L'Orient onwards
Lera(hen3ry)
Malcolm Cann
Sat 28 Apr 2007 10:15
I motored out until I was well clear of the approaches to Port Louis and put up all the sails, I know I wasn't in a hurry but, the sails hung down and didn't even flap.
I left the motor running and chugged along at about 3kts, my wind speed/direction was indicating about 3kts wind directly on the bow, genius here decided that really was all from the motor, occasionally the direction would do a circle around, but all in all not much was happening. In the lovely warm sunshine I settled down in the cockpit and went to sleep for a while.
The next excitement was when I was coming up to St. Nazaire, it was dark about 0300 I could see the shore lights on my port side but directly in front I could see a whole bank of lights which my chart said weren't there. I trusted my charts and continued on my chosen path, speed was now down to 2kts so life was very slow.
As daylight came up I could see that the lights were actually ships queuing to enter St. Nazaire fairway. There were so many lights on these ships that I could not distinguish their nav lights, one I thought had a red light on?
The fairway is about 2 miles wide so I approached with caution at right angles, when I reached the fairway I could see a ship coming in from the horizon, probably about 5-6 miles, so I increased speed to nearly 6kts to try to get across, none of the other ships were moving, though I had seen signs of an engine starting on one of them. I galloped across the fairway watching this one boat, when it was about 2 miles off I knew I was not going to beat it so I turned towards him and showed him my port lamp and went behind, and chugged on my way. I suspect I was being very closely watched by the pilot boat sitting in the middle of the fairway.
I arrived at Pornic at about 1100 during hightide, intentionally as the Banc de Kerouars has a minimum depth of 0.7m and I had plotted to go straight over it, everything worked fine, I didn't hit the bottom.
Arriving at Pornic the place was full, what a surprise, so I parked on the "Welcoming Pontoon"(P3). There was much hassle as the currents were quite fierce in the marina around this pontoon. Having parked I started out for the Captiniere but found the pontoon was isolated by a break from the rest of the world. Unberthed and found somewhere on pontoon P2, on a dangerous corner, got help berthing this time. Booked my self in and got allocated a real berth for my two weeks stay.
This leg had worked out exactly as planned except I couldn't sail any of it. I have pictures of the Bay of Biscay like a mirror. I have now had to switch to Camping Gaz as my last drop of Calor ran out on Wednesday. The Almanac says there is no Gaz here but "Le Gecko"(Cafe/bar) carries a very small stock.