The time to return home was drawing close as we’d been now been on board for some 10 weeks having sailed LJ from Chichester to the Morbihan Sea.    We had a few appointments to keep back in the UK and the electrical system wasn’t going to repair itself, so the only practical solution was to READ MORE

Entering the bay of Morbihan once again, we headed to a new location, La Trinité Sur Mer We hired electric bikes and travelled inland to the Carnac Stones.   Dating from around 4500 years BC the stones pre-date Stonehenge by about a millennium.   Built by Neolithic man the stones numbering just over a thousand are laid READ MORE

The moment you leave the sea and turn into Blavat River towards Lorient, you are faced with two spectacular buildings dominating the east and west banks.   Built 400 years apart, these fortresses had the same purpose – to display power and dominance in times of war. To the east bank is the Citadel of Port READ MORE

Just 10 miles from the French mainland sit the Glénan Islands.   This archipelago comprises of nine major islands and over a dozen smaller islets, some so small that they only appear at low water. Needless to say, navigation in and out of the central lagoon requires some calculations, attention to charts and a few nerves.   The READ MORE

Concarneau’s visitors’ marina sits in the shadow of an impressive 16th Century fortified Citadel creating the unusual set up of a city within a city.    The castellated walls surround a warren of medieval streets and alleyways lined with very smart boutiques, cafes and restaurants which entice those of low moral fibre (eg: us!) to sit READ MORE

Sainte Marine sits in the estuary of the River Odet which winds its way to Quimper.   Once a commercial highway connecting the sea to the European canal system, it has been reduced to the occasional tourist boat and visiting yachtie, but this has allowed nature to thrive on its banks.   Along its entire length the READ MORE

It was time for a change of scenery and so we did a short hop to Camaret-Sur-Mer for a few days to escape the hustle of Brest.  Camaret is one of the favoured launch points to transit the Raz do Sein which is the last headland barrier to Atlantic France and Biscay.  Whilst waiting for the READ MORE

The storm that had engulfed the Isles of Scilly had passed but another one was on its way across the Atlantic.   It was forecast to split up over Biscay with half of it hitting Cornwall and southern Ireland the other hitting Brittany with predicted winds of 40 knots plus. Our choice was to either head READ MORE

All hopes of visiting the Isles of Scilly were abandoned due to a continuous westerly wind and two storms hitting the UK from the Atlantic and so we agreed, let’s head straight to France … We set off from Plymouth at midday and headed out through the Sound. Four hours later the last sight of READ MORE

As described in a previous post, jobs on this vessel have a clear and unarguable division of labour and simply labelled ‘Blue jobs and Pink Jobs”.  In summary ‘Blue Jobs’ often involve a whiff of some description and are instantly allocated to me whilst ‘Pink jobs’ are Nina’s department. Let us all agree that sometimes, READ MORE