IAN STEPHEN’S BRITTANY WEBLOG

A word about food

20 September 2008

A word about food. Some would call this adventure-sailing. A 30 ft boat with 2 smelly males returning from Faroes at the tail end of the season. Even the stray male cat picked up at Stornoway feels the chill at the beginning and ends of days. October is nearer than August.

At the Island of Houat, a half day sail from Lorient, the bay is dressed with winging anchor lights. People who may have not used their boats so much during the year realise they’d better get a last week-end in. The long beach which would not disgrace Tolsta, Lewis has a scattering of sunbathers and one swimmer. But the temperature dips before the sun does.

Guy dehydrates good meat stews for ice-camping expeditions. He has not done that for this trip. The standard boat standby is no longer corned beef but pasta bake. If you have an oven. If you don’t it’s pasta in a bought sauce livened up with some chopped onions and peppers. This trip, since Stornoway, has been a pattern of 200 mile legs and 2 night landfalls. Most of our food has been bought and eaten fresh. It’s difficult for Guy as a Cilliac (wheat allergy) to make sure everything is safe for him. On the boat we clean the breadcrumbs off the knife before it’s placed in butter.

I made Cullen Skink with the fine quality undyed smoked haddock bought from the van at Port Ellen. Guy makes a 3 day chilli with 3 beans, ground beef and plenty garlic. We have caught a few mackerel at different points along the route and one lythe (pollack) at the Scillies. Guy cooks perfect rice on one of our 2 burners and I introduce variations of kedgeree, with some smoked mackerel or salmon between the fresh fish, marinated in lime, olive oil and parsley.

When we berthed at a small marina across the harbour from the big docks at Lorient, Guy baked his own bread, using the oven aboard Delphinea. Corn-meal, rice-flour and millet are mixed with linseed and a yeast mixture with molasses sugar. But he’s also built up a relationship with the bakers in a shop that sells nothing he can eat. The bakery frontage is built from reclaimed boards. The breads have the same look of realist painting but they’re not more than an hour out of the oven. And this is nearly closing time.

The artisan baker used to be a business professional – an accountant perhaps, who had traveled a parallel track to Guy. Both men decided that success was not such a successful way of living. So Guy refuses to sell his few acres to property developers and the ex-accountant smiles and has conversations with the queue of customers who appreciate that something more than yeast has risen the bread.

There is an implicit respect for the 2 adventurers who left this harbour 5 months before. They’ve sailed between England and Ireland, between the Scottish mainland and the Inner and Outer Hebrides. They’ve crossed in one boat with a limping engine to Suderoy, Faroes then joined the second boat in the expedition to voyage to the Westmann Islands and Iceland. And back. All these adventures of engine trouble and charts falling off the screen and tows and repairs have happened before this cat did the pierside jump at SY.

All these crew-changes. Lorient registered boats have made plenty in my home town. But the offshore fleet is small now and the big vessels are lying idle. Small boats set larger and larger numbers of traps to cover their costs. We had to dive and dart between them in the hard slog against the wind, from Oeussant to Lorient. Michel wonders how any of them make a living. Maybe it explains why one of their crewman makes a pretty unmistakable international gesture back at me when I attempt a comradely wave.

That and the huge fleets of pleasure boats, moored all along this coast. Most of them will not go as far as Scillies, far less Faroes. That and the Free Tibet flag might explain why the baker throws in a loaf of his special fruit bread for Michel and me. Michel is looking content. He eats only a handful of the steaming old style baguette as we saunter for a beer. We take Guy’s chilli, 3rd day in and at its best, with the bread, across to Delphinea. The ambience is more thoughtful than celebratory. It’s possible Edith and Jean might not live together still, after sailing together for half a year.
Next day, Guy catches up with photos and filing and his own blog (www.voilierguy.canalblog.com ). Michel takes me on the tour. The layers of trade and war are to be seen in the citadel at the entrance to the port. We walk to it and see the splendours and models of the engineering works that went into massive shipbuilding.

We look across to the sad remnants of the submarine pens and the carbon fibre and Kevlar spars of a new kind of shipbuilding. We call by a side street that still looks like the ones in the French Higher handouts and confirm that all the Bonnie team will be happy to accept a supper invite. Pierre and Pat live here and Pierre was on the expedition, sailing with Jean as far as Tobermory.

The time lost in repairs and diversions amounted to too much for Pierre to continue. He has his own boat project. He is a Breton who lived elsewhere and had to come back. He tells me about his grandfather who was French Navy and his father who worked for some time in the rebuilding of Germany before also having to return.

Pat has heard that Michel and his team like their food. She sautés 4 types of mushrooms including ceps and chanterelles. She roasts du foie de mouton. Good liver is a sought-after cut in France. They would have appreciated the Howth (Irish) butcher’s care with his slicing and wrapping of the same meat. The firm potatoes are of course fried in butter.

We have brought Bourgogne pinot noir and of course some of that thrice daily bread. Guy has brought his own. We laugh a lot. Pat is curious how we got on, 3 men in a tight space. She asks me direct. I tell her it’s a cool boat. We consult together on when to sail. Everyone says his piece. Of course Michel is the skipper but he listens to his team. Guy is the ace on fixing things. I work out tides, Michel does the same and then we check we have the same result.

There is now a notebook full of hours before and after high waters. So far it’s worked. Michel says in 2 days the key is the Low Water at the entrance to the Loire. We must enter exactly on the slack to be sure of working the flood up the river and we need the high water to enter the sidewater where Bonnie will be moored.

We’re given free rein of internet and phone. Pierre gives me an insight into a larger expedition than the one I picked up fifty yards from my front door. A larger cast in its opening stages.

It’s a subdued send-off in the morning. Jean will wait a while before taking his boat towards Bordeaux to lay her up. Edith looks sad at times. There must be a strain in being only two on board and now only two left in Lorient. There must be a strain on all these months of winds and navigational decisions. We’re a bit slower on Bonnie too, ready to sail but nobody’s been up to the bakers today.

© Ian Stephen, 2008

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