I went up and prepped the boat while Alison tidied away below and got the cabin into day mode. I don't think we've ever done it faster although we didn't hurry. We got the sails up on the mooring and sailed off it. We had the engine on and we needed it to tack out of the crowded moorings.
The two cat boats we had seen the previous evening were also leaving and we exchanged waves with the single-handed white sailed one. They headed out the north-east channel and we headed out the south-east one.
The southern-most island was a cormorant roost.
The wind was finally coming from the forecast direction - east. Where were we going? east! We sailed out of the archipelago but once free of obstructions we reluctantly turned the engine back on and motor sailed close-hauled until the wind died completely and then got the mainsail down and let George steer us towards Lorient.
It was a rather boring day. Motoring far out to sea with nothing to look at. At least it was a little hazy so it wasn't quite as hot as the previous day. I went below for a while and re-configured the Raspberry Pi so it is now possible to connect to it from my tablet. This is becoming more important as Lorient is the last place our Navionics charts cover. From now on the only electronic charts we have are the ones on OpenCPN on the Pi. We do have old but good paper charts Alison borrowed and we will make increasing use of these. We can see the OpenCPN charts now on my laptop and Alison's netbook and on my tablet and they seem quite functional.
The Ile de Groix has memories for Alison - she went on a geology field trip there in the early 1980s. We will stop there on the way back west. From 20 miles away it looks quite large. As you get closer it seems to stay the same size until as you approach it you can see its proper size - about 4 miles long and 1 mile wide. Very strange.
The entry into Lorient is straight-forward but there was quite a lot of traffic. One large cargo ship passed us went in ahead and another came out as we neared the Citadel of Port Louis. Two life-boats came out and half-dozen large fishing boats as well as some pleasure craft and the Groix ferry. We were alerted by the AIS receiver before we saw most of them.
There are lots of marinas. We had decided on the one at Port Louis as the Citadel there has a maritime museum covering the French equivalent of the East India companies. Also Port Louis is named after Louis XIII. I studied his reign in some detail for A level history although I've forgotten most of it. Less famous than his son 'The Sun King' Lots of interesting things happened during his reign - his first minister was Cardinal Richelieu and of course that makes it the period that the Three Musketeers is set. The English Duke of Buckingham is a character in the story and in real life he led an expedition to relief the siege of the protestant Huguenots on the Ile de Re in the harbour of La Rochelle after the 'Revocation of the Edict of Nantes'. Nantes and La Rochelle are all in the vicinity but too far for us to sail to this trip. The Edict of Nantes had given protestants some religious freedom in France but Louis XIII got rid of it which is how come many French protestants move to England and set up communities in London (which became Soho) and Nottingham (where they carried on making lace) for example. We'll look around tomorrow.
Entering the marina is easy and we ended up on the visitor's pontoon with lots of other English boats including Wyld One - last met in Cameret and Caroline - all the way from Tollesbury!
The showers here are top-notch - really new and nice and clean and they work well.
We are still trying to keep costs down so we eat aboard and had beans-on-toast followed by cheese and biscuits. Really rather delicious.
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