Tuesday 28^th August – Port Joinville, Ile d’Yeu – Les Sables d’Olonne

46:30.145N 1:47.474W

Last night was fun.  We went to bed reasonably early but by 2.30pm we were awake with a force 6/7 ripping through the marina and blowing us on to the pontoon hard.  A short while later, a yacht entered the marina with difficulty and, after spending a lot of time donking around, struggling with the wind and a full marina, waking up most of it, rafted against us. 

We got up to help (self preservation) and wondered why they were arriving at such an hour; we suspect they had had to change plans due to the wind and sea conditions – sparking this theory we had noticed that one of the crew, the only girl in the crew, was sitting in the cockpit looking so horribly miserable and not helping a bit – poor thing looked like she never wanted to leave the shore again.

Unfortunately, they then spent an hour or so taking it in turns, clumping across our bows, to go to the facilities – I think at that point I could have cheerfully strangled them.

By around 5.30am things were quietening down; Richard had deployed the washing-up liquid to stop the fenders squeaking, we’d counted four out/in trips to the facilities for the four crew; the skipper of the outside yacht had gone out again to put on a shore line; now there was only the wind.  When we got up we could see a few other boats had come in (more quietly, clearly) in the early hours and rafted on other boats nearby.

It was a windy morning but due to calm to a F4-5 for the afternoon before building again this evening, so we decided to make a run for it after lunch.  We had F4-6 all the way here, with quite a chop.  We were heavily reefed and it was exhilarating trotting along briskly, fairly close hauled.  At one point we were travelling at 8.2 knots through the water (we had a bit of tide against us so the SOG was lower); it was also time to reef!

We arrived here at Les Sables d’Olonne at around 6.30pm.  We did as the Almanac suggested and berthed on the fuel pontoon and I wandered up to the harbour master and asked in French for a berth for the night.  He replied in English (he’d seen us arrive and so knew I was English from our ensign, but was kind enough to say my French had been very good).  He gave us a large finger berth which was approached nose to wind and made parking easy for us.  His assistant also came to take the lines for us – a very welcome reception after our hard sail, especially as the wind was still 18-22 knots in the marina.

This marina is the one that hosts the Vendee Globe yacht race that some of you may have heard of and so we are going to have a wander around tomorrow; it is also where the Figuro solo yacht race recently ended (they were racing during the time that the gales were impacting the Fastnet).  Richard is in heaven as the place is surrounded by chandleries, boat yards and workshops – I think I’ll be finishing that book!