It’s with desperate disappointment that we have left this beautiful island. The simple reason is it is impenetrable by dinghy! Not ones for giving up easily we made a couple of attempts to ‘land’ our dinghy and explore Brehat, but the mooring near the sharp rocks would cut her to bits, or leaving her on a sandy beach would leave her heavy frame high and dry incapable of returning us ‘home’ until the tide reversed, or tying up to a ferry ramp would probably not help us make many local friends. So despite finding a fantastic anchorage we are struggling to enjoy the fruits of Brehat. It seems the local ferry men have a monopoly...

So as day turns to night and back to day, we enjoy the teasing sunset and sunrise views of Brehat from our own floating island and with the morning wake of ferries getting closer and closer and the wind moving to a north westerly direction we admit defeat and decide to head back to the comfort and familiarity of Lezardieux to compose ourselves for the next challenge. Bugger.

Not to admit defeat in its entirety we decide to be brave and attempt our first buoy mooring in the marina instead of taking the easy pontoon option. With the help from our previously befriended marina staff on a rib we manage to thread two mooring lines through the top of the buoy and back to our port and starboard cleats. Job done! Time for a beer... nope! Time instead to lower the dinghy and get team widdles ashore for some fresh sniffing. With a new putt putt ut putt en route we decide the dinghy still needs some love and upon return we clean out the fuel filter and hoping that after running the tank dry the other day this solves the problem. So far so good.

So as day turns to night we tuck into some amazing home made burgers and then turn into bed a bit disappointed but happy knowing we’re safe and tomorrow’s another day. As 4am approaches it brings a change in the direction of the tide, 4 knots upstream becomes 4 knots downstream and the wind competes for which way the high sided plastic can should point. That’s all fine, but this plastic can is like the body of a guitar, each strum on the rigging or hull produces a harmonic overture inside alerting our already over-heightened senses to possible disaster. Captain Grubs does a complete perimeter check in PJ’s and concludes that all is in order and returns to the harmonic crib to try and get a few more z’s with anxious Anny.

Morning coffee concludes that mooring buoys are ok but... while they look peaceful from a distance have their downsides. So perhaps until we’re out of extreme tidal waters we take the pontoon option. We cast off at 10:30 and begin our trip to Tregieur, we figured 1 hour up, 1 hour across and 1 hour down the river. Now, that’s fine if the tide isn’t against you the whole way, so a 3 hour trip turned into 6 which is fine, but we planned to arrive at HW with the tide, but had omitted to factor in the tidal resistance exiting Lezardieux and around the headland. Still noobies. Anyhoo, we arrive all is well, marina staff and new neighbours are super nice and we moor up under the cacophony of the local travellers funfair, it’ll be fun for a fair few hours but a new destination is already the topic for diner tonight. Trebeuden?