Pornichet

After a fairly restless night due to an amazing thunder and lightning storm, we set off in the morning for Pornichet in the sunshine with the forecast for a force 4 gusting 5. Well, that was a bit of a bum steer. It was a 5 gusting 6, that combined with the swell of the Bay of Biscay and probably the remnants of last night’s storm it was my scariest day yet.

A nice sail before it kicked off !

We arrived at the marina which let me tell you is a wee tight entrance in the conditions, got in and had a look for a berth, the only one available was one where we were getting blown off. So in comes Gordon on the helm at a rate of knots and I manage to get myself onto the pontoon when a couple of men off the German boat in front of us come to help me secure the lines. Well! The next thing I see is this man hanging from our guard rails at the bow of the boat in water up to his waist. There I am, screaming to Gordon telling him to keep the bow out otherwise the man is in danger of getting crushed between the boat and the pontoon, the other man, his friend seemingly, is shouting to me that he will be fine, he obviously wasn’t looking at his mates face. The best bit of it was, all I could think of was he looked like Dennis the Menace hanging there with his red and black striped top on. Anyway, along comes the guy from the marine in a wee fishing boat thing and is trying to tell us to go to another berth, then he spots the man hanging from the bow and pulls him into his boat, his wife meanwhile was on the other boat taking photos of it, I have asked her to send them to me, if she does, I will post them. Talk about a pantomime! We were doing just fine on our own, but I suppose people are just being helpful. The German man (not the one hanging from the bow) was telling us later that this is what they call a summer storm(can’t remember the German for it), we told him it’s what we call “blowin a hoolie.” lines doubled up for the continuing onslaught.

The next day was overcast and the remnants of previous day so went for walk around Pornichet.Lots of varying architecture as you can see. Had a 3 course “formula “(fixed price) for lunch to get out of rain. Stuffed!!