A brisk crossing of the Channel in a W5 brought 'Aliya' and me to Alderney and thence to l'Aber Wrac'h via Guernsey and Perros-Guirec in the usual manner, with the wind softening by the day, and only a brief encounter with fog. I met up with Rupert Fowke on 'Oleander' in l'Aber Wrac'h, and when Arthur and Margaret Meech arrived it started to feel like home!
Thence to Camaret, Le Guilvinec, and the Ile de Groix, drifting on gentle sea breezes, and so to Quiberon to find Arthur and Margaret have got here already!
On the way to Camaret I took the inshore passage off Portsall, using the alignments on my French chart, GPS waypoints I put in some years ago hoping one day to be able to use them, and the excellent Navionics 'app' which actually has shortcuts like this flagged, and is replacing my old Garmin handheld GPS as the first choice navigational tool. The alignments are, however, the easiest to use, being either in front of, or behind, the boat and so where you're looking anyway.
The classic boat festival in Brest last week means that there are a lot of very old boats sailing back in both directions, and I found it interesting to reflect that the seaworthiness of Breton boats is already praised in Julius Caesar's admiring description of them in his 'De Bello Gallico':
"For their ships were built and equipped after this manner. The keels were somewhat flatter than those of our ships, whereby they could more easily encounter the shallows and the ebbing of the tide: the prows were raised very high, and in like manner the sterns were adapted to the force of the waves and storms... The ships were built wholly of oak, and designed to endure any force and violence whatever; the benches, which were made of planks a foot in breadth, were fastened by iron spikes of the thickness of a man's thumb; the anchors were secured fast by iron chains instead of cables, and for sails they used skins and thin dressed leather."
In Le Guilvinec, a fishing port with no marina and so ignored by nearly all yachts, I was woken by the sound of hammering, and in a shed opposite I noticed such a vessel being built, in wood and of some size. It's good to know the tradition continues...
Steve Fraser
Submitted on 28th July 2012