andromeda of plymouth - Some progress but still not in Spain....

Some progress but still not in Spain....

andromeda of plymouth

Susan and Andrew Wilson

Sun 2 Aug 2009 14:52

We arrived in La Trinite sur Mer at 9:15am yesterday morning to be greeted by torrential rain and a thoroughly miserable start to the French summer holiday season.

We left Brest at 05:30 on Friday morning to take advantage of lesser winds, though not in the right direction, and to get to the Raz du Sein by slack water at approx 12:30. This meant a long sail and some motoring to arrive at the right time. Sue and Paul's daughter Megan was due to leave Southend to drive down to La Trinite to take them home on the Sunday morning, hence our need to get to La Trinite. This involved another overnight passage and we sailed and motored some 161 miles in just about 30 hours.

The trip through the Raz du Sein was fine - our timing was out by 2 minutes - not bad after some 7 hours and 35 miles we thought. The journey was marked by a little mal de mer, some mad fishermen who weaved about all over the place, rain and a few visits to the foredeck to sort out the rfurlng lines. We had some really nasty weather overnight in terms of wind and rain and very reduced visibility so we slowed down outside Quiberon to wait for a little day light to plan our route up to La Trinite. However the winds were as forecast - F3-F4 with some gusts of F5 overnight.

We skipped the last night dinner as we were all pretty tired and Megan and Jacob had arrived so had a brief bite to eat and hit the sack to get up at about 05:30 am to see Sue and Paul on their way back to Southend. Andromeda seems very empty without them both and it was great having them on board for the trip and a real shame we couldn't get down to Spain, though we did do some sailing in Biscay. So far we've done 461 miles on this trip. We are looking forward to them returning to Andromeda.

So our plans are to visit Carnac tomorrow and then head out to the Ile de Houat on Tuesday afternoon after re-fuelling, and to avoid the fuel spillage problem, to meet up with another yacht from the rally - Lucy Alice - who are also planning to cross Biscay to La Coruna. It looks like we have a weather window of some 3 days of winds from the north from Wednesday onwards so we plan to leave early on Wednesday morning to take advantage of the northerly air stream and sail in company and maintain radio contact for the crossing. Lucy Alice is heading down to Gibralter for the Blue Water Round the world rally in October - she is an Oyster 406.

We are drying out all the wet weather gear - somehow we thought it would be tee-shirt and shorts sailing - and getting ready for the next leg. We have discovered a real liking for anchovies and have been trying all sorts of preparations - well oily fish is good for you!

Hope all is well with all of you and we will update again soon - so far nothing else has broken but we have not seen any new wildlife to add to the list of observations - other than a holiday destination full of very damp families.