Leaks and L'Herbaudière

It's easy to get stuck in a port like Piriac. It's a nice spot, the boulangerie is just around the corner, it's very sheltered and there are nasty scary winds out there. We had a very pleasant meal out on the Wednesday at a little restaurant which offered very good fish soup, oysters, choucroute à la mer and our host playing Hey Jude on the Breton bagpipes. We meant to spend two nights in Piriac and ended up spending three, mainly because of strong winds which came in overnight on Wednesday and would have made the sea particularly choppy. Also Rob and Jo from Cyclone decided to stay an extra night and invited me to join them for a 10km walk, which was delightful although the first half was drizzly.

Naturally by the time Friday dawned the forecast was actually worse than it had been on Thursday - SW gusting up to 17 or 21 knots depending on which forecast you read, and raining. We left just after 11 having filled up with diesel on the fuel berth. The Piriac digital readout said 2m but in fact we never saw less than 0.7m under our 1.65m keel, so it must have been pessimistic. 

The sailing started grey and a bit chilly, as we were tacking into the light WSW winds. A bit of judicious motoring got us around the corner, and after that with one reef in the main and for part of the way two rolls in the genoa, we bounded on at up to 7.5 knots, sometimes even more. Terrific sailing, although Robin said he expected it to be bumpier (I thought it was quite bumpy enough) and it would have been improved by more than two minutes of sun. 

The choppiest bit of all was the final approach, but fortunately Rob who had beaten us in (not by much, and they used more sail than us for much of the journey) was able to call us on VHF and guide us to a hammerhead. 

Having been to the capitainerie and paid the now high season rates (€30 a night instead of €20) I was ready for a drink when Robin announced that the floor in his cabin was wet. This turned out to be a disgusting mixture of diesel, probably from an overspill, washing up water which somehow got into the fridge last night, and fresh water which I had used to wash down the saltiest part of the engine. Mopping it up took the best part of an hour and the cabin still stinks of diesel. Then I cooked lasagne, fortunately already prepared by M. Carrefour. I do hate boats sometimes.