Boating in a Princess V50 to Southern Brittany part 1: ‘The Semaine du Golfe festival was heaving with people’

Colin and Linda Le Conte took their new Princess V50 from Guernsey to Vannes in the Morbihan

Southern Brittany is an idyllic place to visit by boat – it seems to have its own climate once you go ‘around the corner’. It also enjoys much smaller tides than northern Brittany and Normandy.

As we are based in Guernsey, it seemed like an ideal place for us to explore in our newly acquired Princess V50, Echo Beach, but would the small harbours and marinas there be able to take a 15m boat, and would we be able to find fuel when most of the local pumps have a card limit of €180? There was only one way to find out…

Guernsey to Brest in a Princess V50

We always try to do the long mileages at the start of the trip. Even when travelling from the Channel Islands, let alone the South Coast of England, it is a fair distance to the west coast of Brittany.

We left Guernsey on Wednesday 21 May and headed directly to Brest Château marina. The wind was F3 to F4 from the NW, with gusts of F5. The boat handled the conditions really well, and we passed inside the Sept Îles rocks off Ploumanac’h, where we slowed down for a quick sandwich and cup of tea.

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We timed our departure to arrive at the Chenal du Four with a following tide and the wind behind us; it was one of the calmest parts of the trip. This helped us make good time, covering the 140nm in 5 ½ hours at an average speed of 25 knots.

Our friend, John, an experienced yachtsman, was keen to expand his knowledge and experience by coming on this section of the trip with us. Brest Château marina was welcoming and efficient and an ideal functional stopover with easy fuelling and a nearby station for John to catch a train onwards.

Crucially, it’s also an approved port of entry (PPF) so we could clear passport control. The surrounding buildings are commercial but the area by the Marina office has a number of decent bars and restaurants.

We had sent in our forms to the Brest Douane for entry into the Schengen area as per the instructions on the Digimap Marinas website, and sure enough, on arrival in Brest, the stamped forms were already in our email inbox.

Very helpful, but in our case, we needed to have our passports stamped, as John would be leaving France on a ferry, and we’d be picking up our friends David and Debra for the return leg home. The rules require everyone on board to check out of the Schengen area together, and the only way of doing this was for us all to
have our passports stamped.

We walked to the Douane office, which is seven minutes from the marina, and explained the situation. They were very helpful and duly stamped all our passports. We were now free to enter any other marina without more form filling.

Brest is an interesting city and there is a maritime museum within walking distance of the marina. The other good news is that there is a Paul’s boulangerie near the port, one of our favourites. We stayed for two nights.

There are two fuel pumps at Brest on either side of the pontoon. This worked well as it meant we could fill up without upsetting the local boats and yachties, who only wanted a few litres. We called the office on VHF9 and they overrode the credit card limit of the pump, so we did not have to keep restarting the process every 100 litres or so. Fuelling completed, (Euro 1.77 a litre), we paid our bill at the marina office and went on our way for the next stage of our adventure.

Raz de Sein

Timing our arrival at the Raz de Sein was crucial. The short, sharp overfalls are notorious and need to be respected. Once again, we used Digimap Marinas’ times. It worked a treat, the tide had slackened and the white-capped passage became calmer as we approached.

Echo Beach took the short waves in its stride. With the two famous towers behind us, we enjoyed a calm run towards Bénodet, completing the 70nm trip in 2.5 hours.

Sainte-Marine

This is a beautiful stretch of Southern Brittany and we were delighted to be back. We were even more pleased to see a couple of vacant moorings on the visitors’ pontoon at Sainte-Marine on the opposite side to Bénodet.

Sainte Marine has a beautiful cove with good restaurants and crêperies and a nice walk to the headland. Bénodet is on the Odet River, and, like most tidal rivers, it is best to moor at HW or LW when the tidal flow is slack. Bénodet also has fuelling and they too were able to override the card limit from the office.

A ferry runs between Bénodet and Sainte- Marine for the princely sum of €2 and there are good walks to the headland on both sides of the Odet River. We found a good patisserie in the road parallel to the riverfront, called Nektar, where we bought a selection of cakes to celebrate Linda’s birthday.

One of the joys of owning a V50 is that there’s enough space in the tender garage to stow our bikes, and the next day we cycled the customs path to Île Tudy (7km). We also took the ferry to Loctudy to check out the marina there.

Port-Louis, Lorient

We made an early start to beat the forecasted arrival of a F5 wind. Our target was Lorient, a relatively short hop of 37nm. We’d heard good things about the area and Port Louis seemed to be the boaters’ marina of choice.

The impressive Citadelle de Port-Louis stands over the entrance to the Bay of Lorient and Port Louis is on the right as you pass it. We were met by a RIB, which showed us to a prime hammerhead berth.

Most of the shops and restaurants in Brittany are closed on Mondays but we found a lovely one called La Reine Suzette in the town, about 10 minutes’ walk from the boat.

The following day, we caught the ferry to Port de Pêche on the Lorient side. It was a 30-minute walk from there to the K3 submarine pens but once we’d found the ticket office (in the Eric Tabarly building) they were well worth seeing.

These massive structures are effectively bomb- proof and still used for commercial activities. You need to take the guided tour to go inside them (in French only, except mid-summer) but you can visit the Submarine Museum and the Flore S645 submarine using multilingual headsets. We can also recommend a detour to the tasty on-site crêperie!

The following day, we caught the ferry to Île de Groix. We had considered taking our boat, but it’s a small marina, and with the F5 winds continuing, we felt this was the sensible choice. Good fuelling is available at the main marina called Kernevel. Access is through the southern end but beware of the beach.

Étel

Most UK boaters seem to give Étel a miss as there’s a sandbar at the entrance to the river, however, a friend of ours told us it was well worth the effort. Given that it’s only 11nm from Port Louis, we decided to take a look.

We had timed our arrival for HW on a 92 coefficient tide but as the sandbank is constantly shifting, we took things very slowly and were soon safely into the deeper waters of the river Étel.

There are new facilities at the marina and the visitors moorings are on the outside of the marina wall. True to our friend’s word, Étel is beautiful. Our stay was slightly spoiled by the wash from passing boats – the locals show no respect for the 5-knot limit – but once they’d all come back in for the night we had a peaceful night’s sleep until 6am, when they all decided to go back out to catch the fish they missed the previous day!

We rode our bikes to Île de Saint Cado and the lovely town of Erdeven, where there’s a great walking and cycle route to Carnac, taking in the historic menhirs, dolmens and stone alignments known as the “Sentier des Mégalithes”.

We also took a small ferry up on a very scenic route up the River Étel via the oyster beds and back down again to the Barre d’Étel at the river entrance.

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Crouesty

We wanted to be in Vannes in two days’ time to meet up with our friends David and Debra. As the crow flies, the journey is less than 20nm but you have to go around the southern tip of Quiberon, increasing the distance to 25nm.

We did consider some of the inside passages around the tip of Quiberon but decided that given the speed and size of our boat, it was safer to go around the Phare de la Teignouse.

As we passed the lighthouse, we could see 100 or more yachts battling it out in a race towards the island of Houat. We had already been warned by Trinité-sur-Mer that they could not accommodate us until early June due to the Arman Yacht Race, and sure enough, when we arrived at Crouesty, it looked like rush hour. This is a very large marina with over 1,500 boats but the fairways are not that wide, so you have to keep a lookout in all directions.

We made it to the fuelling pontoon under the tall tower to find no fewer than five pumps: two for smaller boats on the far side of the pontoon and three larger ones on the fairway side.

Once again we called the marina office and someone came to override the pump’s card limit, taking payment at the small office on the fuelling pontoon. Just allow plenty of time, as the marina attendants are all very busy!

Crouesty is a stopping-off point for lots of boats so it’s well set up for it, with four sets of toilets dotted around the marina. The Passport Escales card worked well for accessing these facilities here and at other marinas – a handy tip if you haven’t got the code from the marina office.

Once settled, we walked to the headland of Port-Navalo to see the full force of the Semaine du Golfe festival of traditional boats. It was heaving with people, boats, tents, bands and parades. No wonder the marina was busy!

Île aux Moines

Turn right out of the marina and you are at the entrance to the Morbihan, a huge lagoon containing an archipelago of over 45 islands but with an entrance just half a mile wide so the tide rushes in and out.

We timed our entry half an hour after HW during neaps but we still had 2-3 knots of tide with us as we passed through the entrance. High Water in Vannes, at the top of the Morbihan, is almost two hours later than at the entrance, so water is still flowing into the Bay even when HW has passed.

With the tide behind us and travelling at a GPS speed of just over 5 knots, our Garmin chart plotter reported a range of over 1,000nm on our full tanks. If only that were always the case!

Our destination was Île aux Moines, as recommended by visitors to the Digimap Marinas website. There are two pontoons for visitors outside a harbour in idyllic settings. The pontoons are supposed to have electricity and water but often one or other of them seems to be broken.

On this occasion, it was the water. There are no toilet facilities on the pontoon but there is a free water taxi service during marina office hours. Outside of these times, you are on your own.

We were worried there might not be a space for us as there were so many boats around for the festival. However, the marina office had said there should be room and sure enough we were soon moored alongside the outside of pontoon A, only to be moved to pontoon B as they wanted to keep the deeper water available for any yachts.

Île aux Moines was lovely. We ate on board that evening and watched the many boats passing through the passage between us and the mainland only 700m away – but a world apart in terms of tranquillity.

Vannes

The next day was our big one as it would take us to Vannes – the furthest point of our cruise. We timed the one-hour journey to arrive 30 minutes after the gate was due to open.

Vannes Marina had been very helpful, responding to emails and advising us not to come until the big Morbihan event had finished. On arrival, a RIB met us and asked us to wait on the waiting pontoon for an hour, while some boats left but after 15 minutes we were told to follow the marina attendant in.

It is not the widest channel but we made it through just fine and were directed to moor outside the Capitainerie. Watched by a number of visitors, we spun Echo Beach round and moored perfectly.

With a sense of satisfaction and a certain amount of pride we had reached our destination. Our friends from Guernsey would join us the next day for the return leg of our adventure and the opportunity to visit a number of new and not-so-new marinas.

Next month: the return voyage to Guernsey, a handful of surprises and final lessons learned.

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