Every cruise of the Brittany coast turns, sooner or later, on knowing where to hide. The weather here changes fast, the gales come through hard, and a coast of rock and big tides is no place to be caught out looking for shelter at the last minute. The anchorages are glorious in settled weather, but the seamanship that lets you enjoy them is having a list of all-weather boltholes in your head, refuges you can reach and enter whatever the wind and the tide are doing. After several seasons up and down this coast, this is my list, and the access details that decide whether a refuge is actually open to you when you need it.
The thread running through Brittany shelter is tide. Spring ranges on the north coast run 6 to 10 metres and reach as high as 13 metres at Saint-Malo, the biggest in Europe. Many small harbours dry, and many entrances have a sill or a bar that closes them for part of the tide, so a refuge is only a refuge if you can get into it at the hour you arrive. The boltholes below are chosen because they answer that question: they are accessible at all or most states of the tide, and they hold you safe when it blows.
Saint-Quay-Portrieux: the all-tide standby
If I could keep only one bolthole on the north coast it would be Saint-Quay-Portrieux. The deep-water marina takes you afloat at any state of the tide, no sill, no waiting for water, which on this coast is gold. When a forecast turns ugly and I want certainty rather than tidal arithmetic, this is where I head. It is not picturesque in the way an island anchorage is, but at two in the morning with it blowing 35 knots outside, picturesque is not what you want.
L'Aberwrac'h: the western gateway
L'Aberwrac'h is the first or last French port for boats crossing from Plymouth, and it doubles as the great refuge of the north-west corner. The approach is buoyed and lit, and the river behind gives proper shelter once you are inside, though the tidal streams and range out here demand respect on the way in. For a boat working round the top of Finistere before the Chenal du Four, having L'Aberwrac'h in your pocket as a refuge takes the anxiety out of the passage. The first French port for so many British crews, it is worth knowing well.
Camaret-sur-Mer: between the two great passages
Camaret sits in a position no navigator could improve on, halfway between the Chenal du Four and the Raz de Sein, the two tidal gates that guard the western tip of Brittany. It is a natural shelter, accessible from the sea and protected by the cliff of the Pointe du Grand Gouin and by a long pebble bank topped with a granite breakwater. Sailors from every nation use it, precisely because it is the obvious place to wait for the tide at either gate, or to duck in when the weather between them turns. When I am timing a passage through the Raz, Camaret is where I sit and wait for my slack water.
Trebeurden: the Pink Granite refuge
In the bay of Lannion, Trebeurden marina is protected from the prevailing westerlies by the island of Milliau. The sill sits well below half tide, so on neaps you gain at least eight hours of access, generous compared with the all-or-nothing sills elsewhere. It is a modern, comfortable marina and a fine base from which to day-sail the Pink Granite Coast, which is reason enough to stop, but it earns its place on this list as a dependable refuge in the middle of an otherwise exposed stretch.
The rivers: Trieux and Treguier
The classic Brittany bolthole is not a marina at all, it is a river. The Trieux, leading up to Lezardrieux, and the Treguier estuary both give you flat, sheltered water once you are inside, whatever is happening at sea. Lezardrieux is an all-tide marina; Treguier has its marina up a long estuary about 7 miles inland of the outer rocks, though cross-tides at the entrance mean you time the approach for slack. For the Brehat area especially, running up the Trieux when it blows is the standard move, and it turns a worrying forecast into a quiet night up a wooded river.
Saint-Malo and the Rance
At the eastern end of the coast, Saint-Malo gives you the ultimate all-weather refuge, a marina deep inside the walled city behind a lock, accessible around high water, with the option of the Rance river beyond the barrage for total shelter. The price of admission is the lock timing and the biggest tidal range in Europe, up to 13 metres on springs, but once you are inside the bassin you could ignore a hurricane. For a boat arriving from the Channel Islands or staging a Channel crossing, Saint-Malo is both a destination and an iron-clad bolthole, and the old town within the ramparts is one of the finest landfalls in France.
How a sill and a lock change the calculation
It is worth being precise about access, because the word refuge means nothing if you cannot get in. Brittany's sheltered harbours fall into three types. There are the all-tide marinas (Saint-Quay, Lezardrieux, Roscoff at most states) that you can enter at any hour, and these are your true emergency boltholes. There are the sill harbours (Trebeurden, Roscoff) that open for a window each side of high water, on neaps Trebeurden gives at least eight hours, so you check the gate time before relying on them. And there are the lock harbours (Saint-Malo, Vannes on the south coast) where you wait for an opening. When I plan a passage I note not just which refuge is nearest but what state of tide it needs, because a sill harbour that closes an hour before I arrive is no refuge at all.
South-coast boltholes
The south coast is gentler than the north, with smaller ranges and fewer rock-strewn approaches, but it has its own boltholes for when the bay anchorages turn untenable. The standout is the run up to Vannes, deep inside the Gulf of Morbihan, where a town-centre marina behind a lock gives total shelter once you are through the gulf's fierce entrance, though that entrance, with its streams reaching 8 knots at springs, is the obstacle you must time to reach it. The rivers do the same job more simply: the Odet up towards Quimper, the Aven, the Belon, all give flat, wooded, sea-proof water you can run up when it blows. On the south coast the bolthole is more often a river than a marina, and the lovely thing is that the river is a destination in its own right, not just a hole to hide in.
Building your own bolthole list
The method matters more than my particular favourites. As I plan each day's sail in Brittany I note the nearest all-tide refuge to my intended anchorage, and I do not drop the hook anywhere unless I know I could reach shelter before a forecast change arrives. That way the open anchorages, the islands and the drying coves, become pure pleasure, because the safety net is always within reach.
This is the other half of cruising the region. The anchorages get the photographs, but the boltholes get you home. If you want the anchorage side, my round-up of the best north Brittany anchorages covers the islands and bays to aim for, and the gentler south coast bays in quiet anchorages in south Brittany are easier still. Underpinning all of it is the holding and scope craft in anchoring in Brittany, because even a bolthole is only as good as the way you lie to your ground tackle once you are inside.
Carry the refuge list, do the tidal sums, and Brittany stops being intimidating. The gales still come through. You just always know where you are going to be when they do.
