More warmth and colour

Well I am sure you will be happy to know that Drizzle is long gone back to his family and we have entered a much warmer and sunnier phase.

Since we last updated this blog in Roscoff we have been to L'Aber Wrac'h; Cameret; Loctudy; Concarneau; Port Trudy and we are now in Belle Isle. We have travelled a long way south and over the last few days we have dispensed with the thermals, the 'oilies,' the sea boots and finally today some small body parts became exposed to the sun and fresh air..... not all of the photos can be shared though! 

The first signs of colour came as we passed through the Raz de Seine - which can be quite dangerous if not entered at the right time. There is an amazing lighthouse there called La Vieille built ingeniously on some terrifying looking rocks. We saw a rainbow just as we were going through shining on a westerly cardinal. It was all quite biblical and coincided with me receiving a mail to say I had won the lottery, but it was only £2.50!

La Vielle

Since then we have had some very benign days in pretty towns like Concarneau. Concarneau is lovely and as a consequence quite favoured by tourists - but it was nice to sit and chill with a cider and watch the world go by for a bit after a few days of hard sailing.

On the way from Concarneu the wind was in the right direction so we decided to fly the spinnaker. It looked absolutely great and our speed increased significantly, but the wind strengthened to 15 knots and Greg got scared so we took it down.....

Yesterday evening we sat on board and watched loads of yachts piling into a very small harbour in Port Trudy on the Isle de Groix. Luckily we had arrived just in time to secure a mooring in the harbour rather than having to anchor because later it became a bit of a scramble with lots of rafting up; some boats up to 4 deep. 

When it became ridiculously crowded sadly a few yachts had to anchor off and use dinghies to get ashore.

When we arrived at Port Trudy the harbourmaster told us to raft up next to another boat - but they clearly didn't want us to moor there as their boat was brand spanking new. They told us they were leaving at 7.30am in an attempt to put us off, but undeterred we said OK and moored up anyway. This morning there was absolutely no wind but we all had to leave early because of the required 7.30 start. It was clear that our neighbours didn't really want to go at 7.30am, but honour was at stake - so all of us that had been rafted together overnight left the harbour and tried to sail. 

Since there was absolutely no wind at all, we all ended up drifting around for hours killing time until the tide rose and we had deep enough water to get into the marina at Belle Isle. Oh well, I suppose there are worse problems.

But we are here and it is belle!

Entering the Marina de Flot - Belle isle

Le Citadel - Belle Ile