Giramondo is 14.75 meters long and 7.95 meters wide, with some chunky fenders hanging off each side let’s call that 8.6m which leaves only 70cm each side, with sea water slowly exiting the harbour and luckily light wind Janine shouts out ever decreasing distances as we carefully nudged airway forward inch by inch between the solid stone walls. We slowly squeeze the eye of the harbour needle to quickly manoeuvre to the right to more up on the visitor pontoon and avoid the moored up yachts.

We consider spinning her 180 degrees in the limited space ready for our departure but decide we’ve had enough fun for today. With our rear facing the harbour entrance we get prime viewing of other yachts leaving and entering, including the large British flagged wooden ship under command by a friendly French couple.

With basic mooring lines in place to hold big ‘G’ on the pontoon the first priority for Janine is to evacuate the pooch on land while Captain Grubby continues to fiddle with shore power and mooring lines to ensure her ladyship can safely take a short step back onto the sugar scoop from the pontoon without overstretching.

As evening approached the call of steak tartare and pizza drew us into a nearby restaurant to celebrate our anniversary. No romantic event can go unsupervised by dog, so she came a long too, and sat quietly under the table, mostly. The pizza’s in France are delicious, I put it down to the fantastic cheese Grommit! The steak tartare was generous and delicious, we must learn how to make this simple dish back on floaty home.

Manyana morning we head out past the notorious ‘Cabine des Crabes’ onto the wide sandy beach to find the sea retreated more than half a mile out leaving sand and mussel covered rocks exposed to the air. As we paddle in the salt water pools left behind between the rocks we notice the oysters had already been harvested.

With sandy bare feet we return to la Maison and notice how barren the outer harbour looks now that the tide has dropped completely. The local boats look like bath toys after the plug’s been pulled out. And reminds us that we must remember to time our departure close to high-water or install a set of very large wheels!

We shortly head out again to mix with the crowd of locals meandering through the weekly farmers market. We happy hopper in hand we stumble our way through French conversations to buy a collection of vegetables and fruit. Cooked beetroot => betterave cuite? We are still learning. We return home with a full hopper with no spider crab or cockles.

As evening descends we head on out one final time for a couple of anniversary mojitos and return early ready for an six am high water start and begin our short trip up the coast to St Quay-Portrieux.