La Hirondelle 19

 

We sail amid the innocence of a new dawn. Colours clear and deep, the air briskly salted. Stargazer is slipping along in sixteen knots of northerly breeze.

Ile Vierge is astern, amongst its reefs. In a flame tongued dawn.

Stargazer skirts the saw toothed shoreline. Shaving off distance, as we round the western tip of Brittany.

 Steering south by west. Riding the tide. The breeze on our quarter.

To reach the head of the Chenal du Four.

In which the buoyage sports boiling wakes. As three and four knots of current sluice by. And where Stargazer's bows may finally point due south.

Pointe de St Mathieu is a clifftop silhouette one moment: the old abbey, the church, the semaphore and the lighthouse. The next, it seems, I can read the red on white lettering, on the light tower. Lest there were any doubt of our whereabouts.

Stargazer flies on. Hardening up, onto a fetch, around the formidable Vieux Moines (Old Monks). 

Sweeping across the last of the Brest ebb.

Into Camaret.