Next to Bassin Vaubin's capitainerie is the St Malo tourist office and there we found out about the daily one hour coach trip to Mont Saint Michel. As one of the few three star attractions in our Brittany guide we decided to make a day's pilgrimage to this tourist mecca. Almost cut off by the sea at high tides this 11th century monastery provides some great views across the bay.

On Tuesday we set off on the area's other must-see visit, a trip up the River Rance to Dinan. As well as the basin lock, there are two further locks to negotiate on the way to Dinan, which open when there is sufficient depth of water either side. The timetable for lock openings and regulations for the passage (in French only) are available from the St Malo harbour offices. The usual advice is to leave Bassin Vaubin on the first lock two hours before high water for the upstream passage which for us would be at 1415LT. We were joined in the lock by a large commercial ship, as well as its tug, pilot boat and several other yachts and motor boats. Fortunately the lock is huge and there was plenty of space for everyone in the end, although the sailing boats found it difficult to manouvre with the ships engines still running and causing a lot of turbulence.

The barrage lock operates on the hour when there is more than 4m of water, and as we were in mid tides there would be plenty of water all day. We thought we had plenty of time before the 1500 locking but after all the delay getting everyone out of the basin we were only just in time to see the road bridge on the barrage going up on the hour. A quick dash the last few hundred yards and we made it into the lock basin just in time. Once into the locked section of the river, we followed the marked channel upstream, looking carefully at the echo sounder as the buoys led us over sand banks and close to rocks.

We were making about 8 or 9 knots for the first hour until we found the depth reducing in the upper reaches and realised we had outrun the incoming tide. Down to around 10 feet on the echo sounder we decided to slow right down until the tide had a chance to catch up. High tide at the upstream Chatelier lock is about two hours later than St Malo, and before this time there really isn't enough water to make the passage comfortably. A more relaxed 5 or 6 knots over the 10 mile section would have given us a better arrival time, arriving on the last of the flood. At least we had the chance to see the sandbanks and deep water channel at first hand. We finally arrived at the Chatelier lock about 20 minutes after the scheduled opening time, and made our way through the open swing bridge and into the lock basin.

Above Chatelier the final three miles to Dinan reminded us of the scenery on the Thames with thickly wooded banks, trip boats and rowers coming at us without much thought of looking behind them. We found an alongside mooring on the pontoons and were greeted by the friendly harbour master. The shower and toilet facilities seem to be a bit sparse at Dinan, judging by the number of solar showers in evidence amongst the sailing boats, so it is probably as well to be fairly self sufficient if you want to visit here.

Cruising Statistics

Distance: 15 nm

Total to date: 1177 NM

Avg Speed: 6 knots

Duration: 2:40 hours

Diesel: 60 litres (est)

Wind: NE 2

Mooring: €16/night

Electricity:Free

Locks

Bassin Vaubin

Barrage

Chatelier

Bridges

Chateaubriand 23m

St-Hubert 20m

Lessard 20m

Charts

SHOM 4233L