Belle-Ile, Brittany, France

We are almost at our destination in La Rochelle and we are moored outside Le Palais on Belle-Ile waiting for favourable winds to take us the final 120 miles. The weather now is perfect and Belle-Ile is certainly tres belle.
The voyage has been difficult since we left Cuxhaven in Germany for Den Helder. We were doing very well motor sailing quite nicely until the wind back onto the nose and then steadily built to about 20 kts as we were coming around the the North West corner of Holland. That was not too much of a problem until the tide changed and it is very disconcerting to see the heading lines on your chart plotters turn around and the navigation marks that you can see in the distance, slowly recede.
We turned around and went inside the Friesian Islands, that we might make it to Den Helder on the inside. That was not to be either as the winds had built to well over 30 knots and we took shelter in a tiny marina in Oost Vlieland. The place was very interesting and the marina was full of huge Dutch barges. The staff were very welcoming and we rafted up to a large motor cruiser.
By the next morning the weather had settled down and we had some nice sailing down the coast to Scheveningen to wait for some weather to cross the North Sea.
The Admiral got the news that her dad was quite ill in England and found a flight from Amsterdam to go and take care of him.
There was no favourable weather to cross the North Sea to the UK for at least a week so we decided to try to sail down the Dutch coast past Belgium and France to get a better shot at reaching the UK to drop Marie -Luce off.
We left Scheveningen one evening passed through the Rotterdam traffic system and arrived at Blankenberge in Belgium the following morning. This was a rather strange Belgian holiday resort which had two things going for it. One was excellent mussels and the other was its close proximity to the city of Bruges, which was visited on the following day. (to be continued)