The GPS Blog| Activity | Activity date | Activity description |
|---|---|---|
| St Helier to St Quay Portrieux | 2017-05-31 | After a light wind start, a lovely sail down from St Helier, Jersey to St Quay Portrieux on the Brittany coast. Sailed under cruising chute for most of the way. St Quay has the huge advantage of being an "all tide" port (i.e. no need to wait for there to be enough water over a marina cill).
Tags:
Brittany
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| St Quay to Ile De Brehat | 2017-06-02 | Up from St Quay-Portreaux to Ile de Brehat. The Ile de Brehat is a small island on a rocky shore. Somewhat similar to Sark (no cars and a very small population like Sark but no cliffs).
Tags:
Brittany
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| Ile de Brehat to St Peter Port | 2017-06-03 | After getting up an hour too early (confusing French and English first light times!!!), we sailed from Ile de Brehat for St Peter Port on Guernsey. The sail around the north east corner of the Ile de Brehat was notable for two things. First, we hit some fairly strong overfalls. It was neaps and a middling wind so we weren't expecting much. Given how lumpy it was, this is one to avoid at Springs. Secondly, Peter S caught a bunch of weed and plastic around his prop while going through the overfalls. Peter was able to sail on OK and got enough motor back to be able to motor into St Peter Port later. The rest of the sail was lovely - under cruising chute for a large part of the journey.
Tags:
Brittany
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| Salcombe to Roscoff | 2024-07-16 | A sail across from Salcombe to Roscoff in Brittany on David K's trimaran Triskelle.
We had been planning to leave to 4am but at 3am Prawle Point NCI were recording F7 winds. We waited an hour and the winds started to drop as forecast so we set off at 5am.
We were double reefed to start with with F5 / F6 winds for a while. They soon came down to the forecast F4 / F5 and we had a splendid beam reach. About two thirds the way across the wind dropped to about F3 / F4 (again as forecast).
So, all in all, a good fast sail across and we made Roscoff about 2 hours ahead of planned.
Many of the accompanying photos are of Roscoff and taken the next day.
Tags:
Brittany-2024
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| Roscoff to L'Aber Wrac'h | 2024-07-19 | As we left Roscoff the fog came down pretty hard putting the kibosh on our plans to go through the Chenal De Batz. Shame. So up round the north of the Ile De Batz and on to L'Aber Wrac'h.
The sail into L'Aber Wrac'h was less daunting than it appeared on the charts but was very rocky (in a good way).
Tags:
Brittany-2024
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| L'Aber Wrac'h to Camaret | 2024-07-23 | We had to wait in L'Aber Wrac'h for four days until we got a weather window where there wouldn't be wind against tide in the Chenal Du Four.
With the tide turning earlier in the St Mathieu narrows than higher up by L'Aber Wrac'h, that meant "punching" the tide for the first hour and a half. Going down the Chenal Du Four was fine as we had light mostly westerly winds. Even though it was (an average) Springs, the speed of the current wasn't greater than, say, the Exe ebb.
We encountered a few hundred metres of turbulent water just south of St Mathieu narrows.
Then on to the rather lovely Camaret Sur Mer.
Tags:
Brittany-2024
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| Camaret to Brest | 2024-07-25 | Across from Camaret to Brest. The weatehr was mizzly and murky with visibility of about a mile.
As it was light winds and only about 8 miles, we motored across the south side of the Goulet De Brest.
Brest is still a naval port and we caught glimpses of Napoleonic fortifications as well as U Boat pens (still in use by the French navy I believe).
Moored up in the Port Du Chateau marina which is huge.
Tags:
Brittany-2024
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| Exe to Salcombe | 2024-07-14 | A lovely sail down from the Exe to Salcombe on David K's trimaran Triskelle ahead of sailing across to Roscoff in Brittany.
Spent the next day on a mooring buoy off Salcombe Yacht Club making a few preparations ahead of the cross channel sail (mainly around setting up the AIS aerial and receiver).
Tags:
Brittany-2024
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| Brest to L'aber Wrac'h | 2024-08-10 | The wind was invited but failed to show. The tides were calculated to arrive but we didn't see much more than a knots worth in the Chenal Du Four. Once out of the lee of Ushant we got a tiny bit of Atlantic swell to speed us along. The dolphins weren't invited but turned up anyway. Ended up on mooring buoy at L'aber W'rach and the first leg of the homeward journey completed.
Tags:
Brittany-2024
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| L'aber Wrac'h to Roscoff | 2024-08-12 | Up early to catch the east going tide. Enough wind to sail for the first dozen miles and then motoring sailed on to Roscoff. Too misty to go through the Chenal De Batz and we hadn't quite made the tide. A few more dolphins came out to play but didn't give me enough forewarning!
Tags:
Brittany-2024
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| Roscoff to Salcombe | 2024-08-13 | The long trip back from Roscoff to Salcombe. Bit of everything really.
I'm not mad keen on dead runs and suspect trimarans aren't either. But the first 40 miles were goose winged (with the first 15 or so having a little motor assist). Triskelle isn't one of those multihulls who bamboozle normal folk by tacking downwind.
After some adjustments while crossing the ships coming out of the shipping lanes, the wind had shifted back a little more south westerly. And grown. I saw a 10.3 knots as we surfed down the side of a 3m wave. Lots of fun but I was hoping they wouldn't get any bigger. They didn't!
Then rain and drizzle for the last 20 miles meant that the poor visibility getting into Salcombe was more stressful than planned. And we didn't hold out much hope for getting a mooring as it was Salcombe Regatta week. But strangely that helped as we called up "Salcombe Harbour" on the VHF at 22:30 and they replied! And then they gave us the lifeboats mooring (who we'd seen haring out as we came in).
Tags:
Brittany-2024
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| Salcombe back to the Exe | 2024-08-14 | And, finally, back to the Exe from Salcombe. The forecast wasn't too promising with northerly winds so we expected a lot of tacking. It was slow for quite a while after we rounded Start Point - from there to Berry Head seemed to take an age. We idled away the time crossing Torbay watching three large ships in a row come into the bay to take on pilots. As we passed the Ore Stone the wind freed up and we had a lovely sail straight up to the Exe SWM. We arrived an hour before low water but as it was so neapy we progressed up channel to just past the floating cafe where we picked up a spare mooring for an hour waiting for enough tide rise to make it onto Triskelle's mooring
Tags:
Brittany-2024
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