Bénodet to La Rochelle - First Day
So our long 300km voyage starts today.
I’m sure Marcello said up at 7. So up I got put the kettle on and had a chilled hour watching the sunrise with a cup of tea and my camera before anyone else emerged . Although I must be a bit quieter I think.
I rang sue to wish her a happy birthday, she has just woken up. The wonders of modern technology! Sam was getting up early so she could do presents. I’m hoping for a video of the hoola hoop later!
We prepared the boat for departure cleared the berth and went looking for the gazol pontoon. This was a little bit upriver from us. We moored along side; no issues apart from me forgetting to get the rope on the outside of the boat ready for tying on.
Filling up was more problematic than we liked. All self service and in French. We managed to get it working at our 3rd attempt with the help of a young French man, who had on obviously come out to see what those stupid Australians 🙂 were doing.
With a full tank of gazol, off we set. Chloe got on the phone to Theresa for about an hour 
. The wind was very light and a lot of boats were headed out. The first 2 hours had lots of boats and islands to look at….. more lighthouses of course.
We saw some more dolphins! Marcello noticed birds diving, we think due to the dolphins driving the fish to the surface. Then there were dolphins all around. I grabbed my camera and whacked the aperture open to fire off rapid shots to capture them…. sadly I had closed the aperture and only got a blurry fin
.
Chloe went forward to see if we could see them again
As the island, La Ille belle, approached the most exciting thing was data for the phones. Marcello and I both needed to down load our next book. I spoke to my mother, then my brother and then rang sue for her 2nd birthday call.
Chloe went down to prep dinnner which was a very tasty carbonara.
The wind was still not up to much, we had the sails out but still needed to motor to keep our speed up. Annoyingly, the boat behind had a cruising chute up and was going just as fast. Probably one of those is on Marcello’s Christmas list.
After that excitement that is probably it until we go past Isle …..
Chloe took the first watch. It had chilled down a bit. Marco went for a Rey in his cabin. I stayed up top and got some nice sunset pictures. We also had a half moon tonight,
Marco took 2nd watch and I had a bit of rest. I actually got a bit of sleep.
I woke about an hour later. And we swapped round. The moon was still bright and some stars were out. Not as bright as the Roscoff journey.
Running on autopilot at night is quite eerie. The boat keeps plowing through the Incessantly rolling sea. Nothing ahead but a dimly present horizon, smudges of light from the distant shore to the left, a shockingly bright half moon to the right. The wake of the boat bubbles under the rear navigation light and the stars speckle the sky above in semi familiar patterns.