We Sailed up the West Coast of France to Le Havre.
Click on the small pictures to see an enlargement of them.
We left La Rochelle for Belle Isle on July 7 and arrived the next day at Belle Isle where we picked up a mooring just in front of our Valley. We had bought this land in the mid 1960's when visiting Claire's sister who lives in Loc Maria. Any body interested?
E. Galois on its mooring with relatives on a visit.
We left on the 16th and, after a stop at La Forêt Fouesnant on the South Coast of Britany, we
headed for Gurnesey. Although we passed the Pointe du Raz at the right time with respect to the tide, it was very impressive.
The inner harbor of St Peter Port in Gurnesey at low tide. Tides in Gurnesey are about 20 feet. Boats in the inner harbor can only leave at high tide. When this picture was taken, the tide in the outer harbor, where E. Galois was on a mooring, was such that sea level was about 3 feet below the sill of the inner harbor. This picture is taken from the outer harbor looking into the inner harbor. On July 20th we left to sail around the Cottentin Peninsula.
We had a fairly strong storm that night as we were passing by Cherbourg. Fortunately we were runing during the storm and we arrived just in time to enter the harbor in Courselles. At low tide the beach in front of the harbor is about 1 mile wide! The
Courselles harbor gates only open for about 1 hour at high tide. We visited our friends the Delaunays and on the 23rd of July headed East to Le Havre.
On the 24th we unstepped E. Galois' mast and by the 25th we were ready to go up the river Seine, as this picture shows. Because of the strong tidal currents up to Rouen one has to carefully time the trip up river. We left the harbor of Le Havre at 3 AM on the 27th of July and had an eventless trip up to Rouen where the tidal current changed less than a half hour after we arrived.
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