Pornichet to Isle d'Yeu

After what seemed an interminable few days of wind and rain the day we were due to leave arrived exactly as forecast except for a large amount of fog.we motored out of the Marina into a grey, still bay and plotted a course for the only other passage through the outlying reefs, the le trouves passage.

The sea was flat and oily as we raised the mainsail. The wind was a rather desultory force 1 and I resigned myself to motorsailing most of the way.

As we headed out towards the Lambarde banks we managed to get full sail up and it gave us a couple of knots of extra speed so we could cut down the engine revs. After a couple of hours we were approaching the anchorage / holding point for vessels entering St Nazaire. I was surprised to see a red ensign defaced with the three legs of Man belonging to a ship called the " Happy Fellow" registered in Douglas, Isle of Man.

That's it behind Lynnes head.

There were half a dozen huge ships at anchor waiting to negotiate the narrow channel to St Nazaire.

Soon we came up on the distinctive twin lighthouses of the Isle du Pilier.

The winds remained light but there was a long lazy swell, probably a remnant of the recent high winds. I re-plotted our course to go safely around a large group of rocks known as Le Boeffs the key to which were two cardinal buoys ( west ) lthey came up reassuringly as expected.

In a few hours the low lying coastline of Isle d'yeu came into sight.

We had planned to head for the only harbour of any size on the island port Joinville.

This is on the N.E. Coast of the island.

The island is only about 5 miles long and is joined to the mainland by a surprisingly shallow shelf that you can see in the charts as the light blue section which indicates it's less than 10 Mts deep.

Lynne got on the radio when we were a mile or so out and confirmed that there was room for us in the Marina, we were a little worried as it was still holiday time, but we were in luck ( and a little early ) and we were directed onto a berth quickly. Unfortunately it was a finger berth with a pretty common arrangement in France of loop cleats and a loop end.

This makes the " faf  factor " pretty high especially as there are only the two of us. However with the assistance of a couple of French ladies all was accomplished without major incident.

Port Joinville had a real southern feel with narrow streets, blue painted shutters and tiled roofs.

It also had one of the best fish shops anywhere.

We had decided to stay for the weekend so we could explore properly.