Belle Ile and Houat

The swell died down nicely last night and we had a good night’s sleep. The wind blew steadily but lightly from the head of the fjord keeping the boats from swinging near each other or the rocks.

It was cooler too – not the searing heat we have become used to.

So we felt awake and able to have a decent start. I went on deck and got us ready to go while Alison put the cabin into day mode. That seems to be falling in to place as a habit – we must swap it around at some point.

The wind was strong enough that we debated setting the No 2 jib but XC said it was 3-4 and due to drop so we went for the No 1.

The shearwaters were looping the fjord as we left but proved very difficult to photograph. The zig-zag pattern on their upper wings is beautiful.

Outside we went head-to-wind to raise the main and then turned left down the west coast. The first part was pretty much due south and the freshening south-easterly wind pulled us along at 5 knots like a steam engine. Alison was finding it tough on the helm so we put a little reef in the main. We didn’t slow down.

The wind kept freshening and I realised we should have the No 2 jib but before we could change them we needed to reef the main more. I took it right down to the first hoop and we furled the jib and carried on with deeply reefed main and stay-sail.

I should have changed jibs then but didn’t think of it. As the wind eased Alison would have had the No 2 jib out for the last 15 minutes before I took the helm but didn’t want to try the No 1. When I took over I put the No 1 out and it felt good. Deeply reefed main and full head-sails shouldn’t really work but close hauled Robinetta was nicely balanced.

When I’ve read books on rig design they all assume the centre of effort is in a fixed place and one needs to reef fore and aft in parallel. With Robinetta the balance seems to shift with wind-speed and point of sail. I don’t know if this means a poorly designed rig or if it is true in practice for all boats.

We were quite far out to sea by now and beyond the bottom of the west side of the island. We tacked in to get closer for the views and to see if we could pass inside the only marked rock. This brought us close to another small yacht going the same way and we sailed beside each other for a while. Mostly Robinetta was faster but they did start to overhaul us when they put out more of their roller-reefing genoa. The wind was easing more and we went head to wind and shook out most of our reef in the main. It’s nice to sometimes find a boat that isn’t faster!

They dropped their sails and went into one of the bays, presumably to anchor for lunch.

The wind kept easing but kept us at about 3 knots all the way to the eastern end of the island. The whole seaward side of Belle Ile is lovely. The cliffs are quite high with offshore rocks and sea stacks and small sandy beaches.

Rounding the island’s southeast corner we lost the wind completely and put the engine on. The east shore is lower with bigger beaches. The southern one is full of moorings. On this Saturday afternoon – the last in June – it was full of motor boats and one sailing yacht. There are two or three further beaches and they were all occupied.

We could see Houat, our destination, now. Houat is surrounded by rocks and is said to be dangerous to leave or approach at night. There is a harbour on the north side and two good beach anchorages, one on the east side and one on the south. XC was predicting northerlies and our experience at the Iles de Glenans told us the vent solaire was likely to kick in from the north so we chose the southern beach.

Coming from the south there is an isolated danger mark and to the east of it a small island. An approach between the two avoids all the other dangers. Alison calculated a 2.5m tide and it was one hour before high water so we dropped the hook in 5m and went for a swim. A fender as an extra bottom rung to our ladder works well as a swim ladder.

We haven’t eaten ashore at all yet this trip. It was our only Saturday night of this leg and we felt like a change so we dressed up a bit and rowed ashore and walked into town.

The village on Houat is delightful. It is absolutely covered in flowers – lots of hollyhocks and roses and other flowers.

We bought some milk at the general store and walked to the harbour. There were lots of fishing boats and some yachts but what caught my eyer were two tiny three-masted luggers moored up together.

Alison spotted a hotel restaurant and we walked up their garden and booked a table. The Hotel Iles was running two sittings – one at 19:30 and one at 21:00 so we wandered off to find a bar for a drink before dinner.

The bar was nice and I spotted someone wearing a tee-shirt with a three-masted lugger on it. He noticed my interest and came over and said hello. He had sailed one of them over from Morbihan. It had been made in 1997 based on a Bantry Bay boat and been at the Breast festival in 2000.

Dinner was excellent. We shared a hot goats cheese salad starter and I had moules-frites and Alison had the seafood platter with spider-crab and langoustines and crevettes. I had raspberry sorbet and lime sorbet for afters and Alison had what was billed as Tiramisu but was more like summer pudding.
When we got back to the beach one of the boats at anchor was in full party mode with loud music blaring out over the whole bay. I hoped they would stop before midnight.

Back on the boat I was a bit concerned about the depth of water below us. Ever since I configured the echo sounder with the transducer offset I’ve not been sure what the chart plotter displays. We predicted the tide would have dropped by about a metre but when we turned the plotter on we were now in 3.6m by its measurement so it looked like we had a 3m tide not a 2.5m one. With the uncertainty of the reading we needed more information.

I dropped the dinghy anchor over to use as a lead line. We measured the depth of water with a steel rule and we only had 2.4m or 1m under the keel with another metre at least to fall!

Luckily there was a nice big space to move to. We put the engine on and I changed into older clothes and hauled the anchor up and we moved into 6m and dropped it again.

So now we know that the chart plotter does use the transducer offset number and we know that I need to change the number stored in the echo sounder. It looks like I should take at least a metre off the transducer offset.

The party boat went quiet about 11:20pm. Nice folks after all.