St Denis d'Oleran
The Voyages of Richard and Amanda
Wed 23 Jun 2010 13:30
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POS: 46:02.15N 001:22.22
Arrived at St Denis at 10.10am today after what
turned out to be quite a good sail (Richards point of view), a bit of a
nightmare (Amanda's point of view). At the moment Amanda has a bit of a
confidence crisis, we have had so much bad weather that that is what she is
expecting everytime the wind starts to increase. Last night after a spell with
and Easterly at 16 knots, which was very manageable it started to back to NW and
increase eventually peaking at 22 knots around 7pm. This raises quite a lumpy
sea and Justine Gabrielle bounces around alot and it means Amanda cannot face
doing a night watch. So last night she chilled out with her beta blockers, we
reffed right down and I did my 20 mins catnaps. As it happened the wind
dropped by about 10pm to a quite respectable F3 and the night was nice and
quiet.
This all worked quite well as it slowed us down so
that we didn't get here in the dark. There are some big rocky drying areas
around the headlands and the number of wrecks shown on the chart is an
indication of what can happen if you get it wrong. We ended up about 10 miles
off the coast as dawn broke so it was just a case of motoring round to St Denis,
keeping far enough off to miss the rocks. There are three buoys outside the
harbour you can use to wait for the tide as you can only enter 2.5 hours either
side of high water. To celebrate our arrival in France - bacon and eggs, real
coffee and the first real swim of the holiday.
The whole voyage took 2 days and 3 hours and we
covered 225 miles. This is an extra 40 miles over the straight line distance
because most of the time the wind was almost dead against us and we were tacking
off the straight line course.
The difference having the sun out is amazing. It
has a real Mediterranean feel, with blue skies light blue water colour and sandy
beaches. Very enjoyable.. We plan to stay here for two nights, then possible one
night in St Martin on Ilse de Re before coast hopping back to the good old
English Channel.. We should be able to do that without anymore night
sails.
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