On 17th April I set off for Pornic, but ended up in L'Orient 47 42.60N 03
22.00W in spite of the cold which was not doing me any good.. The week
previous I had had my mind made up to go by the arrival of "39em Course
Croisieres EDHEC". This is a 9 day long regatta involving some 200+ boats,
x-country and all that athletic sort of stuff, but at the end of each day
the noise starts at 2200 and will continue until 0200 except the last two
days when it continues until 0300, while setting up/testing they kept me
awake until 0300 and then woke me again at 0515, this made my decision.
Brest itself doesn't seem to have a lot going for it, it has a large
commercial dock, a naval docks, some sub-pens and I suppose that's about it.
You don't get to see the sub-pens as they are in the naval docks which is a
restricted area. The marina itself is quite comfortable except for the wind,
which blew me into the slot and tried to stop me getting out of it. The
bi-lingual marina staff seemed a bit scarce so I started to learn French,
and the fuel is available 24hrs a day if you have a chip and pin card,
Lloydstsb card worked well. I didn't find that out until the day I left.
So on the 17th I fought my way out through the throngs of yachtees all going
racing to go to Pornic. The noise machines had not proved too bad after all
but I had decided to go.
I caught the tide out of Brest and was in danger of overtaking a slow moving
Navy ship at about 8kts SOG. One outside Brest I found very little wind and
tried to use the genoa to grab what ever was available. It was quite
miserable, there was no nice warm sun, no wind only the motor. I kept on
furling and unfurling the genoa as a hint of wind appeared and then vanished
again. I'm getting quite good at that now and try not to use the winch for
furling. At about 0200 the sea started to get very slightly bumpy so, coward
that I am, I thought "Bay of Biscay- bumpy sea get out", I turned for the
nearest marina, L'Orient. It took me until 1100 to get to Port Louis, the
entrance to the rivers, and I arrived there when the tide was running out,
and of course it had turned out to be a nice day. The gap at Port Louis is
narrow and I reckon the tide was running at about 4kts because I had to put
on nearly full power to get me through it and are there some nasty eddies
and cross currents.
I got into the river and looked for a berth, every where seemed full of
locals as in Brest but eventually I ended up at L'Orient where I rafted
alongside a local boat just behind one for sale in the visiteurs area. When
I went to the captiniere and told the young lady I'd like to stay for 5 days
she gave me a locals berth further in the marina, so I went onto a finger
berth for all of 10mins then she very apologetically came and told me the
owner was coming back, so she and a helper moved me and even offered a
bottle of wine as recompense. I stayed my 5 days.
My 5 days were not wasted. As usual the first thing I did was located a food
supply, this done I started looking aroud all touristy, I visited the
sub-pens and got lots of pictures, I looked at most of the sites, including
the incredible ferry which turns in its own length. Now know why its called
"L'Orient" also know that there is not much of the town older than the 50s
cause the pig britishers blew it apart because of the subs.
Five days passed quite quickly so on the way out I took some more photos of
the sub-pens and made sure I caught the tide going out.
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