Saturday 25^th August – Lorient - Le Palais, Belle Île

47:20.868N 3:09.089W

Last night was a bit more interesting than we would have wished.  I woke up at 3.30am, smelling smoke.  I despatched Richard to find out what the problem was, assuming a problem outside somewhere, but it was indeed us!  The de-humidifier had decided to commit hari-kari and was gently smoking its motor and filling the saloon, before it died.  Because of my cooking, the batteries had been removed from the smoke alarm, so it detected nothing (lesson learnt – please fit your smoke alarms and keep the batteries in them).  Anyway, we switched the de-humidifier off, opened all the hatches and went back to bed with the resolution that the batteries will be put back in the smoke alarm – and indeed they have!

Feeling rather tired this morning after all the excitement last night, combined with a yacht(s) nearby feeling the need to test their fog horn several times at some unruly hour, we decided on a short day sail today.

We arrived at Belle Île, a small island off the coast of South Brittany, after an excellent sail in F2-4 winds, managing over 7 knots most of the way.

We were pleased we arrived in the middle of the afternoon before the mooring was full, as this is the first time we have experienced this sort of berthing arrangement.  We were expecting simple mooring buoys but here there are elaborate rafting arrangements – shoe horning boats in.  Luckily for us, the harbour master meets everyone and arranges the warps how he wants them, so we just went along with it (it’s basically a bow on a shared buoy and the stern attached with a warp to the harbour wall and lines to the boat next to you.

We were warned in the Almanac that it is busy in season, and yes, we have been surprised at how many Beneteau yachts you can get lined up in one go, even when you are convinced the mooring is full (all with Zodiac dinghies like ours, odd coincidence). 

What surprised me most here is that we thought that at 39 feet long and 1.9m draft we were a bit big for many French moorings as they are often quite shallow marinas.  Here, however, we are the smallest in our trot (row) – including two brand new Oceanis 46’s – this is the highest number of large yachts we’ve seen in one place on our travels so far.

We had a walk around the town and this is certainly a place to visit if you are travelling this way.  The town is in a beautiful setting and the atmosphere here has a lovely holiday feel about it. 

Certainly no moaning about the weather today; after a grey and low visibility start at Lorient, when we arrived, it was a lovely day outside the harbour, and when we turned into the harbour, the temperature soared and we had to strip off immediately to shorts and t-shirt to survive.  Great!