Summer cruise to the Morbihan

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Vannes Cathedral

This summer we took the boat to southern Brittany for 6 weeks, a 950 mile round trip that convinced us that it is worth much more exploration. For nearly three weeks of the cruise we kept the boat in the Gulf of Morbihan, the little inland sea full of islands that runs up to the city of Vannes.

The average air temperatures in the region are significantly higher than in the English Channel in summer, the food is excellent and the beaches beautiful. Though the Biscay coast (the Golfe de Gascogne on French charts) is exposed to Atlantic swells from south to west, there are some lovely sheltered cruising areas, including Quiberon Bay, canvassed as a sailing site for a coming French Olympics bid, and the almost entirely enclosed Gulf of Morbihan.

For the rest of the post, follow this link.

Race fleets hogging marinas

Three times on our cruise to southern Brittany we were turfed out of marinas and harbours because of race fleets: at Torquay Marina, where we arrived just before dawn, we were ejected as soon as staff arrived because the marina was fully booked for a Figaro single-handed race; at Port Tudy, on the Ile de Groix, we were turned away for the another race fleet; and at L’Aber Wrac’h we were refused a second day when we  wanted to stay, because a 120 strong race fleet was arriving that afternoon, which was going to more than fill the marina. Each of these fleets were closing a succession of ports, day by day over anything up to a week. With L’Aber Wrac’h in particular, there isn’t anywhere convenient near, and tired arrivals that day from Falmouth or Dartmouth must have been furious, since it is the standard stopover when heading to the Chenal du Four.

It would be great to find a way of broadcasting the information about closures more widely: maybe something for Reeds Almanac or the Cruising Association to pursue?

Useless marina internet

Marina internet is a waste of time. It’s fun doing a live blog of a cruise, but it was so difficult to get web access on our 900 mile round trip to the Morbihan this summer that I failed to file anything en route, and will do a single post later.

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How we got marina wi-fi in Vannes, but nowhere near the boat. (The jacket shelters the tablet from the rain).

Every single marina over 4 weeks advertised wi-fi, and only one actually delivered it in practice at a decent speed, with the rest either intermittent and unworkably slow, available only a few yards from the marina office, or simply not showing up on my tablet’s wi-fi source list. Some marinas openly confessed to technical problems, others were incredulous at our inability to log on. At most marinas, it was a cheek to advertise wi-fi at all. Maybe sailing magazines should be taking this on as a campaign.

There were cafes and restaurants, of course, but we went to drink and eat not write in a corner. I’ve also filed posts in the past from my phone using 3G, but we seem to have consistently chosen places where the 3G signal was poor, so that didn’t solve the problem either.

Pilotage in the Venice lagoon

Vaporetto
A Vaporetto at speed

Quite by accident while wandering around Venice with friends who live there, we crossed paths with a neighbour of theirs, who turned out to be one of only two women drivers of vaporetti on the lagoon.

When told we were on a hire boat she pretended to collapse in hysterical laughter, Continue reading “Pilotage in the Venice lagoon”

Round the Venice lagoon by barge

The beauty of Venice is so great that even the high-season overcrowding is still bearable. Now we’ve found a way of seeing the city in spring, summer and autumn without feeling oppressed by the sheer numbers around us. A week afloat on a barge is is the answer, because you see Venice in the context of its whole lagoon, and can slip easily away from the crowds.

Arriving, for example, at the island of Torcello in the evening, after the day-trip boats have left, is a blissfully peaceful experience. We found a mooring up a tree-lined creek on the far side of the island from the excursion landing stage, right behind the basilica. It was just an hour and a half slow cruising from Venice. In the city itself, we spent two nights in the peaceful surroundings of a yacht club marina at St Elena, in easy reach of the sights but away from the crowds.

Read the rest of the post by following this link: Round the Venice lagoon by barge.

The mooring on Torcello
The mooring at Torcello

Venice Biennale – all at sea

Gav's Bar
Gav’s Bar

We had hardly started on the Venetian lagoon when we came across this site-specific installation by Gavin Turk, the much-praised Young British Artist (now of course no longer so young). Here is some of the publicity material we found flying about in the wind from the Biennale*. Continue reading “Venice Biennale – all at sea”

Round Venice

A year ago we went round London by barge, and next week we’ll go round Venice, with the same seven-strong crew. We will start from a barge base at Chioggia, and plan to visit Venice itself and several other islands, including Torcello, and maybe up the River Brenta towards Padua or the Sile towards Treviso. Not sure whether the mobile internet reception is good enough to allow a daily blog, but we’ll load a picture log during the week.

Chart errors (contd).

Several earlier posts covered inaccuracies in charts. Last week I came across yet another example in Cala de Portinax, a bay at the north end of Ibiza in the Balearics. This screen shot from my Navionics chart shows depths in a fair amount of detail: yet the numbers were wrong by a factor of three or four. IMG_2586 Because of the modest depths shown, we motored in with great trepidation in Olivia Jane, a Beneteau 43 with a 2 metre draft. Yet we found the depths in the middle of the bay were all in the 11-13 metre range and even close in to the rocky shore we anchored in 8 metres. In contrast, the C-Map chart on the cockpit plotter gave no depths at all inside the bay, which is a safer option than mistaken information. We’ve fed this back to Navionics and await a reply, but the nagging question will always remain in future, even if this proves to be a rare mistake: can we trust the inshore information on these charts? What if the mistake had been the other way, showing 11 metres when only 2 metres was there? Do other brands of charts have similar errors? Continue reading “Chart errors (contd).”

PS on last year’s Round London

I have just watched a delightful programme in which actors Timothy West and Prunella Scales circumnavigated central London in a narrow boat from Black Prince, the same as the holiday we blogged on last year. It was, however, surprising when Timothy announced in Limehouse Basin that hired narrowboats are not allowed on the river: not so.

We went up the Thames from Limehouse at the same time as  several other Black Prince boats last May. The only condition was that someone on board had to have a VHF/DSC licence and a handheld radio hired from the company, which was fine, as three of us had licences. At least one of the other boats, a group of Norwegian holidaymakers, hired a pilot, and I assume that was negotiated with the company.

So don’t be put off: the exciting river passage was perfectly possible unless they drastically changed the rules between May and the summer when the episode of Channel 4’s Great Canal Journeys seems to have been filmed.

Timothy and Prunella met Andrew Sachs – Manuel from Fawlty Towers to Prunella’s Sybil – on a Regents’ Canal stop, an excuse for old clips from the show. From Limehouse, they did the Thames section of the circumnavigation in a fast river launch.

PS on the National Maritime Museum

Tip for nautical parents and grandparents: great new facility opened this week at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich – a new play area for children complete with pirate dressing up clothes and lots of games for two years old and upwards, plus a large buggy parking area. Makes a visit to the nautical collections fun for every age. Child approval rating in our test this week was 100 per cent.

Maskelyne v Harrison – the longitude show in London

Harrison's third clock
Harrison’s third clock

 

We finally managed to take in the excellent Ships, Clocks and Stars exhibition at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, which runs only until 4 January. Among other things, it puts the record somewhat straighter on the eminent 18th century Astronomer Royal, Nevil Maskelyne, chief villain of Dava Sobel’s best selling nautical history of the race to measure longitude at sea. Maskelyne was the man who conspired against John Harrison, the genius who built the first true chronometer, or so the narrative goes in Sobel’s book, Longitude.

Not so, it is clear from the detailed story set out in the exhibition, Continue reading “Maskelyne v Harrison – the longitude show in London”

Greek pilotage puzzle: where’s Ithaca?

On an Ionian holiday a few years ago, I walked straight off a modern cruising yacht into an argument about an ancient voyage that has been unresolved for well over 2,000 years. We had moored at Vathi, the main town on Ithaca, where in a first floor room down a side street I came across an exhibition of photographs of Homeric sites on the island.  There I fell into conversation with a white-haired, distinguished looking man who described himself as director of the archaeological excavations on Ithaca.

Looking down to the sea from one of the archaeological excavations on Ithaca
Looking down to the sea from the site of excavations on Ithaca.

Naturally, we got onto the Odysseus connection, for  the exhibition was designed to connect present day sites on the island with the wanderings of Homer’s hero. I had just read in Rod Heikell’s Ionian pilot book that the island of Levkas, a few miles to the north, had been put forward by some as the true Ithaca. What did the director think of that?

It was as if I had insulted his family, his religion and his country all at once. He exploded.

For the full article – a long read – follow this link. Or look under ‘old stories’ above.

Cowes – love it or loathe it?

The man manoeuvring in the queue for the fuel pontoon at Falmouth took one look at our port of registration on the transom, and let loose a flood of abuse about people like us from Cowes. He was accusing us of queue jumping – we weren’t. Elsewhere, another sailor looked at the town name and added “arrogant bastards” to his complaint about where we were parked on a pontoon.

I may well be getting paranoid, but since moving our sailing base to Cowes 5 years ago I’ve been wondering whether the mere name sometimes prompts the sailing equivalent of the “posh boy” jibe at David Cameron’s cabinet. Continue reading “Cowes – love it or loathe it?”

Sailing days

This year we’ve been converting and extending an old farm building to make a house, which has been a full time job, so with the work running late I didn’t get away for a cruise until the beginning of September, a jaunt across channel for oysters at St Vaast-la-Hougue and back for a south coast potter.

At St Vaast, home of the Normandy oyster
At St Vaast, home of the Normandy oyster

Continue reading “Sailing days”