BREST: 1,050 boats, 9,000 sailors
Brest 2016 was a fairly mind-blowing
experience. The city’s four-yearly
maritime festival welcomed 1,050 classics
of all shapes and sizes, more than 9,
sailors and 1,500 musicians, drawn
together from the coastlines of Europe
and beyond to celebrate every aspect of
nautical heritage for six glorious days
from July 13-19.
It was a blockbuster of a festival, a
tented city pitched around the extended
grey breakwaters and stark concrete
quays of Brest’s historic naval
fortifi cations. It was colourful, inspiring
and joyous.
At fi rst the giant tall ships, fl oating in
stately magnifi cence, kept you spellbound
and it didn’t matter if they were repro or
real – older boats just had a longer list of
stories to tell. As days passed you got to
know some of them quite well: there was
Artemis, a triple-masted barque, built as a
whaler in Norway in 1926, which thenbecame a trading vessel, presently
Dutch-owned after refurbishment. One of
the most stunning big’uns was Loth
Loriën, which started off as a herring
lugger following her 1907 launch in
Bergen, and has been re-formed into a
graceful three-master. Another
‘transformer’ was J R Tolkien, an East
German tug before the Berlin Wall fell and
currently a 42m (138ft) two-masted
gaff -topsail schooner.
All three became my friends, instantly
recognized out and about as the festival
days slipped along. Sailing around them
were the magnifi cent Jantje, Golden
Leeuw, Bellem, Twister and many more,
whose lofty rigging defi ed any ordinary
attempt to decipher, and whose
thousands of square metres of sail
dominated every view.
But even they faced a challenge in the
personality stakes from the ubiquitous
traditional French working boats, preciousto their coastal communities, which have
formed societies solely dedicated to
recreating or restoring the originals. These
craft are sailed with passion, drawing
everyone’s attention as they swerve and
weave – impossible to ignore and
incorrigible in demanding to be admired.
I remember Eulalie, 33ft 10in (10.3m) of
tough fi shing boat built in 1995 from the
plans of a 1900 chaloup sardinière, with
two lugsails and heavily raked sternpost.
She was everywhere. There was Marie-
Fernand, the only original Le Havre pilot
cutter left now, apart from Jolie Brise.
There was Biche, the stunning 1936
dundée thonier à voiles, which won a
Classic Boat accolade in 2013 – once seen
never forgotten, all fl ags fl ying.
Another little one mixing it with the
huge ships was the whaler Stérenn of
Lanester. She sails with ‘friends who are
not afraid of spray’. The spray, naturally, is
blamed on everyone else!Logbook
Out and about
WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHS CLARE MCCOMB