Wild Betony

During the last week of April Mike Salisbury, Tim Jolly, Peter Latham, David Walker and I chartered "Wild Betony" from Cornish Cruising in Falmouth.

Wild Betony is a Rustler 36, a long keeled bermudan rigged sloop. We had an evening sail and stayed at Falmouth the first night. On the Sunday we set off for France. We had a really good passage taking about 20 hours over night. We did encounter some fog mid channel but thankfully it cleared.

Our first port of call was Trebeurden in North Brittany. Trebeurden is a holiday area with a brand new marina and lovely beaches and scenery. After a day and night here we sailed along the coast (well we motored quite a bit as the wind dropped) to Treguier. This involved negotiating quite an inhospitable rocky coast and then sailing up a really pretty river for several miles.

Treguier is a lovely old cathedral city (more of a market town like Wells) with losts of half timbered houses along winding streets. The marina pontoons are laid across the river which is quite fast flowing so it presents a challenge when mooring the boat, especially with a long keel.

The crew were amused to see a couple of french racing yachts attempting this at speed under sail alone!

Just as we were about to leave the berth on departure we discovered our engine controls were jammed. So we had to stay 'til the next tide whilst various members of the crew tried gentle methods of persuasion to get it going again (see photo!).

We finally set sail, this time for the Channel Islands. Another overnight sail brought us to St. Peter Port in Guernsey. We had to moor to a pontoon in the outer harbour whilst waiting for the tide to enable us to enter the inner amrina. Once in there we were very snug just a few steps from some first class showers in one direction and the high street and M&S in the other.

We enjoyed an excellent meal ashore in the evening. The next morning we rose early to catch the tide and set off on the 100 mile passage back to Falmouth.

All in all a very pleasant cruise to some lovely places on a terrific boat with a first class crew!