Dieppe to Fécamp

We left Dieppe in very light winds and motored all of the 32 miles to Fécamp. Did two bonus turns in the middle of it, using the slack tide and flat water to swing (calibrate) the fluxgate compass for the autopilot, which now works brilliantly when steering to a track, with the track coming from either OpenCPN or the chartplotter. The engine RPM counter is still dropping to zero occasionally.

Arrival in Fécamp was easy, thanks to the french "pick your own pontoon" method. You just rig your fenders and mooring lines the side you like best and go along the visitor pontoon, find a suitably sized finger and moor up to it. This time the the office didn't even want to know which one that was. Marina staff was friendly, the toilets/showers a bit smelly and the Wifi fast but blocking most ports other than web/email for no good reason.

We stayed two nights, exploring the city a little in the evening and the whole next day. Fécamp was nice, but not as charming as Dieppe. Noteworthy is the number of small sport-fishing boats in the marina. This must be where Jeanneau sells 90% of their "Merry Fisher" range.

The local Benedictine monastery and distillery unfortunately was just closing for an extended lunch break as we wandered by, so we just took some photos of it from the outside. Probably just as well, various signs in town warned that the monks were not only distilling and selling herbal liqueur, but had also been employed to spy on the locals for William the Conquerer. Probably didn't have too much time for actual monking with all that going on.

The local Patisserie had something called "Paris Brest" in stock, which was so delicious it never lasted long enough to snap a photo of — sorry. For lunch we took a break from french food and had a proper Kebap from "Le Gyros". Elvyra bought a sack of mussels in the town for not much money and cooked them for dinner, which was reportedly very good. I ate one and didn't get immediately sick, so they probably were good.

I also pulled apart some of the engine wiring in hopes of fixing the flakey RPM counter. It works for now, but then it was always one of those annoying intermittent faults. We'll see!