH!, apparently)
This is a gap of a couple of kilometres where the Atlantic gets squeezed through a 15km long ridge, culminating the the Île de Sein, and the mainland. The gal is characterised by over falls and tide races into which the tide forces the water which has nowhere to go but … up
Chaotically
The passage notes from all sources share one thing: they implore people to be really wary of this place. Apparently you go through in the calmest weather you can at slack tide. You’ve got something like a 30 minute window in which you need to arrive and then you just … GO. Miss that window, and the sea will try and murder you, and might actually succeed.
Immediately north of the RAAAAAAAH, is another inshore passage called the Chenal du Four, which looks scary on the chart but which is a pussy cat. The only issue with it is that it’s a tidal gate. As the Raz is also a tidal gate, despite being quite close to each other, you can’t really pass through them on the same day unless things align precisely. Next week they do not, so we will be overnighting at the small marina of Camaret-sur-Mer.
We have been checking the developing weather forecasts. They are characterised by an Atlantic low coming through Monday and Tuesday, followed by several days of flat calm weather.
Our plan is to hunker down at L’Aber Wrac’h, the last safe haven going west on the southern shore of the English Channel, and wait out the low, then go for it. Chenal do Four, Raz de Sein, anchor overnight in the bay of Audierne, and then sail leisurely to Bénodet, where we await phase 3, the final phase of Oui Oui Baguette which gets us to La Rochelle for the winter, and the launch point for Operation Churro next year.
We have two scenarios. The nice, low stress one is to sail to the port of Roscoff on Sunday and then have a short sail to L’Aber Wrac’h on Monday, followed by a day off, and then run for Biscay. This very much depends on precisely when the low arrives. 36 hours ago it was looking like Monday would be doable, but we would end up exhausted and covered in our own vomit. It’s looking a bit better today, but still marginal.
The alternate plan is to do Tréguier to L’Aber Wrac’h in one shot on Sunday. This is a 73 nautical mile passage which will take about 14-15 hours and requires us to depart Tréguier the moment there is enough daylight to see what we are doing. We need to exit the river before the flood tide starts, which is about half an hour after sunrise, then fight the eastbound tide for a few hours until it turns and starts pushing us west again.
That will be a LONG day and I’d rather not do it, so I hoping for better weather. Let’s see.
Presented in the images are the two options.
BashStKid
Christine Burns MBE 🏳️⚧️📚⧖
Ed Davies
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