Day 31-34: Biscay, from France to Spain

Day 31-34: Biscay, from France to Spain

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Biscay was the biggest crossing in the first months of the trip. As the crow flies the bay is around 300 nautical miles wide. Our channel crossing from the Isles of Scilly to Brest was closer to 100 nautical miles.

As the crossing was going to take a few days, the main task in the days and weeks ahead of setting off was finding a weather window that both provided wind for sailing and a bit of comfort too (not too much swell).

The window we were aiming for primarily had a north or northwesterly wind around 10 to 20 knots with 1.2 to 1.7m swell, but also had a high pressure passing through the bay around the evening of day 33 which would give us a big lull before some easterly wind to finally bring us to A Coruna, Spain.

We used Fast Seas weather routing to come up with the initial route, and we used our Garmin InReach throughout the crossing to update this weather routing, and also to get weather updates. The route remained mostly the same throughout the crossing, although we ended up crossing in around 20 hours less than the initially predicted 3 days 12 hours. (Very satisfying).

Throughout the crossing, we literally saw hundreds of dolphins, too many to count, in 10s of different pods throughout the various days.

As we were far ahead of schedule when making landfall we got to our anchorage at around 3am and anchored in the dark.

Waking up around noon the next day, according to the plan we would still be sailing, but instead, we headed to the beach to relax.

Instagram Post (July 23)

Instagram Post (July 23)

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Wet set off across the Bay of Biscay on Thursday, now around 55 hours in and we can see Spain!Should reach out anchorage this evening or early in the morningA picture wouldn't the the stars at night with a clear sky and no moon justice (also impossible to take on a moving boat), so here is a sunset and some boaty water pics#sailinghannahpenn #sailing #sailinglife #bayofbiscay #nic38 #camperandnicholsons #sunset

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Day 30: Brest to Crozon

Day 30: Brest to Crozon

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In order to shorten the Biscay crossing, similar to our thinking when leaving the Isles of Scilly, we wanted to get as far south as possible without actually entering the bay too much. We looked at our options and the time that we had before our weather window and decided to aim for Crozon.

This was a short hop down the coast, but we were beating into the wind to get out of Brest which took quite some time.

Here is a funny-looking rock that we went past…

Rock between Brest and Crozon

And once anchored, here was our delicious dinner!

Oceanopolis, Brest

Oceanopolis, Brest

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The marina that we moored at when arriving in Brest gave us a free ticket to Oceanopolis, a nearby Aquarium.

We took this opportunity to have a day out on land.

The aquarium was about an hours walk from the marina, so we stocked up on icey cold water, and started walking amidst a bit of a heat wave (around 30 degrees Celcius).

Our walk took us along the rest of Brest harbour, then along a busy-ish road with a cycle path, and eventually through an industrial area until finally reaching Oceanopolis.

The aquarium is split up into 3 main different zones. Tropical, Polar and a zone for the local area.

There were penguins.

Lots and lots of penguins.

Seals.

The cutest of sea otters.

And of course, small fish pretending to be Nemo.

While browsing the shop we found a very cute seal which is now part of team Hannah Penn (also known as Team Saily Mc Sail Face).

Keep an eye out for this cute one in photos to come.

On the way back we tried out a french bike rental app called Donkey republic.

Not many bikes available that worked, most parking places would generally have 5 or so bikes, but only one that wasn’t broken / that you could unlock.

This shortened the trip back quite a bit. Very glad the bike was electric assist.