Pos 46:08.40N 01:09.90W

A beautiful sunny day and a gentle sail to La Rochelle….with some last minute motoring to get through the entrance with enough depth of water, my how time flies when you are enjoying yourselves!

Mooring in Port Minimes proved slightly stressful when we couldn’t find the berth allocated to us by the Capitainerie over the VHF radio.

Nicely hampered by a returning racing fleet and an increasing breeze we politely enquired again where pontoon 25 was located, the Capitainerie replied ‘ It is between pontoon 24 and 26’, very helpful with 3000 berths to choose from and not a number in sight !

Safely moored at last we excitedly plugged into the electric and blew the pontoon fuse (no wonder electric is free in France).

Tomorrow we plan to cycle down to the next yacht basin to see if they are any more friendly, and to see if they will open the gate to let us stay for the next couple of weeks.

This basin, called Basin de Chalutiers, is much closer to the centre of town and is designed to accommodate larger yachts, so I have worked out some impressive french vocabulary to persuade them – fingers crossed !