It was just a short hop from Anse de Ben Hir to Camaret, my next stop. Nice harbor and nice town. Again there was very little wind so with the exception of a short attempt at sailing, I motored the whole way. Interestingly, most other sailboats out on the water were sailing in 3 knots of breeze! There is a long visitor dock at Camaret but as I’m now accustomed to, my calls to the harbor office on VHF channel 9 went unanswered. No problem, I hailed a sailor from another boat who took my lines.

Kincsem at the visitors dock in Camaret

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17th Century Vauban tower in the harbor

I did not stay long in Camaret because there was a long line of low pressure systems arriving soon and I wanted to get to Brest before the first one came. So I was off the next day to Brest. A nice following breeze, no rain and the Queen Mary 2 crossing my bow right when I approached the narrows to the Rade de Brest - no complaints! Interstingly, there was no one on deck on the QE2 - so they were likely just delivering the ship somewhere. Covid is still shutting down the cruise line industry.

There are two marinas in Brest, Marina du Chateau and Marina Moulin Blanc. I went to the latter which turned out to be a good choice. Even the harbor staff came out to help me dock Kincsem! Moulin Blanc has a humungous sailing center which is used by the youth of Brest. Every day of the week, a large number of kids and adolescents are out on kayaks, wind surfers, foiling boards, catamarans, lasers, foiling kite boards, you name it. Red coach boats zip around all day in the bay just beyond the harbor, instructing the kids how to do it all. One day, it’s blowing and pouring rain, I observed a female coach towing a bunch of optis with what appeared to be 5 year olds in them and storm sails around in the harbor to get the young ones exposed to the elements! Yesterday, it was blowing hard from the South with significant waves in the bay but everyone’s out with reefed sails in some cases. This is all happening during school hours so I think this is school sports in Brest!

Now that my crew for the next leg arrived, we also explored Brest a bit. The highlight was the Oceanopolis, a huge complex housing three acquariums (showing acquatic life in Bretagne, Tropics and Artic) and various other exhibitions. Definitely worth a visit. But other than that, there is an utter lack of quaint things to see. It looks like Brest was largely destroyed in the 2nd World War and now is mostly a navy town. The old Chateau seems to be the Navy headquarters and we could not get in to see it.

Medieval tower with Chateau in the background

View from the cable car across the river Penfold