Courseulles-sur-Mer

We missed the 6:15 lock, my fault, I used John’s phone to set an alarm but didn’t check that it was set to local time. It wasn’t it was still on Guernsey time! We did wonder at it being so light but it wasn’t until we were out on the canal waiting, I had radioed, but they didnt answer, that I realised what I had done I glanced at my watch to see how much longer to wait and it read 7:07.
We returned to the pontoon to wait until the next ‘Lock’ out at 12:15, we did a rough calculation to see what our options were and thought we might be able to get to Port en Bassin if we could achieve 6knots on the cruise. We did a little more shopping, more milk and bread and waited. The lock opened on time but there were loads of boats and we didn’t get out until 12:45 and we were then fighting tide, after 2hours we realised we weren’t going to make the high tide plus 2 gate closure on Port en Bassin and had to either head to Courseilles Sur Mer close by or go to St Vaast and anchor off until the next high tide. The wind was picking up already and there would be nowhere to anchor that would be sheltered so Courseilles was the choice. It’s the site of the Canadian D day landings on Juno beach. They had a good market today for a look around and tomorrow we plan to walk towards Arromanche and the Mulberry harbour to get a bit of exercise as, all being well, we will try for Cherbourg on Thursday.Les mer