"We should be in Paris by now..."

WE SHOULD BE IN PARIS BY NOW

Many years ago, I signed on a small yacht for a trip to Brittany. This, I have to say, was before modern GPS technology, let alone, radar; depth finders; plotters; lap-tops; met-fax; SSB; EPIRB etc. We did have a state of the art Decca, wonderful in it’s day and the joy of the RAF but in the hands of initiates... More of that later. Still, we did have charts and compass, so we were bound to get there... Weren’t we?

The annual yacht club trip to Brittany had been planed well in advance. Ever since the Skipper had raised the suggestion of “Morlaix for breakfast”, we were packed and on board, at least mentally. We were the willing crew on the Little Breeze, and joined her on the pontoons off the club. Skipper, Tom; Navigator; Crew and me. We stowed the boat while keeping a weather ear on the radio forecast as It was still a little fresh along-side and the various yachts nosed and tugged at their mooring warps like ponies. Some of the bigger ones had gone the previous night to avoid a lumpy crossing but some would stay with the little fleet. The air of excitement was thick as treacle and sweet with the thought of a week or more in France.

We were clear of the moorings by late morning and made a polite call of intent to the coastguard. They in turn wished us well and though the sea piled astern, we felt safe in the sturdy little boat. Skipper had owned ‘Little Breeze’ for years. She was an easy sail and had been a weekend escape for as many summers as he could remember. Local stuff, but she had not crossed the channel and he was keen to go foreign The club cruise would be perfect.

We made a call to the commador’s yacht to check time and course, as we seemed to be sailing a little high, or they were freeing away south’erd for a better sail. Either way, a gap was slowly widening, though they were still well in sight and surging down the seas to Morlaix.

Our navigator, consummate and methodical tactician, suggested hourly fixes by Decca and Chart to cross refer. I was happy to see him bent over the saloon table as my own constitution was taking its time adjusting to the swell and Skipper cheerily let him get on.

‘And don’t go calling me “skipper”’, he laughed. ‘This boat’s a democracy’.

The navigator though, was not convinced the decca was accurate, as it seemed to be giving fixes that were, frankly, miles off. Soon he and Skipper were heads down, both below fiddling with the electronics and scratching their heads. In the cockpit and happiest steering and sailing, I was aware that the other yachts had disappeared and we were at one with the ocean. We all concluded that we would go by compass. The weather was easing, we were going well and we could almost smell the croissants and would catch the fleet later.

We slotted into our watch routine throughout the day and we kept ourselves warm and well fed, alternately chatting and silent in our own thoughts as is the pattern on passage. The shipping lanes, once so forbidding, were taken in our stride as evening progressed and Little Breeze seemed to bound along over a mercury like sea. Dusk descended slowly and the clear summer night wrapped its starry mantle over us. Sharing a watch with the other crew we perched in the cockpit in the small hours, silently in awe, as overhead the full moon, wearing Jupiter as an earing, cast a magical light over the seas.

Some hours later, anticipating landfall, I scoured the horizon for light. We calculated that we should be close but seemed to be taking a long time. Perhaps the log was misreading. Perhaps we weren’t quite as smart as we thought, but the simple sums of distance by speed put us well in sight of land, and land was not to be seen. Then, with a cheer, I spotted the loom of a light. Yes, yes there it was, clear as day. We pawed the chart. It must be Iles de Batz. We had made it, our first real channel crossing on our own. I slapped the navigator on the back.

‘Take us in Number One’, I saluted. ‘Now we know where we are’.

Less than convinced, he had fretted over sums all the way across and decided to stay awake till light to make absolutely sure. Relieved by Skipper, I turned in and crawled into one of the forepeak bunks to sleep the triumphant sleep of the just.

Watery sunlight streamed into the warm space as the crew shook me awake with a mug of tea.

‘Are we in?’ I smiled sleepily, imagining the quayside at Morlaix, with the elegant shops, the cafe’s, and the market crowding around the heels of the lofty viaduct.

‘No, not quite,’ she replied. ‘you might like to join us in the cockpit’

‘No?’ I fired, lunging out of the bunk. ‘We should be in bloody Paris by now.’

I scrambled out into the gray daylight. All sails were stowed and we were creeping ahead under power. A lowish coastline about two or three miles away met my bleary eyes and seemed to be almost encircling us. A bay? But which one? My companions addressed the charts.

‘It doesn’t make sense’, the navigator rubbed his face thoughtfully. ‘I suspected some error were likely, but where on earth are we now?’

‘Perhaps we could ask someone,’ I joked, ‘and if they reply in Dutch, we’re well lost’.

I went to reach for the pilot when the crew pointed and said,

‘See those fishing boats, they’re from Paimpol. I can see their registration, and they’re only crabbers, so they can’t be far from home”.

Her sharp young eyes had given us our first clue. Sure enough, not too far away were some local fishing boats busy pot-hauling.We scanned the horizon. It seemed to me, that out to starboard, a dent in the cliffs on the end of the bay was becoming into a distinct gap in the landscape.

‘There are some big islands out to the west’. I observed. ‘Where’s that chart?’

Skipper carefully started taking bearings with the hand-held.The only sizable islands on offer were Les Sept Iles off Perros Guirec, but we knew them, and these really weren’t that big. Our fingers coursed eastwards. Brehat? Surely not. They were miles away and way off our course. Even we couldn’t be forty miles out. The sums added up though. Time and distance put us deep in the bay of Paimpol, EAST of Isle de Brehat and in an area of known “magnetique anomalies”. We started searching for the charted towers that peppered the coast and before long, established once and for all that we were indeed to the east of Isle de Brehat and a very long way from our planned landfall in Morlaix. Though there is a channel inside Brehat, we decided to go outside to avoid the islands and their attendant rocks just to play safe. We knew the welcoming River Trieux would be around the corner where we would put in for a deserved rest and take stock. The sky was clearing now and the sun shone on sandy beaches and stone cottages. This was more like the Brittany we came for and thought perhaps life wasn’t so bad after all.

Once ashore we quickly established contact with the rest of the yacht club fleet and safely secured to the outer pontoons off the quay, we turned to the tricky business of establishing how four perfectly good sailors could be so far off course. We were all qualified enough, at least on paper, and though perhaps a little short on cross channel experience, we had all many years of salt in our veins and much good ol’ southwest weed below our collective waterlines. And therein could be found the seeds of our downfall.

So much, too much navigation was always done by eye over well trodden and familiar ground, with little recourse to actual sums. We rarely even looked at the compass. It was always there and certainly seemed to be doing its job, but over the years, it had slipped further and further behind and no-one noticed. I actually picked up a new hand bearing compass while we were in France and was horrified to find that either it, or the steering compass, was almost 45 degrees out and further experiments confirmed our suspicions. The poor old Decca had in fact been trying to tell us the truth, but like the bearer of bad tidings, we chose to ignore the message and trust to instinct alone. Dangerous. My sighting of the light on Ile de Batz was also grossly inaccurate. In my zeal to raise a light, I happily identified the wrong one (by forty miles). Thankfully, The navigator did not erupt with my enthusiasm and elected to stay on watch till he could identify the characteristics. Needless to say we were without GPS and radar then, though these oversights have also been addressed.

As it worked out, we never did join the fleet. We enjoyed a couple of nice days in Lezardrieux but the weather quickly turned foul. Rain on a hardened northerly set in for what seemed a dripping eternity, and we headed upriver to Pontrieux, where we decided to leave the Breeze in the capable hands of the harbour master while we legged it home, along with almost every other saturated holiday maker in France. We all had day jobs waiting in Blighty and had to get back. However, it meant we had a good excuse to retrieve the boat a few weeks later when the weather brightened up. As it surely did.

The homeward passage was a peach, and armed with a little up-to-date technology and a new compass, our pinpoint navigation only left us only with the choice of which side to take the buoy.

Haiku on Gray Mullet

Haiku on Gray Mullet

The fisherman waits

as gray mullet feeds on weed

that he has grown them

The tide turns in time

and slowly the boat circles

as fish and man graze

Tails stemming the stream

fins disturb the bright surface

creating ripples

He can just reach them

spinney dorsals stiff to touch

shining scales reflect

Shall he capture one

or will he let them swim free

for other hunters?

More tranquile to watch

the submariners repast

by evening light fall

The streets of Kemper

The tide was running deep and smooth and I allowed the tender to drift upstream on the flood before flashing up the outboard. I'd normally prefer not to motor, the peace of the wooded banks being too perfect, but I had a mile or two to make and the two-stroke would have to be engaged if I was to make the most of the time. The current on the bends of the Odet runs fierce and fast but further up, as the banks become more agrarian and more distant, the river eases it's grip and one can afford to dawdle. Before long, the quay where the steamers disembarked hoved into sight and I decided to be sensible and moor up, leave the punt and take the bus into the city.

Kemper is an old place, picturesquely pokey around the medieval centre, no modern symbolic office towers, no post-war concrete brutalism, though the boxy modern suburbs undulate the surrounding countryside, and hypermarkets bloom off every rondpoint like everywhere else in France. The skyline is dominated by St Corentin's cathedral. The market square from which it erupts used to be a jumble of shops and alleyways, right up to the gothic walls, but nowadays there is a pleasant open space, the uphill side of which is the Musée des Beaux Arts. There are still lots of half timbered buildings, cobbled side streets and pretty corners of geraniums.

I bought a newspaper with no intention of reading it, wandered into a cafe overlooking the square and sat quietly at an outside table to order a kir before looking for lunch. I was soon attended by a spikey haired, teenage waitress who politely took my order before spinning away, scribbling on a pad as she went to serve someone else. How French. Most businesslike. This nation and lunch are inseparable. I've known factory robots stop for it, along with shops, schools, medical services and port authorities. Nothing was going to happen now for a couple of hours, so it's eat or perambulate the quiet streets. Eat then. I spent a pleasant hour people watching. Local businessfolk, well dressed and urgent; families with trained children; Tourist of many nationalities, who were not sure of menu details and whispered like spies behind their cart du jour. One lady, American, in her later years and on her own, knew the system. I watched her eyeball a young, male waiter, ask in educated French, what was the best wine for escallopes and could she not have this, or that, but something else which she knew the chef would remember, as they were old friends, and he could mention her name to the Maitre. Merci cher. Classic, honey blonde, well dressed and canny, from somewhere like Philadelphia. I enjoyed my own curried moule frites and Muscadet with less bravado but as much pleasure, and a coffee later, strolled off to see the sights.

I could not resist the tranquil charms of the Musée des Beaux Arts. One of the finest provincial art galleries in the country, and currently exhibiting a Rodin. I once spent a week in Paris on someone else's expenses and discovered the exotic/erotic delights of Rodin's garden near the Invalides. I had my eyes opened to the sheer power of sculpture and have never looked at a piece the same way again. It's not something I have ever done, but I could toil and sweat for a hundred years and never get within a mile of his genius. There are always works by the Pont Aven groups, and other Bretton painters, traditionally figurative, and modern too, Like Soulanges, who's stark, black and white images are mysterious and moving. Enough art though. I had a tide to catch and was only playing at what I had come for; to explore historic Kemper, and see if it would tie in my mind, with an idea for a book I wanted to write, or finish. I left the cool gallery and walked out into the warm early summer afternoon.

North coast drawings

A few weeks ago, before we turned the big corner, The Promise cruised the norther coast of this rocky country. Chaucer wrote about Armorica in the fourteenth century and it's tides are no less forbidding today. These are sketches from a run ashore. See what you make of them.

Cloudy again but the weather is set to improve and so I plan an excursion tomorrow. The scheme is to take the tide to Kemper in the ships boat. It should be pleasant, as the river is said to be the most beautiful in France and I have some experience of it's charms. Many years ago, as a hand on a freighter carrying a hundred tons of Baltic timber, destined for the roof trusses and floor joists of the French weekend boom, I discovered myself on a lonely quayside with one faded phone number and a Levi's back pocket full of wages. An old shipmate was running a business here and said If I was ever holed up, to call the number, and we'd make a night of it. True to his word, we painted the town claret red and ended up in a swanky restaurant where he proceeded to impress the pretty waitress with his fluent language skills and I passed out in the heads. Shame. I never got me langoustines and to be honest, never found the place again. I woke up some hours later, face down in someone's garden with the hammers of hell banging my head and no idea where the ship was. I aim to be on that quay again tomorrow, with culture in mind and a nice lunch to look forward to. Great days though, when you're young.