Sailing Between the Trees

Four boats were tacking through the fog when I arrived at Arradon, in Brittany, on the northwest coast of France. Four brown sails and one white, all lug-rigged, faded in and out of view as they were swallowed up and then re-emerged out of the haze. It looked mysterious and strangely timeless, as if I’d just stumbled across a bunch of 16th-century smugglers waiting to load their contraband.

“Monsieur Compton?” said the skipper of one of the boats, as it came alongside the pontoon. “C’est Emmanuel. Bienvenue à bord!”

I lowered my camera bag into the boat and clambered aboard. No sooner had I sat down than we were off, heading south, away from land, in the company of the other three boats. As the fog closed in around us, the port of Arradon disappeared and we found ourselves surrounded by mist. We might have been headed off across the Atlantic for all we could see, though in truth we were very much near the safety of land, sailing “between the trees,” as one of the other skippers put it.

This was not what I had in mind when I contacted Emmanuel Conrath the week before on the off chance he might have a boat available for me to test while I was on an impromptu holiday in Brittany with my family. Yes, he said, but I would have to drive down to the Gulf of Morbihan to see it. I had seen photos of the famous Semaine du Golfe, an event that gathers more than 1,000 boats for a weeklong mix of regattas and cruises in the sheltered waters of what is essentially a large, enclosed bay, so I readily agreed. No one said anything about fog.

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