Day 1 – Plymouth to Brest

No more preparations – just some sailing!

Neaps + 1 day. Low tide 08:17. 135 NM 27 hours passage.

So we headed out at 11am letting the heavy rains subside. We encountered winds ranging from 7 to 20 knots (force 2-4) with 1-1.5 m waves on our starboard, which made for a little queasy start. Everyone kept their breakfast down, and we had pre prepared sandwiches for lunch, with some Banana cake that Rich made, (with strong flour as opposed to self raising, with granulated sugar as opposed to caster sugar and with lurpack spread as opposed to ordinary butter). It tasted surprisingly good! We have a few more ingredients to buy, together with a wire cake tray and proper measuring spoons as it looks like we may be doing some more baking than Sue told me we would!

We created a watch system to ensure someone was on watch at all times. Watch systems vary a lot, but we went for 2 hours on, 6 off, which gave us a much better chance of rest. We all sat down for dinner – Thai venison Curry (courtesy of Wendy R). Was spot on.

Then we settled down for a very dark, very wet night. We had quite a bit of fog, but thankfully we have a very good radar and AIS system so we could see all approving vessels. The AIS (automatic identification system) is mandatory on commercial vessels but not on leisure, so we still have to keep a very close watch. The local fishing vessels turn their AIS off, so that other fishermen don’t know where they are, and the fish they’re catching! It makes for an added challenge for us when avoiding collision. You may be surprised at the speed of approach of two vessels. If the commercial vessel is travelling at 25 knts and we at 7, that’s roughly a 30kmh collision. It also means that vessels coming over the horizon will be upon you quite quickly.

We arrived in Brest at 16:00 local, later than we had planned due to stronger wind and tide pushing us east.

Have decided to eat out in town tonight. Customs office has closed so strictly we should remain aboard, but ……..