After leaving Brest we made the epic journey of 90 minutes down river to Camaret. We had chosen here as it has a great beach Sausage could play on, and it is really pretty! There are cairns (piles of little man made rock formations) along the seafront near to the marina, and so we added our own that Franco christened, which was a nice touch. There are lots of reasons people make these stone piles, but when I lived in Africa they were made to provide thanks for a safe passage, so seemed an appropriate thing to do all things considered.

We went off for a bimble around and somehow found ourselves at the swindlers ( as our pal Dave Mckay calls them) or chandlers to people who have never entered one might know them as. Am I allowed to buy myself a nice Breton sweater from Brittany? Am I hell. Lee however continued to add to his stockpile of rope / lines we have onboard and so another 50 metres has joined us. At this rate we will be able to pulled across Biscay if someone had the other end. Just outside the shop was a tiny lean to shack where the fishermen came in, that sold 4 things on the menu. It was the type of place where you would either get an amazing meal at next to nothing or the place where withing 3 hours you would be dying from food poisoning, so we took our chance and it was the former. Oh, and the beach…no dogs allowed . We just threw him in off the boat instead. Seemed to work just as well to cool him down.

We came back and were sat in the cockpit when a boat came in. It seemed vaguely familiar from a distance but when they got closer we realised it was a boat called Polestar we passed every time we left our mooring back in Portsmouth. After we helped them moor up we had a few drinks with Julie and Bernard and they went off for a walk.

Then a fleet of boats came in. Mostly British! It was like Cowes week in France. We got chatting to the boat behind us who had just spent 6 months down in The Canaries where we are headed, so that then involved some wine and a natter and we had an early night ready for our start the next day.

So there’s this place down here called The Raz. It’s a smallish channel between the Îsle de Sein and the Pointe du Raz in Finistère, and is known as the Lands End of France. It has a pretty fearsome reputation but even better it has a lighthouse! Yay! Oh how excited I was to see another famous lighthouse on another famous piece of water! This time however we had been looking at the weather for a few days and had done a lot of planning. We left Camaret at 0500 hrs with the plan to enter the Raz about 30 minutes before HW Brest, so at 0900 hrs. ON THE DOT we entered the channel at 0900 hrs. Check us out!! Getting somewhere on a boat for a narrow time frame is like the game “beat the sat nav” but with potentially more dire consequences than being 5 minutes late to your mates for dinner than planned. Due to the tides being almost at their weakest (neaps), little wind, barely any swell and us entering it at slack water we wooshed through it at 7 knots while admiring the oil slick that was the water and having a coffee.

We had a plan that if the journey through was hateful we would cut short the trip and head into Audierne, but as it was it was a sunny and hot day we played the new game “spot the lobster pot” instead and carried on around the coastline to Bénodet. Another lovely place. The ex vogue model wearing shorts smaller than my knickers came out in the rib and asked us to follow her in, as I had called ahead and booked us a berth. To be fair if she had asked Lee to follow her to the pits of hell I am pretty certain he would have.

So now we are having a rest day before carrying on our adventures tomorrow, which should be a shorter hop of about 7 hours. For the love of God Lee has just come up and said we need to go to the bloody chandlers again. I swear if he buys any more rope I will wrap it around his neck and show him just how many knots I can actually tie. Bye for now!