The French love sailing, but the big and expensive racing and cruising yachts often get all of the attention. Two years ago I got together with a group of friends and we organized a new event, called Challenge Naviguer Léger, Sailing Light Challenge, an unsupported, 100-mile tour along France's Bay of Biscay coast in small boats under sail and oar.This year's participants and I arrived at the Corps de Garde harbor near Charron, and waited with our gear-laden boats for the ebb tide to give us a favorable current down the Sevre River to its mouth at Aiguillon Bay. Almost all of the 15 boats being launched for the journey were open boats rigged for oar and sail. I wasn’t sailing; I’d be shepherding the fleet aboard our safety boat, a 17′ rigid inflatable boat (RIB) with a 50-hp outboard.The waters of the Charente Maritime, located on the French Atlantic coast halfway between Britanny and Basque territory, are mostly shallow, and for the next four days, the tides would set a strict schedule for our travels. A lot of the stops we’d make were on shores that are inaccessible during low tides. Some of the marinas in the area even have locks to keep them from running dry as the ebb pulls the water back a mile or more from shore. While our route was protected from the Atlantic Ocean by Ré and Oléron islands, each about 16 miles long, the waters between them, Breton Strait and the Strait of Antioche, can be quite choppy.

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