Brest to Morgat

I We had become quite comfortable in the Marina at Moulin Blanc. Several jobs got done and with Jimmys help we had a few hours with me up the mast again. The weather took a turn for the worse and we decided after a day cooped below to get the bus to Brest and visit the Maritime museum.

This was fascinating and is housed in a chateau, well it's a fortress really that has been on the site since Roman times, a very interesting diversion and it did keep us out of the rain!.

Sadly Jimmy and Shari have had to go home for family commitments and are leaving Aquila at Brest for a few weeks.  They had also unbeknown to us come into Brest to check out buses to Roscoff and we bumped into each other on the bus home to Moulin Blanc. We had decided as the weather cleared to move down the coast to Morgat, in the morning  I helped Jjimmy with his enormous bags to the bus stop and after a sad goodbye to the Aquilas we left the Marina in the early morning mist.

I had wanted an early start as the tide and wind would be opposing each other in the narrow entrance channel, to the Rade de Brest known as the Gulet de Brest. The waves were quite impressive but luckily only one or two were breaking over the boat, one however was quite memorable causing us both to shout out loud, I had better not say what we shouted. Lynne patiently listened to my lecture about "wind over tide" probably wondering why we left the marina in the first place.

The wind was as usual for us these days bang on the nose so although we had the mainsail up we were under engine until we reached the tricky little passage past the lighthouse at Point du Toulinquet that led between the Roches du Toulinquet and the headland, one of the rocks is named " the Lion"

To be honest I couldn't see it myself, however something I have never seen while threading Dark Tarn between the many submerged rocks and hazards was a flock ( if that's the correct collective noun) of cormorants. As we couldn't deviate from our course, being on a leading line that cleared all dangers we barged straight through them, it was quite impressive when they all took flight together.

The rocks visible in the distance are les Tas de Pois, and it is possible to go between any of them with variable degrees of difficulty but Lynne tactfully requested that we go around the outside.

The coast of North Brittany really is a graveyard of ships and it's not hard to see why, there are cardinal marks all over the place, rocks visible and hidden, charted and uncharted, named and unnamed. We passed  " Le Bouc " and " Le Chevreau " as we made our way, thankfully now under full sail to the next headland the Cap de Chèvre.

 After threading yet more rocks the very attractive coastline down to Morgat came into view.

Although strangely there was no sight of the town, however I had no time to think about it as we were engaged in following " rule number 1 ", that is to say, " any two boats in close proximity are in fact racing "

The boat in question had been ahead of us since the Point du Toulinquet and we had gradually overhauled him until he was about 200 metres in front of us and the next few miles became a very enjoyable downwind duel.

However it didn't detract from us admiring the really beautiful coastline, we were now officially in South Brittany and in some undefinable way it felt more southern maybe it was the sandy beaches or scrubby pines, I don't know. As we passed the last headland the wide sweeping bay of Morgat came into view and we were forced to use our new rock dodging skills to avoid a load of wee kids in tiny " optimist " dinghys with brightly coloured fan sails in order to find a nice spot to anchor. They certainly seemed to be enjoying their sailing, there were two kids to a boat the size of a small chest of drawers and the skills they had were fantastic. I am very impressed by how the French introduce sailing at every stage seemingly to children. We anchored on the outside of the mooring buoys and just outside the entrance channel for the Marina.

Morgat on this chart is the small bay right up at the top centred on the yellow sectored circle.

I also discovered that we had at some point round about the north end of the Chanel du Four accidentally switched on our stealth mode switch so our AIS was not transmitting, oops! We fixed that.

However as we had been " silent " there is no track.

We had a very late lunch and then went ashore to explore.

Morgat is a typical ( we are led to believe ) French holiday town, largely developed in the past by the founder of the Peugeot car company as a place to send his executives on holiday. The beaches are fabulous.

There was a craft fair in progress and there was obviously an entertainment planned for that evening. 

We enjoyed watching some buskers. I have no idea what the instrument on the right is called but it's an impressive piece of plumbing!

But we were fairly tired after our early start so we returned to Dark Tarn and enjoyed the evenings entertainment  under the stars in the cockpit. This turned out to be a female Accapella group singing in Breton and an Irish fiddle y dee band who were very good but made Lynne very homesick for Ireland!