{"id":2313,"date":"2023-07-12T08:51:21","date_gmt":"2023-07-12T08:51:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/?p=2313"},"modified":"2023-07-12T08:51:21","modified_gmt":"2023-07-12T08:51:21","slug":"bulots-and-the-body-clock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/bulots-and-the-body-clock\/","title":{"rendered":"Bulots and the body clock"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dateline: L\u2019Aber Wra\u2019ch<\/p>\n

Middle of the Night<\/p>\n

Yes. It is 0030hrs, the smell of fresh-ground coffee fills the cabin, and I am wide awake, washed and dressed (in fresh clothes). Mozart\u2019s Romeo and Juliet is playing on the Bluetooth speaker – and so, the day begins.<\/p>\n

Maybe this takes a bit of explaining.<\/p>\n

My body clock is fucked.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sorry, but there is no other way of putting it. I left Les Sables d\u2019Olonne on Friday after a week in which I managed to get one interview with the local paper and handed out several hundred leaflets, accompanying each with a little French sentence. I became rather proficient with this by the end.<\/p>\n

According to Google Translate, it said: \u201cMay I give you one of these? It\u2019s about the French translation of my book.\u201d Once I had that taped, I added: \u201cTo get started, it\u2019s half-price!\u201d<\/p>\n

This was a big success. People smiled and thanked me \u2013 but that may be because I was saying something else entirely. Who knows?<\/p>\n

Then, on Friday morning, the Windy App changed its mind from flat calm to westerly 10-15 knots – and I was conscious of two children about to graduate back in England. Sometimes you have to take advantage of the weather \u2013 even if you\u2019re paid for the marina berth until Saturday.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s one of the nice things about France, isn\u2019t it? \u201cBien s\u00fbr\u201d to a refund \u2013 you didn\u2019t get that in a British marina last time I tried it.<\/p>\n

So, with a big bag of petit pois dans la gousse<\/em> from the market and all the water bottles filled up (yes, a new tank is another reason for getting back), I set off up the Biscay coast.<\/p>\n

Twelve hours later, I had managed precisely 23 miles and was looking at a night of rolling about in 3kts of wind and sleeping for 20 minutes at a time because, apparently it was a perfect night for fishing – and fishing boats have right of way. French fishing boats the more so (it was outside Les Sables d\u2019Olonne that Alex Thomson, fast asleep and waiting for the tide in the entrance, was rammed by a fishing boat and effectively knocked out of the 2008 Vend\u00e9e Globe).<\/p>\n

\"\"
Very pretty and all that – but not much good for going anywhere.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

On the other hand, I could just about afford the fuel to motor three miles to a bay on the east of \u00cele de Yeu. Anchored at one in the morning, I slept late, pottered about on the Internet (I\u2019m now \u00a325 over my international roaming allowance) and left when the breeze returned at midday \u2013 which was what was supposed to happen in the first place.<\/p>\n

But it did mean I was 26 miles closer to the Golfe de Morbihan – a wonderful inland sea and nature reserve and, incidentally, home to the grave of the great singlehander Bernard Moitessier. I had never visited either. It was halfway to the English Channel. The westerlies were due to hold for a few days yet. I could afford one stop\u2026<\/p>\n

Or two…<\/p>\n

\u00a0The thing about the Morbihan is that the tides between its many islands run at upwards of six knots. It is not a place to be mucking about in the dark. On the other hand, there was a little bay only 13 miles away on the island of Ho\u00ebdic where I could anchor and get another good night\u2019s sleep.<\/p>\n

Well, that\u2019s what I could have done if I hadn\u2019t spent the day making painfully slow progress the 43 miles from the last place.<\/p>\n

To while away the time, I did some more research on my cunning plan to slip in between the rocks to the south and discovered that all the beacons were unlit, and the Navionics App insisted: \u201cApproach from the North\u201d.<\/p>\n

Instead, I spent the night wafting very, very slowly the 13 miles across to the Morbihan, arriving with the dawn and a rising tide. By lunchtime, I would have paid my respects at the graveside and be sitting down to a celebration Plateau des Fruits de Mer.<\/p>\n

I had promised myself this on the sale of the first copy of Le vieil homme hisse la voile. <\/em>Amazon assured me someone had indeed bought one (apart from the six I had ordered myself as review copies). I was reduced to sending out three of them on spec \u2013 which is a bit like posting them directly into the recycling bin.<\/p>\n

On closer inspection, it turned out the mystery purchaser was in the UK, not Les Sables at all. But since both my sisters insisted (with apologies) that it wasn\u2019t them, I convinced myself a celebration was still in order \u2013 particularly with the extra \u20ac32 from the marina refund in my pocket.<\/p>\n

Except that didn\u2019t quite work out because the 13 miles to the Morbihan took so long that I still hadn\u2019t made it when the Windy App changed its mind again and announced that if I didn\u2019t get out of Biscay by Wednesday, I would be trapped by a strong north-westerly airflow that would sit there well into graduation season.<\/p>\n

Which was how I came to spend another much-interrupted night \u2013 and you can\u2019t do that indefinitely. Your subconscious gets so used to alarms that eventually, it just ignores them. You end up not waking up at all. The secret is to vary the alarm setting \u2013 have the occasional decent kip for 45 minutes or so.<\/p>\n

I set a course to the southwest of the \u00cele de Groix – at least I might get some peace and quiet out there.<\/p>\n

The blasted fishermen were there as well.<\/p>\n

Also, there was a time when you could rely on a trawler to go in a straight line for a bit. Now they link their fish finders to their autopilots. They\u2019re all over the place. At one point, I was setting the alarms for 10 minutes \u2013 which, basically, meant spending all my time getting in and out of bed.<\/p>\n

Would you believe I still woke up to find one of them on a collision course at what the AIS measured at 863 feet? You\u2019ve never seen anyone roll up a super-zero and gybe so fast…<\/p>\n

By the time we reached the Raz de Seine, I was seriously spooked. It\u2019s a long time since I\u2019ve made this notoriously tricky passage (39 years, I worked it out). Also, I sold all the Brittany pilot books at car boot sales in the early 90s. All I\u2019ve got aboard now is the 2021 Reeds \u2013 and the Internet, of course.<\/p>\n

Reeds offered this on the Raz: \u201cIn moderate to strong winds, it must<\/strong> be taken at slack water. In strong wind-against-tide which raises steep breaking seas and overfalls, the channel must not<\/strong> be used.\u201d<\/p>\n

All well and good, but when was<\/em> slack water? Navionics put it 0330 \u2013 or 0430 when I noticed the little exclamation mark and \u201cGuernsey time\u201d (why?)<\/p>\n

Reeds insisted I should wait for High Water Brest +5\u00bdhrs \u00a0– which would be not until 0530. Then there was the Yachting Monthly site: they seemed to suggest +6\u00bdhrs.<\/p>\n

Everyone agreed that the window for this \u201cnastiest of Europe\u2019s tidal races\u201d was half an hour at most (some put it at 15 minutes). It would have helped if the My Tide Times app agreed with Tide-Forecast.com (which itself was adrift from Tidetime.org by four whole minutes).<\/p>\n

And which of them was on GMT+1 and which +2?<\/p>\n

You never got this sort of thing before they invented the mobile signal.<\/p>\n

Once I entered the Raz, I wouldn\u2019t be able to sleep at all. I might get a few catnaps crossing the Iroise, but you have to maintain 5\u00bd knots if you\u2019re going to catch the tide up the Chenal du Four. Even with three sails up, that meant motor-sailing all the way and nobody can sleep with my engine insulation.<\/p>\n

By the time I made it into L\u2019Aber Vrac\u2019h, I knew exactly what I was going to do. I was going to tie up, get off the boat, march straight into the Restaurant Le Vioben and order the biggest Plateau des Fruits de Mer they had on the menu. I\u2019d been reading reviews all the way along the north coast: a German guest was very complimentary about his six-course meal.<\/p>\n

I might leave my own review for the Vioben. For a start, their website says they are open from 10am to 10pm but there were some very doubtful faces when I walked in at 2.30. Then they wanted me to order dessert before I\u2019d even speared my first bulot.<\/em><\/p>\n

Actually, I never did get to spear a bulot<\/em>. There weren\u2019t any on my plateau. At least half the bigorneaux<\/em>were empty as well.<\/p>\n

And the final insult that will make it a one-star review was that sitting on the top of it all was an araign<\/em>\u00e9e. <\/em>I kid you not \u2013 a spider crab. Now that\u2019s cheap.<\/p>\n

I said so.<\/p>\n

The waiter said crabes <\/em>were rare. No, they\u2019re not. They\u2019re just more expensive \u2013 the sort of thing, in fact, that you might expect for a meal costing \u20ac76 \u2013 and what was with the wet-wipe in a plastic sachet that was completely impossible to open once your fingers were covered in mayonnaise and bits of seafood? \u00a0<\/em>How\u00a0about a finger bowl with a bit of lemon floating in it?<\/p>\n

Worse than that, I hadn\u2019t consulted Google Translate before getting started on all of this, so I may have come across not only as rude but ignorant as well. Moreover, it had nothing to do with the beer before lunch or the bottle of Muscadet\u2026<\/p>\n

I can only claim lack of sleep.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember getting back to the boat \u2013 just waking up at half-past midnight<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re still with me after what is apparently 1,662 words, that\u2019s because it\u2019s now four in the morning, and in the middle of everything else, I\u2019ve been trying to find out why Facebook is refusing me permission to comment.<\/p>\n

Maybe they know something.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"
Le Vioben’s version<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"
Alternatively, last year in St Malo with Hugo.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"
… \u00a0in fact, there’s a bit of history to the plateaux.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dateline: L\u2019Aber Wra\u2019ch Middle of the Night Yes. It is 0030hrs, the smell of fresh-ground coffee fills the cabin, and I am wide awake, washed and dressed (in fresh clothes). Mozart\u2019s Romeo and Juliet is playing on the Bluetooth speaker – and so, the day begins. Maybe this takes a bit of explaining. My body … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2313"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2319,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2313\/revisions\/2319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}