Trip Update - 10th August 2008 Ile d'Yeu, France
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Position: 46:43.63N
02:20.68W Port Joinville, Ile d’Yeu,
We woke up to a far nicer day, and
set off from L’Herbaudiere, through the Chenal de la Grise (certainly wouldn’t
have been possible to negotiate this shallow channel yesterday), once again
heading South. We haven’t had internet access for
some time now, but we were starting to think about the Biscay crossing. This has been preying on my mind,
normally when I am lying awake in bed, because it is the longest passage we will
have had to do (approx. 36hrs if we go to Santander or Bilbao), and because we
cross the continental shelf, where the waves can get horrendous – this is where
Biscay earns its fearsome reputation.
I worked out a few weeks back that we had a couple of
options: 1)
Cross
from somewhere like Benodet or 2)
Cross
from somewhere like Ile d’Yeu or Les Sables d’Olonne, crossing to It doesn’t sound like much of a
difference, but a 36hr crossing can be done in 2 days & a night, whereas the
48hr crossing is going to mean 2 nights.
Whilst with a stronger crew I wouldn’t mind (and would cross direct to La
Coruna – nearer 3 days) – but in our case, the worst case is that we can’t
guarantee that I will get any help with watchkeeping and I don’t think it would
be safe for me to do 2 consecutive nights with little sleep. Even if Sarah is up to watchkeeping, the
kids will need entertaining, feeding etc and I suspect that the combined
situation is going to make it quite hard. I know that we have to face up to a
longer passage from There is an argument that we should
just get on with it because if conditions are fair, it is no different to
coastal sailing and the length of time you are at sea is irrelevant. I do subscribe to that argument (and if
I was alone or with a group of lads, I would be following it) but for us, in our
situation, it is not the right approach – yet. There has also not yet been a decent
weather window that meets our conservative appetite for
risk. En route towards Yeu, I tested out
the Iridium connection and downloaded the latest GRIB file (this is a compressed
file which provides wind speed/direction, wave height, and pressure, on a grid,
for anywhere in the world. File
size for all of Biscay is about 50Kb – takes just under a minute to
download. Great for the
bandwidth-impaired!!). Typically
the Law of Sod was in force and the only available window was immediately – ie
if we just sailed straight past Yeu and kept on going for another 200
miles! Sarah and I had a “difficult”
conversation to assess whether we thought it was feasible or not. We came to the conclusion that it wasn’t
sensible to go straightaway because (1) we needed to get the water circulation
pump on the engine replaced (2) we wanted to see Yeu. With hindsight, maybe we should have
grasped this rare window as the subsequent weather has been rubbish, but we
didn’t, and this really helped my state of mind. I think I have been getting
progressively more worried about the Biscay crossing, but discussing the options
cleared it all up for me. We arrived into Port Joinville, the
main town on this small island. The
architecture has really changed and we are definitely out of Britanny and into
Vendee! All the roofs are orange
tiles and the walls are all whitewashed.
On Yeu, the doors and shutters on all the houses are painted sky-blue and
the whole effect is very Mediterranean.
After an afternoon on the beach, we
sussed out that the thing to do on Yeu is hire bikes and the next morning, we
hired two bikes and a trailer for the girls. It was superb! Despite it drizzling in the morning, it
didn’t dampen our spirits and we rode all around the island, including climbing
the lighthouse View inside the
lighthouse
We stopped for lunch at a lovely
restaurant in Port de la Meule, a tiny hamlet on the South coast, where on
enquiring in our best French if there was a table, were answered by the waitress
with a Scottish accent! We refueled
on wine, Galettes (savoury pancakes) followed by Crepes (sweet pancakes) and ice
creams for the kids. Post-ice
creams
The sun came out and we continued on
our circumnavigation of this beautiful island, helped along by the bottle of
wine we’d drunk at lunchtime, and stopping at stunning sandy beaches with no-one
on them, with Sarah picking out her ideal next home tucked away in the pine
trees. Heaven
Ollie towing 2 lazy
lumps
Millie learning to
ride
We were all tired by the end of the
day and arrived back at the hire shop 5 minutes before it closed, vowing to do
that again. Yeu is absolutely
lovely. Two tired happy
girls
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