Giles and Paula's Great Retirement Adventure
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Leaving as early as possible tomorrow is critical. We have to be in St Malo before the lock closes. It does open again in the evening, but we have to be on a train to Paris at Sparrows on Saturday morning, so really want to get in on the early tide. But we need to know what depth of water is over the annoyingly positioned sand bar between us and freedom. The marina staff are being pretty useless. So Paula and I are monitoring this tide, and making notes of what the depth at regular points around low water are. From these observations, we can extrapolate what the depth will be at certain times tomorrow morning.
We also want to go to the bar and have a drink and some food. So I've rigged up a Blink camera so I can remotely monitor the depth gauge from my phone....
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Almost perfect. We barrelled down here for 11:32 lock opening. Actually managed to get in the queue for the 11:02 opening. Then we got a call on the radio telling us that the 11:02 and 11:32 openings were not happening. Next time the lock gates open is 20:45.
So we are in the next marina on a visitors berth...
Bloody French
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In point of fact. The above fuck up helped us in the end. Paula suggested that we pop around to the marina that we have booked, and check out our berth. Guess what? None of the berths are marked, and even the marina staff did not know where F4 (where we were told to berth) was. If it had not been for the lock being dredged (which is why they shut early today), we would had turfed up at 21:15ish and not known what to do. Because, guess what again? The marina staff knock off at 19:00
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Given this chaos…how in hell did the sailing world come up with the expression ‘running a tight ship’?
The journey is the objective.
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I love the relaxed attitude to work they have they know all about me time and clocking off is clocking off so that's a pretty tight ship as to where you berth is cest la vie bien sur
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@motojobobo the ships plenty tight. Once you get off its loose as all hell.
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At 20:20 we dutifully turned up to get into the queue for the 20:45 lock gate opening. Paula radioed the lock keeper who then spent about 5 minutes saying there would be no room in the lock, as 2 dredgers and their barges had to transit, and we should come back for the 21:45 transit. We were fourth in the queue after the work boats and a 22m Princess from Jersey with 3 crew and a load of drunk guests, so did not pay any attention to him. Mind you, by the time we got into the lock. 2 French boats, and a German boat had muscled in front of us. It was mayhem, then a bloody great trimaran joined the party too.
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Leaving St Malo. Next stop Sark.
https://vimeo.com/share/6bb3522b-fb81-469d-8a8c-d6b4fe484af4?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci
