Friday 7 June

We leave La Rochelle at 6:30am!  It starts out as a beautiful morning.  The sun is coming up in a clear sky and the light on the towers as we leave is lovely.  After breakfast I put my head down for a little over and hour.  By the time I get back in the cockpit the sky has clouded over and it is not nearly such a nice day.  Furthermore the coastguard are broadcasting force 7 winds gusting higher for 5pm today!  Richard is determined we should make it to Royan, which is 50 miles away, before the bad weather comes in.  So although we have the sails up we are motoring pretty hard to keep up 6 knots.

The weather has deteriorated and when Richard goes below to have a rest, it even starts to rain a little.  But the showers pass and the day settles in to slightly cloudy and virtually no wind and a glassy sea.  It seems impossible that really bad weather is coming.  But we did leave La Rochelle because rain was forecast for Saturday, so perhaps that is not such a surprise.

So we carry on.  At one stage Richard decides to go off course across what is supposed to be a very shallow bit to save a couple of miles.  That was a mistake.  The conditions seemed perfect, but the sea has a terrible swell and we are coasting down 2 metre waves in only 4 metres of water!  Later Richard finds that our more up to date pilot book says never take this short cut!  But we survive unharmed and arrive at the marina just after lunchtime.  The weather is now warm and sunny and we have a nice alongside berth.  Just after we come in a French boat that we passed on the way also comes in.  I’m sure we saw him in La Rochelle.  He asks if we are going on through the canals, and to my shock Richard says yes!

So now I am all confused about what we are doing.  After months of saying he did not want to take the mast down, Richard is changing his mind.  The real point is that if we go around the outside we will not make it to the Med this year.  It is a very long way and we have spent more time than planned getting this far.

So Richard spends the afternoon asking people who can dismantle the mast and ship it.  He speaks to a shipper.  The Frenchman on the boat in front of us is carrying his own mast.  He has done the canal 4 times before!  We are working ourselves up into a frenzy about how to do this.  Richard finally e-mails Nigel Gee for some more advice.  

After a dinner of fish curry we both fall into bed, but find it difficult to sleep because we are still worried about how to deal with the mast.