En France 39

 

'Hooray and up she rises.' 

Stargazer, with the Elan 340 Bout au Vent (Head to Wind) still hot on her heels, after a full day's sailing, surfs into the Gironde.

'Down, down, deeper and down,' (to mix song lyrics) we both plunge. As the Biscay swell finds bottom and recoils. Rearing skyward and steepening.

To port, the seas break heavily over the Banc de Coubre.

Their scend spilling over into the channel itself. Two ships, bound upriver for Bordeaux, pass. Then, in unison, Stargazer and Bout gybe, for the calmer (or at least not breaking) waters in the centre of the shipping channel.

In the dawn twilight, a small convoy of boats beat out around the tip of Oleron. Impelled by the same logic of wind and tide.

Crews making directly for the westerly Spanish ports (Gijon or A Coruna) motor sailing, unable to lay their course directly. And unwilling to add further distance, to their passage, by tacking.

Stargazer tucks a single reef into the main and tacks out, over la houle, in seventeen knots apparent. Riding the La Rochelle ebb, around the tip of the peninsula and on south.

The skies settle on their mood for the day. Grumpy grey quickly exchanged for clear blue. The breeze down to twelve knots true.

Stargazer is reaching now :  reefs out, the tide under her. Making seven knots over the ground.

Swooping over the swell.

Ten miles in, the waters of the Gironde are beginning to flatten, to mere chop. Subdued by the sandbanks and shoreline.

Belem, last of the great nineteenth century French windjammers, steams seaward.

Closely followed by the Dutchman Thalassa. The two tallships returning from a weekend of good living, at the Bordeaux Wine Festival.

The waters sparkle benignly now, across the open expanse of the estuary.

On the south bank, marked by green trees and red roofs, amid the dunes, lies the harbour of Le Verdon-Sur-Mer.