Annie's flight back was not until late, and our trip that day was short, so we planned a late departure. The sill dictates of course, and the latest we could leave was perhaps 1430. A departure of around 1330, with refuelling, would get us to Brittany to anchor sometime in the early evening. Our target was the Trieux river and an anchorage off the mainland opposite Isle de Brehat.
We had resigned ourselves to motoring to Brittany. Its not that far from Jersey, perhaps 30 miles, but the wind was purported to be on the nose, and very light. We were delighted to find we could sail close hauled, and with about 10 kts we were doing a very respectable 7-8 kts over the ground in the right direction! Liquid Asset does sail beautifully with all the sails out hard on the wind.
We made all sorts of new assumptions about arrival time... and then the wind disappeared. We perhaps sailed 10 of 30 nm - certainly a bonus, but still a lovely relaxing trip.
The approaches to the Trieux river are very strange, particularly at low tide. If you didn't have a navigable passage marked out you would keep well away. Craggy rocks all over the place. If you can envision a flooded lunar landscape then that's what it looked like. Surreal.
We found our anchorage. Not at all what we have expected. We had pictured somewhere like the Fal, wooded coastline, snug. None of it. We were right smack dab in the middle of the lunar landscape, feeling very exposed. Normally you hope to have an anchorage to yourself. In this case we felt like we were in the wrong place, it was absolutely deserted. What was worse was that it was strewn with crabbing pots. I am convinced that those that lay lobster pots particularly like doing this in what otherwise would be a perfectly safe anchorage. More on that tomorrow!
Well were were not going looking for alternatives, so we went into shallow water a little away from the lines, and dropped the anchor (in about 7 metres - we were two hours after low water with a range of 7). Having checked all the maths around secondary ports in France in summer, we were happy.
David cooked venison. Fantastic. Settled down to a very peaceful night at anchor - set the alarm for minimum depth to 4 m and went to bed.
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