Trip Update - 10th August 2008 Ile d'Yeu, France

Nutmeg of Shoreham
Ollie Holden
Thu 14 Aug 2008 10:49

Position:  46:43.63N 02:20.68W

 

Port Joinville, Ile d’Yeu, France

 

We woke up to a far nicer day, and set off from L’Herbaudiere, through the Chenal de la Grise (certainly wouldn’t have been possible to negotiate this shallow channel yesterday), once again heading South.

 

We haven’t had internet access for some time now, but we were starting to think about the Biscay crossing.  This has been preying on my mind, normally when I am lying awake in bed, because it is the longest passage we will have had to do (approx. 36hrs if we go to Santander or Bilbao), and because we cross the continental shelf, where the waves can get horrendous – this is where Biscay earns its fearsome reputation.  I worked out a few weeks back that we had a couple of options:

 

1)       Cross from somewhere like Benodet or Lorient, crossing to Gijon – would take 48 hrs

2)       Cross from somewhere like Ile d’Yeu or Les Sables d’Olonne, crossing to Santander – would take 36 hrs.

 

It doesn’t sound like much of a difference, but a 36hr crossing can be done in 2 days & a night, whereas the 48hr crossing is going to mean 2 nights.  Whilst with a stronger crew I wouldn’t mind (and would cross direct to La Coruna – nearer 3 days) – but in our case, the worst case is that we can’t guarantee that I will get any help with watchkeeping and I don’t think it would be safe for me to do 2 consecutive nights with little sleep.  Even if Sarah is up to watchkeeping, the kids will need entertaining, feeding etc and I suspect that the combined situation is going to make it quite hard.

 

I know that we have to face up to a longer passage from Portugal down to the Canaries (or to Madeira) but we want to take these challenges one at a time.  I would hope that the wind and waves are a little more favourable (ie not always on the nose!) by then, and there is also the option of potentially cutting that trip down into chunks by exploring the Atlantic coast of Morocco, which might be fun.  Alternatively we may look to take on an additional crewmember for this one.

 

There is an argument that we should just get on with it because if conditions are fair, it is no different to coastal sailing and the length of time you are at sea is irrelevant.  I do subscribe to that argument (and if I was alone or with a group of lads, I would be following it) but for us, in our situation, it is not the right approach – yet.  There has also not yet been a decent weather window that meets our conservative appetite for risk.

 

En route towards Yeu, I tested out the Iridium connection and downloaded the latest GRIB file (this is a compressed file which provides wind speed/direction, wave height, and pressure, on a grid, for anywhere in the world.  File size for all of Biscay is about 50Kb – takes just under a minute to download.  Great for the bandwidth-impaired!!).  Typically the Law of Sod was in force and the only available window was immediately – ie if we just sailed straight past Yeu and kept on going for another 200 miles!

 

Sarah and I had a “difficult” conversation to assess whether we thought it was feasible or not.  We came to the conclusion that it wasn’t sensible to go straightaway because (1) we needed to get the water circulation pump on the engine replaced (2) we wanted to see Yeu.  With hindsight, maybe we should have grasped this rare window as the subsequent weather has been rubbish, but we didn’t, and this really helped my state of mind.  I think I have been getting progressively more worried about the Biscay crossing, but discussing the options cleared it all up for me.

 

We arrived into Port Joinville, the main town on this small island.  The architecture has really changed and we are definitely out of Britanny and into Vendee!  All the roofs are orange tiles and the walls are all whitewashed.  On Yeu, the doors and shutters on all the houses are painted sky-blue and the whole effect is very Mediterranean. 

 

After an afternoon on the beach, we sussed out that the thing to do on Yeu is hire bikes and the next morning, we hired two bikes and a trailer for the girls.  It was superb!  Despite it drizzling in the morning, it didn’t dampen our spirits and we rode all around the island, including climbing the lighthouse

 

View inside the lighthouse

 

We stopped for lunch at a lovely restaurant in Port de la Meule, a tiny hamlet on the South coast, where on enquiring in our best French if there was a table, were answered by the waitress with a Scottish accent!  We refueled on wine, Galettes (savoury pancakes) followed by Crepes (sweet pancakes) and ice creams for the kids.

 

Post-ice creams

 

The sun came out and we continued on our circumnavigation of this beautiful island, helped along by the bottle of wine we’d drunk at lunchtime, and stopping at stunning sandy beaches with no-one on them, with Sarah picking out her ideal next home tucked away in the pine trees.

 

Heaven

 

Ollie towing 2 lazy lumps

 

Millie learning to ride

 

We were all tired by the end of the day and arrived back at the hire shop 5 minutes before it closed, vowing to do that again.  Yeu is absolutely lovely.

 

Two tired happy girls