MOULIN BLANC MARINA in the Rade de Brest — the pontoons are packed with rows of the usual unmemorable floating blobs of white fibreglass; this could so easily be a marina on the Solent or the Mediterranean, except that on the capacious slipway a strange selection of craft is gathering in the grey light of a Breton morning. They are craned from lorries, or wheeled into the water on the trailers that have brought them from all over Europe: strange round Dutch craft with leeboards and curved gaffs, small French luggers with their characteristic single loose-footed dipping lugsails, a shoal of sailing canoes, the shapely hull of a Longshore 16, a couple of Drascombes. One by one a variety of these craft leave the shelter of the marina to beat westwards into the stiff breeze that sweeps in across the Rade de Brest from the open Atlantic. A Red Ensign streams from the stern of a varnished mahogany twelve foot dinghy, a Tideway called Baggywrinkle; a Tricolour is hoisted in her shrouds and a DCA burgee flies at the peak of her deeply reefed red gunter mainsail. As she emerges into the open Rade her bow plunges into the steep waves, flinging spray into the faces of her crew. She sails out on one tack towards the wooded shore opposite, then comes sharply about and bounds back towards the high steel sides of the cargo ships unloading in the Port de Commerce, passing close under the stern of a long gig that is plugging her way into the eye of the wind under six flashing oars, a Swiss flag cracking at her stern; a French lugger crashes past, two reefs in her brown lugsail, her bluff bows digging up the spume.

It is Friday 10 July 1992, a day long awaited by traditional boat enthusiasts from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean: the beginning of ‘Brest 92’. Whilst little boats had been brought overland to be launched at Moulin Blanc to sail just the final few miles to the festival by water, larger craft had made their way to Brest by sea from all over western Europe and beyond. Viking ships sailed across a stormy North Sea from Norwegian fjords; a flotilla of classic yachts and oyster-dredgers had cruised across the Channel from Falmouth; the east coast of England must have seemed strangely quiet — every Thames barge and smack from the Thames Estuary to the Orwell seemed to have abandoned their home ports to brave the fierce tides of the Breton coast. Craft of all shapes, sizes, colours and nationalities crowded the docks: four masted barques and little dinghies, Dutch barges and French fishing craft, lateeners from the Mediterranean, a Chinese Junk, a Greek Bireme, all moored in groups according to their kind. It was to be probably the largest rendezvous of traditional vessels ever. One thousand five hundred musicians had been invited, from the French Naval Pipe Band to The Dubliners, to entertain the crews, the visitors, the shoreside exhibitors and journalists. The centre of Brest had been closed to traffic and new car parks set up on the perimeter of the city, with special bus services to transport the one million one thousand visitors who were to flock to the four day festival, to see the two thousand two hundred boats that filled five basins of the Port de Commerce and the dramatic gorge of the Penfeld River in the heart of Brest.

On the Friday, the festival was not yet open to the public; the quaysides were still crowded with parked cars; harassed Frenchmen and women were still erecting marquees and hammering at temporary bars and staging. The French magazine La Chasse-Marée had organised boat festivals before, but at an estimated cost of four million pounds ‘Brest 92’ was to be larger and more audacious than any yet. Perhaps finally La Chasse-Marée had overreached themselves? But seemingly at the last minute things began to fall into place: the police slapped tickets onto the cars parked on the quays and an hour later men came with lorries to clear away any vehicles that still remained. The crews made their way into the Naval dockyard — opened to the public for the first time especially for the festival — through the tunnel under the mighty bastions of the Citadel, and out onto the quays of the Penfeld River, where the really big ships were moored. Under the towering yards of the windjammers tables had been laid out with wine and food for the crews, musicians and exhibitors — and the party finally began…

In recollection, ‘Brest 92’ has blended into a bewildering collection of sights and sounds: the hustle and bustle, the variety of vessels of all shapes and sizes, and the sheer scale of the enterprise were breathtaking. Even after four days one felt that one had only discovered a fraction of what there was to see and experience. Baggywrinkle was moored in the ‘small pleasure craft’ basin, amongst a polyglot assembly of vessels rafted up five boats deep and guarded at all hours of the day and night by a French naval rating at the entrance to the pontoons.

We slept under our new palatial and vastly improved ‘Mk3’ camping cover, and felt rather ashamed of its salubriousness compared to the Robinson Crusoe constructions of sails and oars that sheltered the crews of some other open boats nearby. For four days we joined the crowds that thronged the quays, gazed in awe at the square riggers, and drooled enviously at the beautiful and practical wooden lugsail dayboats that the French seem to produce so effortlessly. For four nights we were kept awake by bellowed sea shanties or boats drifting by with orchestras of harmonicas and fiddles. ‘Brest 92’ never stopped; it was that sort of do.

There were meant to be organised races and cruises in company out on the Rade, but no one seemed to know where they were or when they were happening. In the small pleasure craft basin people would sit in their boats and chat, away from the crowds on the quays, but by mid-morning the basin would thin out, as under oar or sail the little vessels ventured out one by one ‘to see what’s happening on the Rade’. What was usually happening was half a gale whipping the wide estuary into steep waves, and the larger craft thundering along like maniacs with flags and streamers flying from every available inch of rigging. Everywhere there were sails of all shapes and sizes, straining above boats full of wet, grinning crews waving wildly at any passing craft. It might have been windy out there, but at least there was plenty of space. In the basins there was a mayhem of manoeuvring craft, windjammers under tow, smacks with long bowsprits, French fishing luggers of all shapes and sizes, cannon firing, the blare of sirens and horns, and overhead, camera men hung out of the doors of helicopters that wove through the mêlée at masthead height.

On the Tuesday a few of us sailed away across the Rade and around the Pointe de l’Amorique to l’Auberlac for a peaceful day away from the crowds, and a chance to find some loos that were still working — the mass of visitors had slowly eroded the effectiveness of the shoreside facilities in Brest. We sat in a small cafe on the quay and looked out over the peaceful inlet and recuperated from the effects of ‘la fatigue de Brest’. “Next time we’ll come here for a quiet holiday,” we all vowed. The crew of a little fibreglass Winide Brig were so overcome with ‘la fatigue’ that they decided to stay the night there, so they could get some sleep undisturbed by Bastille Day revelry, and even find a washbasin for their morning ablutions. Helen and I sailed Baggywrinkle back to Brest, where civilisation awaited us in the form of a gîte that we had rented with my parents for a week, starting from that night. We struggled through the ecstatic Bastille Day crowds on the quaysides, and found a taxi with some difficulty to take us back to our car at Moulin Blanc. We then drove our car and trailer to our gîte on the sleepy Crozon peninsula, where a meal awaited us on a table properly laid with a cloth, and there was a shower and beds and other simple pleasures.

The respite was brief. We were up at five the next morning to be driven back into Brest by my father. By 8am we were afloat on the Rade. The festival in Brest was over, but everyone was to sail out of the Rade and down the coast to the pretty fishing port of Douarnenez for more partying. The strong winds and drizzle which had marred the festival in Brest were gone. It was misty and a flat calm, and we had to sail some 40 miles around the rock-bound Atlantic coast of Brittany. It was billed as a Passage Race. There were reputed to be three start lines, each for a different size of vessel, the large ships were to start off in front, followed by the yachts and smacks, and behind them the ‘sail and oar’ craft, the open fishing vessels and the little twelve foot dinghies like Baggywrinkle. We drifted around looking for our start line, amongst hundreds of other little vessels. No one knew where it was. Eventually it seemed to be decided by mutual consent that we must have started, and everyone began to drift in the general direction of the mouth of the estuary. On Baggywrinkle we had decided that we were not really in for the race anyway; being in the Dinghy Cruising Association, and so not competitive types, we had decided to consider it a ‘cruise in company’ with a lot of picturesque craft. We were not out to win anything. Yet as a ‘sail and oar’ craft, we were of course allowed to row. Soon we found ourselves overtaking the becalmed smacks and cruising yachts ahead of us that were racing in earnest and so not using their engines, and as we rowed past the big ketches and yawls, it was interesting that our talk about a ‘cruise in company’ metamorphosed into a discussion of how well we might do in the ‘race’, and the prospect of big prizes filled our thoughts.

Helped along by a strong ebb tide, we continued to row out between the high cliffs that frame the narrow Goulet at the mouth of the Rade, and out into the open sea, but by the time we were clear of the Rade engines were beginning to start up in the craft around us, and engineless vessels were being offered tows. Everyone had decided that if they were to get to distant Douarnenez at all, a little more urgency was required, and the race could go hang. As it happened, we had prudently taken our sleeping gear back to the gîte and swapped it for a trusty outboard hidden in a waterproof bag under the main thwart. We fished it out, clamped it on the transom, lowered the limply flapping sails and we were off, in the characteristic cloud of blue smoke and raucous cry of a Seagull engine.

There is nothing out to the west of Brittany but America, which is too distant to offer much shelter, so we were now in the open Atlantic: great seas lifted under us, and as we slid into the troughs even nearby craft would dip out of sight up to their mastheads behind the crests. The port of Camaret slipped by in the distance and we rounded the Pointe du Toulinguet and turned south. On the cliff tops could be seen many white specks that we presumed at first to be sheep, but then realised that they were crowds of people who had come out to watch the fleet sail by.

Ahead lay the rock stacks of the Tas de Pois. The large fishing luggers around us seemed to be shaping a course to pass between the two tallest and most dramatically sheer-faced of the stacks: “Local knowledge,” we thought, and abandoning our original plan of giving the whole area a wide offing, we followed them into the gap. All that drifting around the Rade had made us late with our tide, which had now begun to set hard against us and was sluicing quickly through the narrow channel between the stacks. The rocks towered above us on both sides, the seas alternately rising up them and draining off in streams of white foam. A cloud of seabirds flew around us. Then a large three masted lugger that was motoring close astern of us with another lugger in tow, began to increase its speed and started to overtake us on our starboard side, forcing us over to the rocks to port. I opened up the Seagull’s throttle, and we roared away clear ahead of them again. Sometimes I think our outboard is a little big and heavy for the boat. I didn’t then.

As we cleared the rocks a steam launch came streaming through with black smoke pouring from her stack. Two helicopters flew past, skimming the waves, and a fair wind began to ripple the face of the seas as the sun broke through the clouds. Engines were stopped — ours was hidden away again in its plastic bag — sails filled and hulls heeled to the breeze. We rounded the Cap de la Chevre and shaped a new course eastward across the wide bay of Douarnenez over a blue sea and under a clear sky. Just inside the entrance of the bay a little two person canoe paddled towards us, a couple of miles offshore. “Est-ce que vous êtes venus de Brest?” they called.

“Oui,” we replied.

“Bravo!” they responded, and paddled away.

If Brest had been bustling, spectacular and vast beyond comprehension, the three days of the festival at Douarnenez were more like a village fête. The sun shone every day on a river packed with craft of all sizes. Little boats rowed gently up and down between the bigger vessels, their crews sipping glasses of wine. Whatever else they were, the basins of the commercial harbour at Brest cannot really be described as picturesque, but Douarnenez is as attractive a small French fishing town as you could ever hope to find. To stand on the viaduct and gaze down on the boats on a warm French evening was a delight. I am told that the harassed staff of La Chasse-Marée had vowed “Never again!” — but it seems that they are changing their minds. If they do decide to do it again, we shall be there.