This is my view, over Stargazer's stern, as I write moored in Treguier.
We left St Cast three hours before sunrise. The moon just setting.The cloudless sky alive with stars.
Our breeze was a light easterly. Four to five knots. Enough to give us three to four knots of way, with the help of the cruising chute.
We 'sail the angles.' Zig zag our way down wind to help raise our apparent wind - and keep the chute filled with breeze. The distance sailed is greater than running direct downwind, but the speed is greater. Its a gamble whether the extra speed offsets the greater distance.
At five past eleven I realise that our tactics have not paid off. The tide has changed. It is now pushing us back, instead of helping us forward. We are still eight miles short of our turning point into the Treguier river. The point we had expected to have reached by this time. I hoist the spinnaker pole and, belatedly, goose-wing the genoa. This allows us to run directly downwind, with the mainsail to one side and the jib to the other. Slower but more direct.
Stargazer makes good speed through the water, in a rising breeze. Five to six knots. But the tide is sluicing around the Heaux de Brehat at three to four knots. Progress is slow. We inch our way slowly but surely past the lighthouse. Metre by metre. The eight miles take four long hours to cover.
At last, at three in the afternoon (twelve hours after we st out), we can turn into the rock strewn mouth of Treguier's estuary. We are in time to catch the last hour of the flood tide in the river. The wind is on Stargazer's beam. She is racing along at seven knots over the ground. Life is good again.
We sweep in past classic Breton stone built channel markers. The waters hereabout so deep, the channels so narrow and the tides so strong that floating channel buoys will not suffice.
Craggy rock fangs cleave the water to either side of the fairway
Sandy coves beckon from the shoreline.
Tomorrow we have exploring to do. But first, food and sleep.
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