Spring/Summer 2025 was the first time we had taken Moonshine away for more than 2 weeks so it was quite an adventure and a test of our love of sailing and boat life to be sure we would be just as happy with months away. We had decided to use our Shengen time up and go down the French Coast as we had enjoyed quite a few holidays on that Atlantic coast over the years. And having been to La Rochelle a few times and marvelled at the huge Marina there we knew we wanted to sail our own boat in to that town as our target destination.
Needless to say none of the experience disappointed in any way! The Northern coast of Brittany can be a bit of a slog as the tides are strong and there aren't a huge number of places to stop as its such a rugged coastline. Once we were round the corner, and especially as we dropped south of the Raz Du Sein it was plain sailing (!). The tides were of little consequence most of the time, there were plenty of anchorages and marinas and we were lucky to be enjoying fabulous weather (as was the UK of course!).
There were way too many great sights and experiences to list here. We used the Polar Steps app pretty religiously to make sure we tracked our progress so if you want to see more detail on our stops have a look at that (link is under "Socials" on this site's Home Page). And we managed to get to our end goal of La Rochelle. It seemed to take a while to get there, but as we sailed north on our way home it actually didn't feel like it took too long.
Some Reflections
Although we were pretty sure we would enjoy the experience we always approached it as an experiment in case one of us wasn't really happy with living on the boat for such a prolonged time. Everytime we discussed it though, we both felt completely happy with the lifestyle. The outdoor life, being on the water, always being near boats and the French experience were all fantastic. Before we finished, we knew we wanted to do it again next year, and having heard of 6 month tourist visas we knew we wanted to do it for longer!
On the sailing side of things there were some improvements to the boat we considered would be worth making. Probably obvious to say but boats expensive and as we aren't fabulously rich we know its highly likely that Moonshine is our 'Forever Boat', so upgrades and improvements are reasonable investments. I'll write about these in more detail on another page and keep this one free of sailing jargon!