Long time ago a good skipper told me “you do not learn how to navigate until you go to Bretagne”. Provided one of my objectives this year was to improve my sailing skills, I decided to head towards Paimpol.
Paimpol is a cute town in the North of Bretagne with a long of sailing / fishing tradition. The local fisherman used to travel to Island in order to fish cod, no words about the sailing celtic tradition of course.
You can feel marine tradition in every corner of the town, some restaurants are called “l’Islandais” as a souvenir, the name of the streets, the port the people. While the tide is an unknown phenomenon for mediterranean in general, the bretons live according to it, everyone knows what is the status of it and in times of high tides everyone take their fishing tools and go to to the beach to catch cockles. Bretons live by the Ocean but also according to the Ocean.
Paimpol means in breton language “five rivers” and those five rivers are an excellent navigation perimeter to improve your navigation skills! The coast is plenty of rocks, rivers, little islands… this combined with the tides and the currents makes the zone the perfect place for learning how to place yourself in the marine carte and also how not to crash your boat against a rock against “that” little rock.
The range of colours, combinations of grey, blue and green, the people, the cider, the crêpes, the scent of the Atlantic Ocean, altogether make Bretagne a very attractive and romantic place! Even if the weather is not hot I cannot say it is freezing either (I was expecting worse). Indeed, the bretons everyday it is sunny in Bretagne…. at least once a day 😀
About my navigation learning experience in Paimpol…. that was overwhelming, have never seen such an amount of signs, lights, rocks…. that was definitely a good exercise and I will definitely repeat. I had the opportunity to navigated during the sunrise, we navigated during the sunset, during the day and night. And the experience was wonderful, I learned a lot, met nice people and re-discovered Bretagne from the water.
Indeed, ” you do not learn how to navigate until your go to Paimpol”….
