4 - 7 Sep at Camaret sur Mer Brittany

After a pretty dull grey lumpy 36hr down-channeler we anchored overnight at Anse des Blancs Sables in the Chenal du Four in the early hours of Sat 3 Sep. Whiskey and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ( a pattern to be repeated many times later, I'm sure).  Up at Oh!-crack-sparrow fart to catch last of tide down Le Four and into Goulet de Brest. Very busy in the bay with several races and regattas under way.

As the forecast is rather pooo-ey, we decide to roost awhile across the bay at Camaret, with its old ruined fishing boats, the fetes and tourists, and its disney-like Vauban tower. Throughout our first day and night our ears were assaulted by the constant crapalogical (sp?) noises from the worlds least tasteful fair spread along the harbour-side. Shore-side facilities were very end-of-termish and dark.
Much of our stay was rainy and blustery, and to be honest, the weather wasn't that good either.

Walks and meals and beers ashore. Much watching of the meteo and grib files. Waiting for the coat-tails of hurricane Irene to whip the Bay into a frenzy. Big swells forecast and ginagorous winds for several days to come.
We befriended (is this the correct tense?) 2 german boats, the one a minmalist wooden 26ft Wharram cat skippered by an adventurous journalist, Christian, on a soul finding solo mission of the Zen/Motessier type, the other a 30 year old Arpege skippered by the brave Merle, an elfin and bright German girl, already well known in the German yachting press, perhaps as something akin to the young Ellen Mcarthur.She was on her current mission to sail from Berlin to Portugal by any means.
 
One day, our new found friend, Christian, scoured the shore for as much natural seafood (and probably some un-natural stuff as well, if I'm honest) as he could find so that in the evening we had a mighty cook-in on the pontoon between the boats, followed by a long guitar and singing jam session. I'd never had singing jam before but it was alot better than the sneering marmite)












Seeing that not too many easy breaks were set to appear in the wake of Hurricane Irene, Merle asked if she could crew with us as far as Portugal. Seeing her enthusiasm and obvious galley skills (ho ho. nice to get the patronizing chauvinist bits in first) we readily agreed. What a good decision that turned out to be, particularly as 2 old men such as Bill & I are not designed to cope with glaring at each other's navels indefinitely.
Finally around noon on Weds 7th, the portents look good-ish, so we fuelled and watered up and set out for the long and pretty tedious upwind motor sail out to the outer Raz rocks south of Brest and Douarnenez. This flog took us until long after midnight before we could set course across the Bay for NW Spain. Of course, typically, we could not actually set course as the wind was bang on the nose, and so it stayed for the next 3 days!

(Skippers Note: A happy picture, put in to boost morale, and not truly representative as most of Biscay was grey as were the crew, apart from Merle who just smiled and worked hard. Bloody women).