Huge Waves – little Ship Mastering hard weather

Huge Waves – little Ship Mastering hard weather

This is the 2nd part of the story of our journey to the island Ouessant in western France. Well, we didn’t succeed to reach the islands and had instead to divert to Camaret-Sur-Mer. In this video, you can see why.

– This is a video of my series Adventures with my Trawler Yacht Whitehorse, Grand Banks 36 When we had passed Point du Raz and the lighthouse La Vieille, the full extent of the open sea to the north really struck us. The weather and sea conditions really deteriorated. We experienced hard headwind

And growing waves clashed hard against the bow of our GrandBanks. With time passing, the waves got even fiercer as they had a long way to grow. We soon saw, that it was not feasible or safe to try to reach the island of Ouessant and had to find a new destination.

A new decision was a must. We searched for a good marina and agreed to advance to Camaret-sur-Mer, it was still about 30 km north east of us, which meant up to three hours of travel through the stirred seas as our speed had to be reduced.

The boat was rocking hard and the spills of the waves crashed on our front helm windows. Still, I never had any doubt, that our white lady would not stand this mistreatment and we just had to endure the angry beating of the weathergods.

A few miles before reaching the turning point, where we had to head east into the bay of Brest, there are some unusual and spectacular mountains. Les Tas de Pois are three pointy granite rocks sitting in the sea sticking out.

They used to be and are still used for navigation to find the entrance to the bay. Finally, we could turn east into the bay, the waves got smaller and the voyage softer. Here we were in the lee of the north coastof the bay,

Which was only about 10 km away from of us. And after 3 km we could change direction again to south in order to reach the marina of the small town Camaret-Sur-Mer. Now the waves were coming from the rear and it was an easy sailing into the harbor.

The marina of Camaret-sur-Mer gives place to about 1000 boats, 250 of them can be for visitors. It is easily accessable and grants enough shelter from the storms. The sanitary installations were rather old but ok for one night.

It is a nice stroll along the pier to the harbor side of the town, where some restaurants invite to a dinner. Right alongside the marina stands the old “tour Dorée de Camaret-sur-Mer”. The old “golden tower” was built 1693 and still stands good. It got its name from the golden looking bricks.

This site is protected by UNESCO. When walking to the town, there is a “ships graveyard” where 7 old ships slowly desintegrating into rust. Still it is worth a visit and view. We had a stroll through the town. Then as a reward of this demanding first day of travel,

Ståle offered us a good dinner in the Thalassa restaurant. For us, it was a reminder of a remarkable day, when I produced the video. If you liked it, please subscribe and press the like button. You can also press the bell button to get an information when a new video is published.

I expect it to be in about a week. Good bye and we will see us soon!

This is the 2nd part of the story of our journey to the island Ouessant in western France. Large waves hit our small ship and we had to fight against the sea to reach our unexpected shelter marina at Camaret-Sur-Mer.
This is an episode of my series Adventures with my Trawler Yacht Whitehorse, a Grand Banks 36.