The weather was very calm that day. The expected 10 knots of wind are not there and we drag ourselves a little, tossed by the swell. We keep ourselves busy as we can on board. The children help to prepare a pie for the lunch. We read, we also play. The time stretches in length.
A drifting object attracts our attention
In the afternoon, as the sea is calm, the girls are busy on the deck with Playmobils when our eyes are drawn to something floating a few cables to starboard. Guillaume and I immediately ask the children to come inside. We shouted, the children were surprised, did not understand anything, but we urged them to go down in the boat.
What we saw floating on the water looked very much like a sailor's raincoat, blue with an orange hood. We are only worried that someone is in it.
We direct Arthur towards the object which, up close, turns out to be a raincoat. Fortunately, it is empty. We blow, the pressure falls.
Guillaume notes the position of the garment and we try to recover it, but it escapes the blunder. After a second unsuccessful maneuver, we decide to continue our route. The day is well advanced and we still have a long way to go to Sein. We have to arrive at the raz before the overturn.
A report to the CROSS
When in doubt, and after consulting a friend who is a lifeguard at sea, we report the drifting oilskin to the CROSS. To do this, we called 196 on the phone because we were close enough to the coast to have a good network. We could also have used 16 on the VHF.
Our interlocutor asks a series of questions. She first asks us about our sailboat, our crew, our route, then about the oiler, its position, the context. Were there other boats nearby, debris or other objects, etc.? After about ten minutes on the phone, we send him a picture by sms and leave him our coordinates if needed.
This experience makes us realize that we didn't really know how to react to this incident. We probably should have taken more time to recover the garment. In other circumstances (fortunately this was not the case), it might have been useful for a CROSS operation.
Arrival in Sein
The end of our navigation towards Sein is without any other major incident. Except a small problem of connection of the tablet which is used for the cartography in the cockpit, at the worst moment: in the rocks near the island. Still a few details to fix on the electronic side!
We first thought of anchoring inside the harbor thanks to the low tide coefficient. However, once inside, we couldn't find a place between the buoys, the turning area and the channel. The outer harbor is also well occupied. So we headed for a small sandy area, just to the right of the breakwater, to drop anchor. At high tide, Arthur rolled a little, but not more than our companions on the other side.
