Wednesday 5 June

We set out just before 10:00am in lovely sunshine and light winds.  The forecast was for the wind to northeast, so it would be on the beam starting as a 4, but going down to 2 knots by 2:00pm.  The wind strength was as predicted, but the direction wrong.  It was nearly a beat in the morning and by afternoon what very little there was was on the nose most of the time.  Anyway, we had to motor.  We tried to fish, but caught nothing and lost the lures on our new line.

As we approached Il de Re, Richard did some calculations and found that because of the times of the high tides, there would be no bridge opening tomorrow and maybe one at 6:30am on Friday.  So we could get stuck in St Martin for 3 days.  With that information we decide to go straight to La Rochelle.  Richard finds there is a Michelin 2 rosette restaurant in the town.  He phones and gets us reservations for tomorrow! 

It is a lovely afternoon as we enter the old harbour.  It is exciting to enter between the two medieval towers.  We are finally in new cruising area for us.  We find a nice place on the visitor pontoon just at the waterfront.  It is all beautiful and for once I finally feel like we are on holiday!  The Harbour Master finds us and tells us we are fine where we are (despite being next to a no mooring sign!).  The only problem is that the toilet block is ever so far away.  I guess half an mile walk, because we have to go all around the harbour to get there.  Who cares, we’ll use the facilities on board.

We change into shorts, it is really hot and sunny, and take a walk in to town.  We stop at the Bureau de Port and find that for 1 Euro a day we can have internet access.  The fee is 60 Euros, but if we like we can stay a third night for free.  We’ll see.  We would like to be here three days, but we are also anxious to get going south. In town we sus the place out and buy a bottle of Pineau, being in the area.

We are both feeling better and dinner of my Ratatouille, couscous and Mergez, proves our stomachs will be up to dinner tomorrow. Hurray!

So to bed.  It is noisy but we get to sleep.