We have now taken on three of the most notable tidal races in the world, the Alderney Race was our first, the Chenal du Four was our second, and we have now just completed our third the Raz de Sein.
Image: Chenal du Four and Raz de Sein
These races are notorious for seas that appear to boil like a cauldron of water as the tide opposes either wind or the Atlantic swell creating uncomfortable if not dangerous conditions for yachts. But with careful planning and timing these passages go by with a ‘what was all that fuss about’.
Image: Tidal streams around the northern tip of France
The Chenal du Four was difficult to plan, although the northerly winds were helpful but they were strong for days on end creating big seas on this north- western tip of Atlantic France. As we waited for the replacement engine hose we also waited for the wind, and more importantly, the sea state to calm and give us a smoother ride. We spoke to many sailors coming north up the Chenal who reported ‘Perfect Storm’ like conditions and needed several days to recover from the ordeal. On one yacht a crew member hit his head on the ceiling and cracked a rib as the boat was thrown around coming past Portsail Rocks. This is at the northern end of the Chenal and from what we read the bumpiest bit as the rocks around the Chenal itself creates some shelter from the swell. And so with, the engine fixed, and a lull in the crazy winds in L’Aber Wrac’h, we set off 2 1/2 hours after high water Brest as instructed by the Almanac and Pilot book to arrive 1 nautical mile out from the Four Lighthouse still with some trepidation as to what to expect.
Image: L’Aber Wrac’h entrance/exit
Navigating up the L’Aber Wrac’h entrance/exit is confusing, the red and green markers and cardinals don’t appear to line up with the visible dangers of the breaking waves against the shallow rocks, but we trust they’re correct and carefully keep our GPS location in the deeper water safely passing through into the big blue, or ‘Grand Large’ as the French call it. In fact leaving through this section was less ‘exciting’ than our arrival when big G seemed to dance from side to side as she motored side on to the waves, but today the sea state was calmer than our arrival and this time our pot plants stayed upright.
Raising the main sail (Le Grand Voile) requires us to face into the wind and waves which created a few bumpy minutes, but we soon get the sail up with a single reef, and turn to head down wind and begin surfing down the waves and the apparent wind drops as we increase boat speed.
Image: Main sail up!
For the uninitiated: when sailing downwind the wind feels less strong, for example 10knots of wind feels like 6 knots if the boat travels at 4 knots. The opposite is true up wind, 10knots of wind feels like 14 knots if the boat travels at 4 knots. This Doppler effect also makes the waves seem closer or more spaced out. The distance between wave tops is generally measured in seconds, a 9 second wave period can be comfortable downwind as the boat speed increases this to 15 seconds but upwind the boat cuts into the apparent ‘steeper’ waves.
So we head out to our first major waypoint around a northerly cardinal, watching a nearby yacht cut inside, shortening the total distance travelled, but we tend to sail cautiously even though we see that many others safely pass through a shorter route. As we approach the cardinal the wind is coming just off the starboard (right) rear quarter, and turning south after the cardinal would move the wind to our port (left) rear quarter forcing a gybe of the main sail. Even with a single reef in our main sail we prefer to avoid gybes as these can place an immense shock load on the Bimini roof structure as the sail flips across, we’ve installed mooring line ‘shock absorbers’ in the traveller to cushion this impact, but still we opt for what is called a storm turn of 270 degrees, which takes us all the way round softly, instead of the short 90 degree thumping gybe. With that completed we are now set for the ‘Race’ down the Chenal du Four and watch our boat speed over ground pick up as the tide adds several knots to our speed through the water. At one point Janine reports more than 9 knots, to give a sense of reference that’s equivalent to 90mph down the motorway, 6 knots is good, 7 knots great, anything over 7 feels like we’re speeding!
Image: Passing through the Chenal du Four
As we race down the Race we rapidly approach the red and green marker buoys in the Chenal and zip through under the watchful eye of super second skipper, with our 4 feet tall Puggle keeping a watchful eye on the skipper. With all the planning we exit the Chenal half an hour early to hit tide against us for a short while as we turn to make towards Brest. We decided not to head for Cameret-sur-mer which is the most common stop over as the north-easterly winds would make it difficult and uncomfortable mooring.
We pass a few massive old/historic tall ships coming out for a play in the Rade de Brest as we drop sails and head into the wind for our final approach and prepare our lines and fenders for mooring up at the Chateau Marina. Ah, I almost forgot, as we passed through the Gulet of Brest into the Rade we had a short escort from a dolphin checking out Zibby barking at the world on the front of our boat. When Z stopped our escort disappeared. Our first (and so far only) dolphin day. Special!
Image: Moored up in Brest
We spend a few days in Brest, met up with a friend (Dieter) travelling North on a delivery to the UK, explore the local area, and begin to plan the next Race: the Raz de Sein. This race is more famous but less racey than the others that we have done, it is shorter but can still chuck up a nasty surprise, sudden fog as cold water mixes with warm air, on top of the normal bubbling swirl pools when tide opposes swell and wind.
Unfortunately for us the timing for best passage is half an hour before high water Brest when north going tide turns slack to begin south. That’s 6:45am or 17:30pm, neither option is great. Going outside and around adds 30 miles (6 hours) to the journey, so not an option. Leaving Brest before high water to arrive on time at the Raz means beating against the 4 knots of tide as we leave Brest, which means we’d probably take 6 hours, 2 hours just to leave the Rade, burins lots of fuel in the process, so we plan a short hop to an anchorage and take the positive 4 knots out of the Rade instead also meaning we left at a comfortable hour of the day. We choose Morgat as our anchorage which was a stunning setting, probably not the most economic in turns of travel as we still had to motor for an hour, but this gave us an opportunity to anchor again and take our first swim (read dip, as the water was still very cold). Puggle took a taxi ride to the beach and an early night was had reading for a 3am departure.
Image: Puggle taxi!
Now.... let’s talk about lobster pots. It appears that there is no limit as to where anyone can dump a pot, or how many. And the coastline is littered with tiny buoys floating on the surface with a line down to the pot for harvesting. Some pots are in the shallows, others are found in 30m or more of water. They are everywhere. They are hard to spot during the day. And while we have rope cutters installed on both of our props to avoid an expensive damage to our saildrive seals, or bent props, or becoming tethered to a pot, we still want to avoid the problem potential damage. Alas, night sailing means these delicacies create a minefield for sailors. Our safest option while it is dark is to precisely retrace the GPS track we created before we anchored. And off we go, lifting the anchor up with departure in the dark felt naughty, like we were being stealthy. Soon the sky began to light up and the sun rose and we had sight of the Raz lighthouse and waved at the webcam hoping to see ourselves later. We did.
Image: Raz de Sein night navigation on chart plotter
At 6:30am we got to our waypoint and at 6:45am we began to say ‘what’s the fuss all about’ when a small bird landed on deck looking exhausted, and flew inside. I carefully helped him/her out and gave some bread and water. He hitched a ride most of the way to our next stop but seemed to fly off happily recovered. In this distraction we safely exited the Raz and carried on. We couldn’t get in touch with Audierne at all, so skipped our planned stop-over and pulled in at the beautiful Loctudy.