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- Aug 5, 2024, 9:23 PM
- 🌙 23 °C
- Altitude: 36 ft
- FranceNouvelle-AquitaineArcachonPort d'Arcachon44°39’36” N 1°8’58” W
Arcachon
August 5, 2024 in France ⋅ 🌙 23 °C
We were in Arcachon more than a week ago. But we haven't really felt like writing. The first couple of days because we were still getting our energy back from the two long sailing trips. The last couple of days because my (Bel) parents are here!! So no writing for a while.
Arcachon, bassin of Arcachon but mostly for us a French Waddengebied. All information we could find before hand warned us about the dangerous area that we were about the enter. A few miles before arriving at the entrance of bassin d'Arcachon we are supposed to get in touch with the coast guard of Cap Breton to give us advice about whether and how we could enter the bassin. They asked a bunch of other questions about our destination and stay as well. This gave us quite a bit of stress. Willem from the WoL secured us that we shouldn't make too big of a deal out of it , since we are used to the Waddenzee. The coast was beautiful though. We were passing very large dunes and forests.
Which turned out to be quite true. As long as we followed the buoys we should be ago and be able to manouver around the sand bank. Unfortunately we arrived a little bit too late at the entrance which resulted not only quite big waves, but also a strong current of about 3 knots against us. Add to that, French buoys are often quite hard to find and never seem to be in the same form or shape. But we made it.
We decided to take some time to rest from the about 70 nautical mile sail and stayed for two nights. Arcachon itself wasn't that interesting to us, it seems we have already been quite spoiled by some very nice harbour towns that our standard now is a bit too high some times 😅 The croissants on the other hand were delicious, still warm and so crunchy.On the second night we had dinner with the WoL again since we had caught another bonito tuna on our way to Arcachon and it is always more fun to share such a nice dinner.
On our way back through the bassin we figured we've done it before it shouldn't be too big of deal. Which probably would have been case except for the fact that the big breakers (waves) were making it into the fairway (vaargeul) and at one point we only had 1,7m below us, while our draft is 1,8. This was probably some sort of wave and current effect. Quite scary, but luckily the depth quickly went back to 3+ meters. With Bart's good steering, and going around the pleasure fishing boats, also in the fairway made it out after about an hour and a half. On our way to our last French stop, Bayonne.Read more