Sailing along the Normandy beaches

After our long weekend in ‘Paris-sur-Mer’, we continued our travels in a westerly direction. Sadly, there was no Pierre-Michel to wave us goodbye but, well, you can’t have everything. Our destination was the îles de Saint Marcouf, about 50 nm further west along the coast of Normandy. With a day of light winds forecast, we rose early and slipped our lines at 0630 in order to make the most of the tide set. What followed was a sunny, pleasant sail.

Trying our new Code D sail

With light winds coming from abaft the beam, we decided to try our new Code D sail. Code Ds are light, downwind sails that are something like a cross between a fast downwind spinnaker (famously tricky to handle) and a more manageable but slower genoa. Set on a furler, their design makes them relatively easy to handle across a wide range of wind strengths and directions, or so the story goes.

We had initially thought that we would get a parasailer, a much bigger and more complex spinnaker, but eventually decided that simple and easy was what we were looking for, especially at those times when we are tired and conditions aren’t terrific.

Having only had it out of the bag once before, it took a while to get ourselves sorted out. With the wind off the starboard quarter, we thought we’d fly it on a pole, so the first job was getting the pole sorted. Fuss, fiddle – the pole is also new. Then we had to swap the furler from the Code 0 to the Code D, then rig the sheets, then the sail. Phew. Finally, it was up and flying. Very pretty and very nice but it just wouldn’t set properly. After much fiddling on sheets, guys and toppers we eventually took it off the pole whereupon it immediately set nicely. And so we cruised along for much of the rest of the day with an extra 2 kn of speed over the white sails.

Birds and dolphins

Along the way we got to do a bit of birding (great cormorants, Manx shearwaters, northern fulmars, northern gannets, little gulls, blackheaded gulls, kittiwakes, herring gulls, glaucous gulls, guillemots and razorbills). And as we approached the islands we were joined by a pod of about a dozen common bottlenose dolphins.

They spent about half an hour with us, riding our meagre bow wave, zipping off to chase each other and presumably to chase fish. They are surprisingly big animals, stocky and solid but quick.

A lovely anchorage at îles de Saint Marcouf

The îles de Saint Marcouf are a small group of rocky islands about 3 miles off the beaches of the World War II’s Normandy landings. They were the first part of Normandy that the Allies invaded during that operation. There were no Germans on the islands when the landing occurred but the booby traps ensured that there were 19 American casualties before the islands were deemed safe. Yikes.

Our arrival at the islands was utterly boring in comparison to that of the Americans, indeed the dolphins ensured that it was quite pleasant! The only negative was our discovery upon tidying up the boat that our new halyard lead, instead of better controlling the head of the Code D, had worn through the sheath of the halyard. Not the outcome that we were hoping for when we installed it. I guess the original rig designers knew better after all.

‘The Birds’

Landing on the islands is not permitted today, but they made for a lovely spot to anchor for a couple of nights. The islands and their 17^th and 20^th century fortifications make for a dramatic backdrop while their rocky shorelines harbour some very pleasant, if chilly, snorkeling. On a rising tide, massive schools of what looked like sand eels came close to the surface where they created a frenzy of literally thousands of gulls of a variety of species; little, black headed, herring and black-backed.

Absolutely raucous, non-stop shrieking, splashing and diving mayhem that ebbed and flowed across the channel between the two main islands as the fish dived deeper or rose close to the surface sending the birds into a frenzy.

All of this against beautiful sunset backdrops. Magic!