Fort Boyard, Sea, Sticks and Rags

Thursday, June 26, 2008
Snork Maiden
Boyardville, Ile d’Oleron

Fort Boyard, Sea, Sticks and Rags

The weather has turned into summer. We wake up to sunshine and blue skies, and the evenings are long and clear. Sometimes cloud in the middle of the day, but that’s good since the sun is mid-summer strong. There are good beaches on Oleron, but it tends to be windy - that’s how come La Rochelle is such a good sailing place.

We arrived in Boyardville a couple of days ago. Bodyarville is a small holiday village on an old canal leading into the marshy are of the island. It would have started life as an island but now its big attraction is the beach, the small marina with restaurants clustered around it - and Fort Boyard. It was a perfect sailing day when we arrived so we sailed a circuit of the fort. We were approached by a 3rd assistant director in a RIB (rigid inflatable boat with a large outboard engine). He asked us very politely to sail away out of shot, and sure enough, we could see a camera on a crane on top of the fort. (for those of you who don’t know, Ft B is the location for a TV game show - maybe one of you would like to add a comment, ‘cos I haven’t seen it either! Ella Dovey??). Anyway, I am sure that they like to maintain the fiction that it’s in the sea miles from anywhere and not a bus ride from La Rochelle. There is a local industry in boats taking tourists out there to sail around the exclusion zone and ogle. It was nice to do that on our own boat and save the 35€ each. We spent the rest of the day tied to a buoy (corps mort) and snoozing whilst waiting for the tidal gate to open and let us into the harbour. The channel into Boyardville is very necky - Sally will probably remember how it looked at low tide - like a little groove in the sand! Anyway - another soft landing for Snork Maiden.

This end of the island also has a small forest of mixed trees - mainly pines and there’s a shady bike ride parallel to the beaches that has the smell of the Mediterranean. Yesterday evening we cycled down the digue just after sunset and the sea colours and surface were just indescribable. Lawrence called the Med a ‘wine-dark sea’ and that almost does it because the sea manages to be blue and red at the same time. I tried to photograph it, but its not possible to reproduce the appearance, let alone the feeling. In Rochefort we went to the maritime museum and there was an exhibition of paintings by an artist called LAPIQUE. He was fascinated by boats and the sea and really caught some of that in a completely unexpected way. Google him and take a look! Some of the Brittany artists also have a take on that. There are good collections at Pont Aven and Quimper.
People with power boats call yachts ‘boats with sticks and rags’. We call their boats ‘stink pots’. Fortunately, there are very few of those here, just honest day fishing boats. I did the washing yesterday and hung it all over the boat as usual. Most of our clothes look like they are ready to be engine rags!
Saturday 28th June
Back in La Rochelle after a good day’s sailing - 6.4 Knots in a F5 with a reef in the main and working jib. Light airs forecast for tomorrow. We will make for Ars-en-Re, at the N end of the Ile de Re. Access is via a narrow channel through mud and rock. We have to catch it at high water to be safe, so will put the light Genoa sail on and shake out the reef as we go out tomorrow, in other words, give it all we’ve got to get there by 1300. 6am start and midnight now so going to bed.