Fetes Maritimes Douarnenez 2026

Sailing from Plymouth to Douarnenez July 2026 This was a total of ten days at the end of July. Sources of information for navigation we used the Reed's Nautical Almanac, the Shell Channel Pilot Guide plus Imray’s Atlantic France. We have Navionics running on a Samsung tablet, with backup GPS positioning from the VHF, an old Furuno GP-32 and if all else fails - a smartphone. We had paper charts of the Western English Channel (Imray C10) and more detailed charts C35 and C36. Landfall at the end of the Channel crossing was at l’Aber Wrac’h which is a very pretty estuary. The marina staff were extremely helpful. This is a non-PFF port - somewhere you can check-in without the formalities of a major port of entry like Roscoff or Brest. Our passage from the Tamar to l’Aber Wrac’h was 28 hours. Approaching the marina, pay close attention to where the port-hand channel marks are. There is a very prominent one opposite the marina entrance which is on the edge of an extensive rock shelf which dries at low tide. We were looking at the and almost missed a smaller port-hand mark which is vital for avoiding the rock shelf. The customs form for announcing your arrival or departure at a non-PFF port I found on the St Helier Yacht Club website https://www.shyc.je/other-boating/navigation. It must be available elsewhere, but this seemed to be the easiest to find. Southbound through the Chenal du Four, we had a light NW wind and had to fight foul tide from l’Aber Wrac’h to Le Four in order to arrive at Le Four at HW Brest as advised by the pilot guides. There was good visibility and the passage through the Chenal itself was straight forward by following the lateral marks. We stayed in the Marina Vauban at Caramet sur Mer at the end of that passage. It’s the best part of a mile from the marina along the mole to where the seafront bars and restaurants are located. The final leg of the outbound journey was from Camaret to Douarnenez. The anchorage at Port de Rosmeur is great as long as the wind is not anywhere in the North to East quadrant, although obviously no facilities. If you need luxuries like toilets and showers going through the lock to Port Rhu is probably a better bet. On the return journey, we made a single stop at Camaret-sur-Mer again. As noted in the video, we discovered that Camaret is no longer a non-PFF port so we couldn’t do our clearance there. Fortunately the capitanerie at l’Aber Wrac’h were able to help us out via email. Northbound through the Chenal du Four, we arrived at the Southern end at just before LW Brest, there was a light northwesterly wind against us, but not strong enough to cause much wind over tide problems. In the northern half of the Chenal there was some swell which I estimated at 2 to 2.5m, probably left over from the F6 blow on the previous day. In bad weather I can imagine the Chenal is at best unpleasant and potentially quite dangerous. The passage from Camaret back to the Tamar was 145nm and took approx 36 hours. Apologies for the audio quality, wind noise, etc. I will invest in some proper microphones.