Audierne to Benodet - 47:52.863n 004:07.023w

Spent a few days in Audierne and really enjoyed ourselves. Had some strange experiences! On the first day there we decided to have a real sort out day and were delighted to find that the launderette was at the end of our pontoon, which was actually in the centre of town.  We arrived with bags of washing, they have a strange system whereby the machines are coin operated from a central box. Anyway the central box was only accepting notes and not coins, by the time us and several other towns folk had done their washing the machine had broken, so we had bags of soaking wet washing. A lady who had the same problem as us, but didn’t speak a word of English asked if we wanted to come with her to another launderette in the next town. This was so nice of her, but when we got there, there was only one dryer, and she had all hers to do as well as ours, and we ended up spending the whole day with her. My school girl French improved as I was forced to make conversation!!!

That night we settled in for a French night on board, I had bought some local scallops, some French bread and some salad and I cooked these. Really delicious, we then watched a French film Delicatessen (with sub titles), brilliant and bizarre and slightly scary. Whilst watching the film, we felt a jolt and a French boat had hit us. We had already been rafted by some Germans earlier, (berthing is very tight and scarce in Audierne) so we ran on deck, only to find the Germans had done the same and were all in their underpants!!! It wasn’t pretty!  The upshot was that the French boat had done no damage, and they went off to try and moor against another boat.

The next day we spent the day walking, it felt like about 20 miles but was more probably 6. Geoff has been playing a game called leaf or log (log = dog poo…there is so much dog poo on the pavement, and now with leaves too we are forever trying to decided which it is….the squashed stuff is very similar!!!) We walked right out to the coast and inland to an Orange phone shop (we had to go there twice, haven’t got to grips with their long lunch breaks.) We are desperate to get mobile broadband, but the internet is not as advanced here as it is in the UK. Most of the places we have gone to don’t have WIFI access, and there is one café in town that has a WIFI connection.  The Orange phone shop only did fixed broadband, and thought one of the big cities might have a mobile broadband dongle, but wasn’t sure!!

We left the next morning at 6.30am local time (only a 2 hour tide window here), in the pitch black! It is a tricky exit/entrance as lots of rocks and sand backs and breaking seas just off the harbour entrance. We managed to get out ok and settled on our course. The swell was really big today and we couldn’t believe the size of the mountains of water coming in off the Atlantic. The wind picked up, to a force 4/5 but from behind. We decided to run with just our head sail bagged out and we were going along at a steady 6 plus knots, which was great. We sailed all the way along the coast and were right on the edge of some squalls which were hitting the land. We turned the corner and put the main up and managed more like 8 knots for a while.

7 hours later we arrived into a very rock strewn Benodet. It’s beautiful River with lots and lots of boats, some of them very serious sailing boats. Up to now we have only been to places which have small fishing boats and visiting yachts, but this feels more like a yachtsman’s playground. Will explore more today and get back to you…..hopefully we’ll find the internet access!!!   Julie and Geoff