We flew in from London six days ago and have been busy commissioning Adventuress after her hibernation up on the hard at Foleux boatyard. The first two days we worked on cleaning (Nancy) and painting the bottom (John), and stayed two nights in a hotel in the nearby small town of La Roche Bernard, which was a delightful treat, rather than sleeping on the boat in the yard.
We did the all our usual commissioning: cleaning, bottom painting, installing the dodger and bimini, fitting all the running rigging ("lines" that hoist and control the sails) and bending on the three sails. We checked and tuned all equipment, and tested all the instruments. We found a small air leak in our inflatable dinghy and patched it. And the starter battery for the engine had finally conked out so we replaced it.
Our 75hp Yanmar diesel started up immediately without having to prime the fuel, so no air in the diesel lines....Hooray!
Yesterday was exciting. John came up with a brilliant idea. He would return the rental car to Nantes Airport, take a bus to the Nantes train station and catch a train to Redon. There Nancy would drive the dingy 14 miles up the river to pick him up ... Oops! That’s a 28 mile round trip for Nancy on our ten foot dinghy! See the photos for the rest of that story.....
La Roche Bernard is a medieval river town and very well kept.
Dining at L'Auberge de Bretagne, a small hotel very well managed by its owners Audrey and Benoit. Benoit is a superb chef with extensive training, and we could find no fault at this charming hotel: gets 5 stars from us!
The dinghy going for a test drive after repairs and before a long trip up the Vilaine River to Redon.....
...and here's Dinghy Captain Nancy trying to get enthusiastic about it. But she was rewarded......
....with a splendid opportunity to capture this action photo of John climbing back in the dinghy at Redon after falling in off a wobbly finger pier! Note that Nancy was too busy laughing and taking photos to throw a life ring!
So John took an unexpected swim....and so did his cell phone! Fortunately his jacket and back pack had been left safely on the dock.
Zooming back down the river to Adventuress, the clouds gathered but John didn't care ,,,he was already soaked.
So today we put up the mainsail and staysail, and all went well: here we have just taken the main out of its winter storage bag.
Tomorrow we leave the marina to have a shake down river cruise towards the Atlantic, and thus our adventure begins.
Our very best,
Nancy and John
