Most sailors arrive at Camaret sur mer for one practical reason and leave having fallen for it by accident. The practical reason is the tide. Camaret sits almost exactly halfway between the two great tidal gates of west Finistere, the Chenal du Four to the north and the Raz de Sein to the south, which makes it the obvious place to stop, sleep and wait for the stream to turn in your favour. The accident is that the town, the light and the old fort get under your skin while you wait.
I have used Camaret as a waiting room three times, and each time the planned overnight has stretched to two nights because the Crozon peninsula is too good to rush.
A harbour built for waiting
The peninsula juts out into the Atlantic like a clenched fist, and Camaret sits on its sheltered northern knuckle, facing the Goulet de Brest. That position is the whole story. If you are coming south down the Chenal du Four, the tide runs in your favour for only part of the cycle, and you want somewhere to break the journey before committing to the Raz de Sein, which is unforgiving if you hit it at the wrong state of tide. Camaret is that somewhere.
The classic strategy, and the one the pilots all recommend, is to come through the Chenal du Four on the last of a south-going ebb, cross the Iroise Sea against weak north-going streams, lie up at Camaret, then catch the next ebb at the Raz de Sein the following day. Get the timing right and both gates pass like gentle rivers. Get it wrong and you meet wind-over-tide overfalls that will rearrange the contents of your lockers. The streams in both passages turn to the south at roughly high water Brest minus half an hour, so that is the figure I scribble at the top of my passage plan.
Port Vauban marina
The modern marina is Port Vauban, the easternmost of Camaret's three basins, named for the seventeenth-century fort that guards the entrance. It has around 500 berths for residents and space for roughly 250 visiting boats, which is generous and means you can usually find a place in season without booking weeks ahead. Visitor reception is on pontoons two to five. A call on VHF channel 9 will normally get you a berth allocated as you approach.
The marina is accessible at most states of tide, which is a relief after the gated ports of the Pink Granite Coast further east. The golden tower of the fort, the Tour Vauban, doubles as a leading mark on the way in, which is a pleasing bit of history serving a modern purpose. Built between 1689 and 1696 and now a UNESCO World Heritage site as part of the network of Vauban fortifications, it has watched over this entrance for more than three centuries.
If you are coming the other way and Camaret is your first French landfall after a Biscay passage or a hop from the south, you may want to refresh yourself on Brittany tides as a sailor used to other coasts, because the range here is a different animal from anything in the Med.
Pen-Hir and the cliffs
The Pointe de Pen-Hir is the headland southwest of Camaret, and from seaward it is one of the most dramatic on the whole French Atlantic coast. Sheer cliffs drop into the water, and offshore stand the Tas de Pois, a line of rock stacks marching out to sea. Sail past them in a gentle swell and you understand why the painters and the poets kept coming back to Crozon.
The headland is exposed, so this is fair-weather sightseeing. In any westerly swell the water around the Tas de Pois is no place for a small boat, and you keep your distance. On a calm morning, though, it is worth a small detour just to drift past with the engine ticking over.
Morgat and the southern anchorages
If you want to stay a little longer on the peninsula, Morgat sits on the south side, tucked into a bay that gives shelter from the prevailing westerlies. It has a marina of its own, smaller and quieter than Camaret, and the bay is famous for its sea caves, which you can explore by dinghy in flat water. Morgat is the relaxed option, the place to go when you are not waiting for a tidal gate and just want a swim and a slow lunch.
The anchorages around the peninsula reward a settled forecast. Camaret itself has anchoring room outside the marina in offshore winds, and there are sandy bays on the south side that dry and give you a clean spot to take the ground if you fancy scrubbing the bottom. As anywhere in Brittany, check the ground before you commit your keel; the technique is the same one I cover in the guide to drying out in a Brittany harbour.
The old port and the town
Camaret was once one of the great lobster ports of France, and the working harbour still shows it. Tied up in the corner by the old quay you will find the rotting hulks of abandoned fishing boats, left to decay where they were beached, which sounds grim and is in fact strangely beautiful, a graveyard of timber slowly going back to the sea. The town behind has the unhurried feel of a place that lives by fishing and tourism in roughly equal measure: a fish market, a row of restaurants along the front, and the chapel of Notre-Dame de Rocamadour standing guard near the Tour Vauban, its tower famously struck by a cannonball during a failed English and Dutch landing in 1694.
The painters found Camaret before the sailors did. The light here, bouncing off the water and the pale stone, drew artists throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and you can see why on any clear evening when the whole harbour turns gold. It is the kind of place where an intended quick supper ashore turns into a long one.
The wider peninsula
Beyond Camaret and Morgat, the Crozon peninsula is worth exploring on foot if your tidal timetable gives you a spare day. The headlands of Pen-Hir, Cap de la Chevre and the Pointe des Espagnols offer some of the finest coastal walking in Brittany, and the beaches on the south side are wide, clean and often empty outside August. Hire a bike from the town or simply walk the coast path from the marina. After days of concentrated tidal navigation, a day with your feet on solid granite is no bad thing, and it lets the boat sit safely on her lines in Port Vauban while you stretch your legs.
The peninsula also marks a real frontier in a cruise. North of here you have the gentler, more sheltered cruising of the Pink Granite Coast and the bays of north Brittany. South and west, past the Raz de Sein, the coast opens into the wilder waters that lead down towards the Glenan and south Brittany. Camaret sits right on the hinge, which is part of what makes it feel like such a significant stop.
Practical notes
Charts: carry up-to-date large-scale SHOM charts of the approaches, the Goulet de Brest and both tidal gates. This is serious tidal water and the streams are strong; the pilot books earn their place on the chart table here.
Provisioning: Camaret town has shops, a fish market and plenty of restaurants within a short walk of Port Vauban. Provision here rather than at Morgat, which is quieter and more limited.
Weather and timing: build your passage plan around the tidal gates first and your own preferences second. The Iroise Sea is open Atlantic water and a wind-against-tide situation in the Raz de Sein can be genuinely dangerous. If the forecast is wrong for the gate, stay another night at Camaret. Nobody ever regretted an extra evening here.
Fuel: the marina has the usual facilities. Top up before you tackle a tidal gate, because the last thing you want is an engine that coughs in the middle of the Raz with the stream building under you.
Camaret earns its living as a tidal crossroads, but it deserves better than to be treated as a mere stopover. Give it two nights. Walk out to Pen-Hir at low water, eat the fish, and watch the old hulks rotting picturesquely in the corner of the harbour. Then, when the tide is right, slip out and let the stream carry you on towards the Raz de Sein and the wider west. The waiting room turns out to be one of the best rooms in the house.
