Two things had now become high priority on the list of potential disasters, and in no particular order. 1 : The fridge was starting to give all the signals of wanting to die at any given moment which meant warm wine and even worse, warm beer. and if that wasn’t enough. 2 : A storm READ MORE

St-Martin-de-Ré on île de Ré is without doubt the ‘jewel in the crown’ marina on the Atlantic coast and one must not be put off by the narrow entrance, high walls and tight bends, it’s worth it!   It is one of the smaller marinas and one we were told that it was highly unlikely that READ MORE

It was an early morning start to exit Rochefort because if we’d have missed the lock gate it would not open for at least another 12 hours so there was no time to lose, we had to go.   Two hours down river we were back out at sea and facing île d’Aix.   This inconspicuous island READ MORE

As the boat resumed some form of assemblance, we pottered over to St Denis on île d’Oléron.   The marine charts show the entrance as a tricky one and necessary to judge that the right amount of tide had come in to get over both the drying outer harbour and a sill.   The penalty would be READ MORE

Leaving Les Sables, we crossed the line of latitude 460 26’ 9 N and were now in new territory having never travelled further south than Bourgenay in 2019. The île de Ré bridge, which marks the entrance to La Rochelle and the bay of Rade de Basques could be seen from 3 hours away.  As READ MORE

Port-Joinville, île d’Yeu has about 50 visitors’ moorings but with nearly 100 rammed in no one was going to leave in a hurry and with another bout of grim weather anticipated most of us decided to sit it out!   It wasn’t long before 48 knots of screaming, bitterly cold, northerly winds blasted through the READ MORE

It didn’t take long to exhaust La Turballe and so we ventured on to L’herbaudiére for our second visit. We were shoved into a corner due to the imminent arrival of the Pen Duick’ fleet who were having an organised race weekend based at the same marina.     These beautiful boats were the design of Eric READ MORE

It was always going to be a short season so there was no need for the pantomime of obtaining French Visas to extend our 90 day allowance due to the gift of Brexit, the gift that never seems to stop giving.  Our new mooring contract is such that we are required to be absent from READ MORE

After four years of mooring at Folleux our names had eventually crawled their way to the top of the list for a contract in the water at Arzal.    We delayed carrying out the winter maintenance until April so when LJ was returned to the water we could move on down the river to her new READ MORE

With Chloe in tow, we returned to LJ at the end of July with every intention of going back out to sea and heading south.   The plan was sound plus it would give Chloe her first opportunity of a new sailing ground outside of the Solent and hopefully for her to have sight of her READ MORE