Sunday 12^th August – Camaret sur Mer – Brest

48:23.553N 4:25.816W

Today we decided to move on and had a short but pretty fast sail to Brest – coming into the Rade de Brest we were travelling at 9.5 knots (SOG) as we had 3 knots of tide with us.  The views when we sailed into the Rade were amazing - it’s a massive expanse of water; we were really pleased that we had come into the Rade to see it. 

We chose Brest marina as it gets an excellent write up in the almanac.  However, our first impressions have not been so positive; much bigger than Camaret but with the visitors area already full and rafted when we arrived, and the facilities somewhat tired.  It does have separate six digit security codes for everything though, issued by a computer - one to get into the loos (which do not feature either toilet seats or toilet paper), another for the showers, and yet another for the laundrette.  From my enquiries at the marina office, the town is a bus ride away (number 15, but as it is Sunday, there won’t be any), the supermarket is a 20 minutes walk each way, there is a nice restaurant near the marina (the rest being in town) but apparently pricy. 

Oh dear – I went back to the boat wondering if it was too late to get back to Camaret!  Richard was feeling the same and the tide had turned and we could have gone straight back, but we decided to guts it out.

In the end we went for dinner at the marina bar and were delighted to discover it is virtually dedicated to moules frites - and so we had some moules frites (what else) and a bottle of wine.  Both the food and the service were excellent.  We thawed.

Richard has also discovered that we can access free Wi-Fi if we take the laptop up to the marina office; they have a few chairs there for people to sit at.  We will investigate this tomorrow – things may be improving.

As Brest is hosting the Figaro single-handed yacht race and there was a major event over the weekend with the start of the second leg (Brest to La Coruna via the Fastnet rock) things have no doubt be busy, we hope to see some improvement in the condition of the facilities tomorrow.  We have decided to give it a chance.