Last stop in France

Left Guernsey, Channel Islands, UK at 1 pm Monday. On the way out of the harbour we were flagged down by someone in a pontoon boat. I thought maybe the police were after us until he got closer and it was my friend, Magnus, who is sailing with Dave. You remember Dave from the previous picture of his pirate ship! We had met in Tallinn last year. He joined up for an overnight with me in Erland Island of Sweden a month ago. We missed each out in Cherbourg, even though we were both overnighting there. Well Magnus was refueling his dingy and happened to see us leaving. Then escorted us tjo the pirate ship where we again greeted Dave. He had bad news, his father is seriously ill and he must wait there for a while for news. This is really unfortunate. Hope everything works out well and he gets to the canaries for the start of his trans-atlantic race. We will be meeting up again I hope as I intend to be in canaries concurrent with the race.

The trip to Brest took us 39 straight hours as we are pushing it to get thru the Bay of Biscay. Paul has been a wonderful help to me and soon we will part company. Living so confined with a stranger can be trying at times but we both except the others ways and are flexible. We both are richer for it.

The trip was filled with stars at night I had not seen for 5 years, being in light polluted cities. I remember laying on the sane in northern Kenya in 2002 and seeing the milky way. It reappeared to me. Winds were unfavorable in direction for the first half of the trip and ewe had to tack. The last half was ideal. Stream flows helped us to but were lessened due to the neap tide time of the month. At 4 am 7 aug we arrived exhausted in our selected marina… Cameret d mer. No moon light to guide us and with pitch dark ness we trusted the computer gps to do the job. At a critical time we lost battery power due to too high useage on our part and the computer switched to its own batter. This has a life les than the 4 hours remaining to the marina so had to engine up and motor ing recharging the batteries. I was hoping to tdo the whole trip under sail as we have been motoring too much so far and not sailing.

Today is 8/august and the forecast is perfect for us to leave in the morning to cross the bay of Biscay. Will see you in 3-4 days in Portugal!