Anchoring in very big tides

Iles de Chausey

The Iles de Chausey are a swarm of small islands, skerries and rocks that lie roughly 30 nm south of Carteret. Many are bare rocks which at low tide sport long, brown and green kelp skirts. Others are graced with patches of grass that cover the gaps between their lichen covered rocks. Between them are clear, cold green waters that rise and fall as much as 14 m with the circling of the moon. All up they are very beautiful indeed.

Finding enough swing room

We arrived in the early evening after a leisurely day’s sail down from Carteret. There was still c. 9 m of drop in the tide when we arrived so we spent a bit of time checking our calculations and finding a spot where we thought we’d be safe at the low. Dropping 45 m of chain might see us drifting 25 m from the anchor at high tide but at low tide we might end up being 40 m away and that extra distance might see us sitting uncomfortably on rocks – not something we were keen about. So we spent a bit of time doing circles taking soundings and making sure.

Fresh fish for dinner!

When we had finally anchored a fellow came paddling over from a nearby boat to tell us that we’d chosen a good spot and that we wouldn’t swing over the hidden rock to our north. Phew! Almost as good was that he offered us half his day’s fishing catch. When we only took two dinner-sized bream he was a bit disappointed but we had a good chat before he left to cook up his own dinner.

Lazing around on Yuma

The next two days were spent happily snorkelling in amongst the rocks, lazing on Yuma, going for rows in the dinghy and catching up with boat jobs. Very pleasant indeed. As our French fish friend had said, we had chosen our anchoring spot well and there were no surprises at low tide and no dragging at high. Perhaps the only complaint would be that the current between the skerries held us beam on to the wind and waves making things a bit rolly at high tide. We could have moved but, well, we couldn’t be bothered, so it clearly wasn’t that bad.

Remote is relative

While the French, no doubt, consider these islands to be relatively remote and untouched, for us they were a busy and very much used. Off to our NW we could just see the mass of masts of the boats anchored in the main channel by the inhabited island. Apparently, they raft up five abreast on the mooring buoys there and it certainly looked like that was what was going on from the forest of masts that we could see. Happily, we had only our Fish Friend in our spot but there were half a dozen boats in the next open spot about 300 m away and a regular traffic of small fishing runabouts and inflatables trolling in amongst the skerries.

With 9 m tides, much of that traffic, and all of the boats in the other anchorage, would disappear for hours on end behind high walls of kelp and rock before reappearing with the incoming tide. The gulls, perched way up on the most commanding rock outcrops, kept an eye on us all through out.