Set sail at 10:00 into a North Westerly F2, dead on the nose. After half-an-hour, the wind gave up, and we motored with the help of the powerful ebb until we were past Royan. We noticed that the current was very localised, running in a narrow stream not even spanning the distance across the buoyed channel. Leaving this stream cost a knot in speed.
At 13:30, we had a Westerly F3, and we had thoughts of leaving the estuary and heading up the coast. It even rained long enough for me to soap the windows and Ann to soap herself, then stopped.
When we reached buoy 8A, the point where I reckoned we could turn North, we had a F4, which was fine, but it kept changing direction, so that one minute we were running, and the next we were tacking. As we came onto the Banc de la Mauvaise, we found we had an adverse 4 knot current, so we gave up and returned to la Bonne Anse at a cracking pace.