By the time you reach the north coast of Finistere you have run out of gentle coast. East of here, around the Cotes-d'Armor and the Pink Granite Coast, the rocks are pretty and the marinas plentiful. From Roscoff westward the land hardens, the tides accelerate, and you start measuring your days against the great tidal gate at the bottom corner of Brittany. This is the last stretch of the English Channel before the Atlantic proper, and it deserves to be sailed slowly.
I have come this way four times now, twice west-about heading for the Raz, once east-about coming home dog-tired, and once just to potter the bay of Morlaix for a week. It is the pottering trip I would recommend to anyone arriving for the first time.
Roscoff: the natural front door
Roscoff is where most visiting boats touch the Finistere north coast first, and the Bloscon marina makes it easy. The marina sits just south of the ferry port, it can be entered at any state of tide, and it stays open all year in all weathers. That all-tide access is gold on a coast where so much else is gated by the rise and fall. You can come in off a long Channel passage or a hard beat from L'Aberwrac'h and not have to time your arrival to the minute.
The old drying harbour in the town centre is a different matter, charming but only for boats that can take the ground or want a few hours alongside near high water. For an overnight stop with the keel still wet, Bloscon is the answer.
Roscoff itself is a good provisioning town with the ferry link to Plymouth, which makes it a sensible crew-change port. If you are bringing the boat over to leave it in Brittany for a while, the ferry timetable is part of the plan.
The bay of Morlaix
Tuck south-east from Roscoff and you enter the bay of Morlaix, a wide rock-strewn bowl with the drying channel snaking up to Morlaix town at its head. The marina at Morlaix lies behind a lock, roughly five miles up from the last deep water, and the channel dries on the way. You take the tide up, lock in, and you are afloat in a basin under the great railway viaduct in the middle of town.
I love this stop precisely because it is awkward. The awkwardness keeps the crowds down. You need to read the buoyage carefully on the way in, the streams run hard on the approaches, and you want to be moving with the flood, not fighting it. Time it well and it is one of the best town-centre berths in north Brittany. Time it badly and you sit on a mud bank watching the tide leave you.
Out in the bay there are anchorages among the islands, Callot and the Chateau du Taureau fort being the obvious landmarks, and you can spend a settled week never going far. For a deeper look at the islands and the run up to town, our roscoff and the bay of morlaix piece goes berth by berth.
L'Aberwrac'h: the staging post
Keep going west and you round the top corner of Finistere into the abers, the drowned river valleys that cut into the coast. L'Aberwrac'h is the one every cruiser knows. It has deep-water approaches that are well buoyed, with marked short cuts for those who know them, and a marina that fills up fast in season because it is the obvious place to wait for the Chenal du Four.
This is the classic first French port for boats crossing from Plymouth, and our plymouth to l'aberwrac'h crossing notes cover the offshore leg. For most westbound crews L'Aberwrac'h is not a destination so much as a launch pad. You arrive, you watch the forecast, and you slip when the tides line up for the next move. The village is small, the welcome is warm, and the crepes are good. It is also genuinely a laberwrach-first-french-port worth landing at for its own sake rather than just as a waiting room.
The tides and the great gate
Everything on this coast points towards the south-west corner. To get from north Brittany into south Brittany by the inshore route you must pass through the chenal du four and raz de sein passage, the pair of tidal channels that wring you round the Pointe Saint-Mathieu and on past the Raz de Sein. These are not casual passages. The streams run quickly, the rate matters, and you plan them around slack water or a fair tide, never against a spring ebb.
A few realities to keep front of mind on the Finistere north coast:
- North Brittany springs lift and drop the water by the better part of nine to ten metres, so depths on the chart at low water can be a long way off what you find at half tide.
- Many of the inner anchorages and channels are only comfortable near high water, so your day is shaped by when high water falls.
- Strong currents run on the approaches to Roscoff and Morlaix even when the wind is light, so do not judge a passage by the breeze alone.
If the size of these tides is new to you, brittany tides for mediterranean sailors is the primer I wish I had read before my first trip down here.
How I would spend a fortnight
Land at Roscoff, settle in, walk the town. Spend three or four days in the bay of Morlaix, taking the tide up to the town berth for at least one night. Work west to L'Aberwrac'h, with a stop at one of the abers between if the weather holds. Then sit at L'Aberwrac'h watching the forecast, and when a settled window opens with the right tide, take the Chenal du Four south. That single passage drops you into a whole new cruising ground, the bay of Brest and the camaret and the crozon peninsula beyond it.
If you would rather stay north, simply reverse the route and head back east towards the Pink Granite Coast and the Cotes-d'Armor. Either way you have spent two weeks on a coast that most charter crews never see, because it does not lend itself to a fixed seven-night plan. That is the whole point of it.
The abers and the quiet corners
Between Roscoff and L'Aberwrac'h the coast is cut by a series of drowned valleys, the abers, and they are the part of this coast most visitors miss. L'Aber-Benoit, next door to L'Aberwrac'h, is quieter and wilder, a winding rock-strewn channel you take near high water. There are anchorages up these rivers where you will not see another yacht, oyster beds along the banks, and a real sense of having sailed off the beaten track. They are not for arriving in the dark or in poor visibility, but in settled weather with a rising tide they are the highlight of the coast for me.
The abers also matter as bolt-holes. If you are waiting at L'Aberwrac'h for the Chenal du Four and the marina is full, the neighbouring channels give you somewhere to anchor in peace.
Provisioning and crew changes
The Finistere north coast is more spread out than the busy marinas of east Brittany, so plan your stores. Roscoff is the best provisioning town, with supermarkets, chandlers and the Plymouth ferry that makes it the natural crew-change port if you are running the boat with rotating crew. Morlaix town, once you have locked in, has everything a market town offers. L'Aberwrac'h is small, so I top up before I get there. The coast is famous for its shellfish, and the Roscoff onion, the pink one that Breton sellers used to cycle round Britain, is a genuine local thing worth buying at the market.
The honest summary
The Finistere north coast is the part of Brittany that filters out the casual. The pilotage demands attention, the tides demand planning, and the weather can shut you in for a day or two. None of that is a reason to skip it. It is the reason to come. Buy the current almanac, plan every leg around high water, treat the Chenal du Four with respect, and you will have sailed the wildest, finest corner of the French Channel coast before you turn the bottom of Brittany.
