Brest to UK

Several years ago, I had 3 week holiday. Much as I would have liked to do the delivery trips, I did not have the time unless I used much of the 3 precious weeks and SWMBO hates passages of 6 hrs +. Consequently I forked out for a delivery skipper @ £1 per mile with 2 of my regular crew to assist. They delivered the boat to Benodet with the boat's arrival coinciding with me and my family arriving by car from St Malo.
The delivery crew drove the car back to St Malo where I had already arranged parking with the ferry operator and returned back to UK. We spent 3 weeks cruising and close to the end, rang the delivery skipper and told hime where we were expecting to end up.
Skipper duly arrived with car and crew. We drove back to St Malo and boat arrived back in Hamble a few days later.
Cost of Condor ferry, roughly £400 and delivery skipper £700 - well worth it considering the superb worry free cruise (other than when the engine burst into flames while going into Concarneau but that's another story)

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I recon this route actually has the least logistical planning involved. Still got the problem of getting west if the weather is not right, but at least you can dump the yacht more easily. Perhaps Plymouth would be as good starting point as Falmouth. And yes - give Brest a miss and go straight on down.

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Channel de Four is easy. It is even easier at night as there is a light like a massive searchlight at the southern end- stay in the beam and you will get there! Just think of tides times and you'll be OK. Watch strong winds over tides. - oh and put plenty of weypoints in the GPS.

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Jim

I've done this trip a few times also, and concur with Charles about Lorient (though we did have the boat broken into there). It also has good rail connections with St Malo for a ferry back to Pompey. S Brittany is a great cruising area. We were going to go there last summer and left early July but the first week was windless and so we changed plan and stayed in the Channel. This year I will work the boat down with crew and then Karen will join whilst they return. Derek is after an Ocean qualifying passage so we're considering a straight run to Spain and then back up to La Rochelle which is another good staging post with cheap flights.

Looks like we might share an anchorage at some stage!

Regards
Tom

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and PREPARE - it happens quickly - last time we came North with a F5 SW helping us along, with the peak flow of a nice spring tide - we must have been doing close to 25 knots over the ground. With the strange perspective on distance at night it was a ride the crew didnt enjoy. I'm not sure I would have enjoyed without ace radar and a good plotter - particularly the central bit where you get swept up between the two central markers. Oh - and there was a cargo ship coming t'other way...

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Flybe are now flying to Nantes - beautiful, and as safe a berth as you wil ever find to leave a boat in - up river, and locked in. Just outside is the Multiplast yard where they build the ORMA 60 tri's and the new G class boats.

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Delivered boat from Brest to Plymouth last September. Flew Ryan Air to Brest £18 and Taxi about £10 to the marina. Worst thing about Brest is that there doen't appear to be any food shops near the marina! Other than that had no problems at all.

Yoda



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Don't forget you can also keep a boat in Vannes or (believe it or not) Redon then just walk a few mins to the station. I kept a boat in Redon in the winter for a couple of hundred quid. There was one particular TGV a day which went all the way to Lille, then you cross platforms and take the Eurostar to London. Dunno where Charles got the 2hrs from... more like eight. But it's relatively inexpensive with a ticket bought at the French end and does drop you in the middle of London... or Ashford.

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Going South is much easier, though I take your point about the perception at night. Its like the old days before GPS when you were absolutely sure that you were where you were not (if you see what I mean!) No substitute for good planning and plenty of weypoints up the channel.

I notice however that the french don't seem to bother with the kink at the bottom end - they just go straight! Well - it is marked for big ships - but I tend to be safe rather than sorry.

By the way - I have noticed that email notifications of replies arrive some 2 to 4 hours after the reply posting was made - are you finding the same??

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Chris like you our WPTs for Chenal Du Four are set to take us down the light sectors and stay in the middle of the channel with WPTs between buoys/beacons. That way if it is foggy , as it often is on that corner, we can trust a combination of WPTs, Plotter and the radar (which being linked to the GPS has a lollipop to mark the WPT position). We have tested the WPTs many times in clear visibility even using the autopilot in it's follow track mode to be sure we can trust the route.

Like you said the lights are excellent and it really is easier at night, just drive down the white beams. In daylight and good vis though you can straighten it out a bit by cutting some corners, though not to the extent that some of the French boats do through the rocks off the bottom by Pte St Mathieu! There is also a radar station on Pte St Mathieu which will talk you through if asked - this was volunteered to us once when I asked Ushant Traffic Control if they had any info on vis in the Four since we had thick fog 10mls out. Also reassuringly Ushant asked for our position and then replied that they had us clearly on their radar - one up for the Firdell Blipper!


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