The morning dawned… grey and pouring with rain (we’re in a British Crown dependency, why should we expect anything different?), but with a good night’s sleep behind us and an exciting passage ahead, it didn’t matter. We had a luxurious lie-in as we wanted to refuel - taking advantage of the duty-free fuel concessions offered in Guernsey - and the tides were not suitable for us to enter the fuel dock until after 9.30am.

Refuelling on schedule, by 10.30am we were on our way to Roscoff, first in pouring rain and then cloud and sunshine. The seas were calm and flat, and we motored all of the way using the mainsail to provide a bit of extra speed. We were in the middle of the low pressure system that is making its way across our path and although this meant we had to motor all day, the calmer conditions were helpful for some of us to develop our ‘sea legs’ after a period since we last were at sea.

The calm conditions also afforded us the luxury of all sitting down together for lunch without needing to restrain plates of food from flying across the table, and rounding it off with some delicious coffee, Italian style.

In the afternoon Alastair gave Julian and Julia a refresher course on the theory of tides and currents… hopefully the theory will stick and they will be able to apply it in practice. 

Speaking of putting theory into practice - with the sun making an appearance for a couple of hours this afternoon, Julian ventured out on deck to take some sights with his recently acquired sextant. He got as far as calibrating the sextant but fortunately our chart plotters are still working as Julian didn’t get far enough to actually work out where we were :-)

In the early evening along the Brittany coast we were delighted to be greeted by a welcoming committee of dolphins; they didn’t stick around for long but it was great to see them. We finally arrived at our marina berth in Roscoff in Brittany after 9pm, still in glorious late evening sun. After dinner we headed into Roscoff to explore, and discovered a charming seaside town with plenty of stone buildings full of character, well kept gardens teeming with flowers, a beautiful church building with intricate stained glass windows, a variety of sailing and motor boats bobbing around on moorings… and brasseries that were open! It was tempting to venture inside but we stuck to our walk and enjoyed the deserted streets and quaint atmosphere. 

All in all, a great day.