Sables d'Olonne and now Port Bourgenay

It's now friday 21st july and we are in Port Bourgenay. After 2nights at anchor off Port Meule on Ile d'Yeu (last photo) the wind picked up and we decided to move on, the original plan was straight across to Sable but the waves were rolling us from side to side so we changed direction and headed towards St Gilles again and as we got closer to shore waves eased so we hugged the coast around to Sable and saw our first pod of dolphins not a big pod and dolphins were small but at last we have seen some, they must have been feeding as there were also Terns diving into sea around them.
Sable d'olonne is very developed, the first row of buildings on the sea front are almost all high rises, on the day we arrived it was still very hot and the beach was mobbed. Luckily the Port Olona marina is actually closer to the La Chaume side of the estuary and this is much quieter and for us nicer. On second day we did washing and shopping and had a good mooch around attached is photo of shell art, there were two streets which had decorated the walls with shell pictures. Also photos of old buildings on the La Chaume side. We also checked timings for trip to Marans the next day. We would have to be up around 7 to have time to fill up with fuel and then get to the canal lock for high-water when it opened.
But best laid plans and all that, we did fuel up took about an hour but that was OK but once we got out onto the open sea it was very lumpy with random large waves, Johnny says sea was 5-6 even though not a lot of wind and after an hour of tipping and tilting we were checking our options as another 5hours of the same was not good and found Port Bourgenay only 9 miles along coast and headed in.
It's entry in the Almanac is its a good stopover but nothing there, OK so only cafés restaurants and marina stuff at port but a shop 500m up road and tourist office and facilities were clean and for us main bonus is it isn't very busy. More on next post as only 6 photos per post Czytaj więcej