a travel log
From France to Scotland by sea.

Saturday, June 15, 2002

Day 2 was yesterday! Was super busy when we arrived, so didn't post my notes... not something I should do often. Departure from Audierne at 12 AM, Arrival in Camaret: 6:30 PM. Conditions: cloudy, and thick fog in the morning, cleared up a little in the afternoon.

Throughout the trip, there are only 3 or 4 "points" to round, and yesterday we passed the most significant in this region of France; it's called the "Raz de Sein" (Sein is an island off the point). It's a place that can get very rough, but our crossing was somewhat easy, apart from the fog which made the experience quite tense. We only really saw the light houses once we had passed them, as the fog slowly lifted - one has to wonder how people, even 40 years ago, did without a GPS.

Once the fog had lifted, I put a fishing line off the back of the boat, and caught 2 mackerel within 3-4 minutes - to bring them in I coiled the line at my feet, so I had to put the line out again to make sure there were no knots. Started bringing it again only to realize we had mackerel number 3!

Fried the fillets in a little butter. served with a lemon wedge... quite the treat!

The town of Camaret has developped a lot since I was here last -many more facilities for people like me, but a little sad as the old harbour is changing fast.


7:59:01 PM    
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Today: Day 3. Departure from Camaret around 11; arrival at Moulin-Blanc, near Brest, around 1:30 PM. Mostly cloudy, but getting much warmer. Great wind, from 10-19 knots, reaching all the way.

Decided to come to this harbour of Moulin-Blanc for 2 reasons: my dad has to go back home (so he needed to be near a train), and they are predicting rough weather tomorrow, so I wanted to be somewhere interesting. Moulin-Blanc is 15 minutes away from Brest, a large city and naval port. Should be plenty to do and discover tomorrow, while the weather blows over.

Brest is a natural harbour that lays inside a large bay, the entrance of which is very narrow. Big currents develop near the entrance, as the tide ebbs and flows - we had 1.5 knots against us for part of the way. Both shores of the bay hide many german "blockhaus", relics of the french occupation during WWII: as my on-board historian (my Dad) told me, thousands of french men were put to work by the germans to build these; many of the structures still exist today as destroying them would be far to costly. Some building had roofs made of 6 meters of concrete (18+ feet), and could stand direct hits from the largest allied bombs... not a small demolition job! You can see one below

[Technology update: my GPRS phone is doing wonders for email, but for some reason I can't update anything on my site. I'm still creating these entries, and until I get my phone to work properly I'm stuck trying to find a web cafe every few days... grrrr]
6:11:30 PM    
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© Copyright 2003 Thomas Degremont.


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