Falmouth to La Rochelle

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Oscarpop

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We are planning a trip from Falmouth to La Rochelle in a couple of weeks.

The plan is to pass outside of ouessant and then take a course that takes us outside of the raz du sein until we hit La Rochelle .
I realise that it adds distance to the voyage, but we haven't then got to factor our timings with tidal gates. That's my rationale .
What's the shipping like out there? Is it busy?

Any advice? It's our first offshore passage .

Thanks
 
Look at any of the AIS sites to see the shipping.
If first passage then do it in stages to L'Aber wrach, Camaret, Benodet, Haliguen, Yeu and La Rochelle.
Come back in one stage if you still want to.
 
You will find it quite busy around Ouessant, other than that it's straight forward enough. Although you will miss out on some pleasant cruising doing it in one hit. The prevailing winds re likely to be against you on the return so you will more as likely visit them then:rolleyes:
 
Chenal de four and Raz du Seine best route

petehb said:
You will find it quite busy around Ouessant, other than that it's straight forward enough. Although you will miss out on some pleasant cruising doing it in one hit. The prevailing winds re likely to be against you on the return so you will more as likely visit them then:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

I am in Spain at present, but I always go through the Four and Raz because the big ships are outside Ushant. I always make my landfall at Cedeira just to avoid the ships heading Finisterre .For La Rochelle I can't see why you would go outside Ushant.
 
Falmouth to La rochelle

Oscarpop said:
We are planning a trip from Falmouth to La Rochelle in a couple of weeks.

The plan is to pass outside of ouessant and then take a course that takes us outside of the raz du sein until we hit La Rochelle .
I realise that it adds distance to the voyage, but we haven't then got to factor our timings with tidal gates. That's my rationale .
What's the shipping like out there? Is it busy?

Any advice? It's our first offshore passage .

Thanks
Click to expand...

Ive just done the same (ish) route but into Camaret , when we left falmouth (at night) I couldnt be sure of hitting Chennel du four at the right time to catch the tides - which as always were springs and getting dark - so I aimed for the English channel end of the shipping lanes off Ushant, which were fairly busy, but not worse than other places weve been, it worked out just fine and was a stress free trip and Id definetly do it again , we had to swing out a long way to the West to avoid being swept back into the English channel when we approached the French side, as the tides were around 9 nautical miles (accumalative over 24 hrs) greater than the English side , so well worth calculating course to steer.yes it adds a little in distance but allowed me to leave Falmouth with 3 hours to daylight and then just a night entry into Camaret once past all the rocky bits.

Once clear of the shipping lanes if you time it right you will find the tide will carry you into the bay, we passed Ushant doing 10.5 knots and could easily have angled out into the bay to avoid the Raz du Sein , there were sseveral commercial fishing boats pair trawling close to the TSS and on the approach to Camaret the fishing boats were out in force towards the other rocks and races, but they were will lit and easily avoided, other than the shipping lanes there was no commercial traffic that we saw in the Bay its self. If your first trip Id aim for daylight at the TSS for certain, at night it feels a lot more intimidating, we have AIS and called up one vessel that had a CPA of 0.2 NM when he answered, he hadnt seen us or noticed us on his screen, I simply informed him I was altering course to pass behind him ...... his reply ... what do you want from me :-)

little bit on our blog

enjoy
 
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