Paluden to Roscoff

We spent the morning on the boat doing maintenance and blogging. It was another lovely day.

I fitted the new engine cut-off control cable. It is thicker than the old one and both ends needed adapting.

At the engine end the new cable doesn’t fit in the fork on the engine designed to keep the outer sheath still. I cut a piece of plywood with a narrow slit on one side and a wide one on the other and used a piece cut off the old cable to secure it to the fork and then fitted the new cable in the wide slot. It stands off but the angle to the shut-off lever seems ok although it looks tight in the photo.

At the cockpit end I was worried that the larger handle would foul the throttle control. but in the end it fitted in the same place as the old one. The old cable was secured to the wooden panel that holds the throttle cable with a piece of bent aluminium with two counter-sunk screws on one angle and a hole for the cable on the other. The hole was big enough for the new cable but the new cable can’t be threaded through so I had to saw through to the hole and turn it into a slot.

So now we can turn the engine off from the cockpit again!

The accessories panel with a volt-meter, car charger socket and twin USBs hasn’t been working since we got back to the boat. I traced the fault to a broken gel-crimp in Alison’s locker. I hadn’t put enough cable management on it and it was being chafed. I re-made the joint and taped it up out of the way. Now we can charge Alison’s laptop and USB stuff more easily. I still need to upgrade that cable - the voltage drop is too high but I’ll leave that until the winter.

We dropped off the buoy about 12:15 and motored down the river, hoisting sails as we passed the marina.

I’d set the course through the Malouine channel which passes near to large rocks on both sides which the swell was breaking on spectacularly. It saves about 4 nm and the tide flows out through it so we got some ebb in the right direction. The rocks protected us from the swell so it looked daunting but was very safe.

There was wind to sail but we needed to keep the speed up so we motor sailed until about 16:00 when the tide started helping. We got 75 minutes of pure sailing before the wind got too light and we just motored with the tide. There were quite a few boats  heading towards Roscoff by now.

The tie-wrap on the stay-sail traveller failed and I replaced it but I cut the tie-wrap too short and an hour later it failed again. The tie-wrap hadn’t broken, just slipped through. I went forward again to fix it and while I was sitting on the foredeck the stay-sail flipped over and took my hat with it. We saw it floating past and sinking - no time to go back and get it. Then I realised my hat had dragged my glasses with it. Luckily, for once I’ve brought an old pair of distance glasses as a spare. The lost ones were only a year old and expensive thin plastic varifocals. Darn.

The Ile de Batz sits just north of Roscoff and a well marked winding channel leads south of it. The chart shows strong tides in parts of the channel which is why we were keen to go through on the flood. Our timing was spot on and we had loads of water and no strong currents. We were passed by a big gaff-rigged fishing boat from Paimpol also returning from Douarnenez with all sails up but motoring. Just like us!

We radio-ed Roscoff Marina and they told us to moor on D pontoon. There was no space on the north side but we found a space on the south side. Right opposite Gwenili. We took the last of my bottle of Talisker over there for a chat. Martin has been here for a couple of days waiting for crew. He has an old friend and two additional people joining by ferry in the morning.

Today’s sailing against the tide was much nicer than yesterdays. Sailing boats need wind.