Engine crapped out in the middle of Channel!

No, not the English Channel but the French, Rade de Brest channel. Bad enough, but we also dropped the anchor in the “restricted harbor mouth” military zone of Le Fret in this giant bay (like Alameda is to SF Bay). If that wasn’t exciting enough, moments before we received our latest/greatest crew addition – pronounced Irina – rolling the “R” (Irene) from Holland – via a sailboat to sailboat transfer in the narrows! What! We were under full sails doing 7 knots and they were motoring at 10 knot trying to catch us. Yes, what were our captains thinking? Oh, and yeah, it was dark, cold and raining.

This was our arrival to Brest, France, state of Bretagne (pronounced Brittany because it was once part of the British Empire, long, long ago). After about 20 minutes the French military commandos came out and told us in no circumstance could we stay where we were and would have to move. These were the same commandos that sank the Greenpeace ship in New Zealand. After explaining our condition, they said they’d be back in 1 hour to ensure our compliance. Okay, right. So Richard, Brian and then Irene pulled up the anchor, by hand, all 20 M (that about 60 feet of chain)! Sails went back up. Kat was on the helm (wheel), as we had about 25 kts of breeze, we aimed for the nearest anchorage on the proper tack (wind angle). Richard was on lookout, calling to pinch more (sail closer to the wind, but not directly into it) and Brian was at the navigation station (looking at the GPS and chart of the anchorage) telling me to fall off the wind so we wouldn’t stall. Yeah, that’s opposite directions! In the end the tide was ebbing so hard, it almost washed us out (back through the narrows we fought so hard to get though), so I just turned up (into the wind) and we dropped the anchor, again. Hoping for the best, we were able to anchor (in about 20 M again), but didn’t realize we were in the middle of the bay so much until morning! Oops, oh well, those military boats and subs could just do there training exercises around us (and they did)! At least we were clear of the restricted zone.

It was 12:30am when we popped open a bottle of red wine, nerves frazzled, and got to know our new crew addition. In bed at 2am, with all our wet gear hung up, but hey, we were in France! Land of the croissant, yeah! No more gloomy England, we are on our way!