Matthew Zadow's opera blog: Sailing in the Gulf of Morbihan, Brittany

Sailing in the Gulf of Morbihan

The little yellow star near the bottom of the map shows the location of the sailing camp

Maggie and I awoke very early in the morning and drove to St. John’s International School; we needed to arrive by 5:50 am to meet the other teachers and collect the 45 students who would be spending the week staying at the the Île d’Arz, sailing with the instructors of the French organisation Les Glenans.

the volunteer team at l'Île d’Arz

I had never heard of Les Glenans before this trip, but soon learned that it is a non-profit organisation, founded just after the end of the Second World War. Its mission is “…to establish, between men and between women throughout the world, bonds of friendship through the sea, to pass on to everybody the knowledge of the sea world and of sailing, to promote voluntary involvement among its members.” It is a very popular programme in France, and 70% of the instructors are volunteers, usually former trainees. Each year as many as 15,000 people take training with Les Glenans, and around 1,000 people volunteer.

The sailing trainees from St. John's International School

At the recommendation of her principal, Maggie had pioneered this same trip last year for her grade five class as a replacement for the usual grade five week of skiing in Switzerland. One of the issues they had faced last year was a lack of teachers/adult supervisors, which meant that the staff who did go were run ragged. While the volunteer instructors take care of teaching sailing, the trainees are responsible for other aspects of the life in the camp, such as setting up the dining area, helping prepare the meals, cleaning and washing up, and so forth, and these require adult assistance... As well there are ecologically themed activities on land throughout the week that require additional adult supervision.

This year she had received approval to take a total of eight staff; as a volunteer in charge of the medications and first aid role I made the ninth adult on the supervisory team. As it was I ended up bandaging a ton of skinned knees and blistered heels, and doled out a lot of allergy and asthma and fever medication and Strepsils over the course of the week...

the supervisory team

The drive to the small city of Vannes on the gulf of Morbihan in Brittany was over 800 kilometres and so took the entire day. At Vannes we loaded up all of the kids and the gear on the ferry, and travelled another half hour or so to the island of Arz, where the camp is located.

on the ferry

The island is beautiful; quite small at only around 3.3 square kilometers, with a permanent population of around 230 people. Maggie had planned the schedules so that every adult had a day off, and while we were often helping out with the sailing it wasn't obligatory, so over the course of the week I managed to get enough time to myself to run around the circumference of the island twice: as the coastline wiggles around quite a bit the distance was 17 km, and as I ran at shore level it was quite flat, and mostly dirt, allowing me to make my fastest 15km+ run at an average pace of 5:18 per kilometer, and in my FiveFingers toe shoes too!

There were lots of fun moments, like the blackberry picking that Maggie led her kids in, followed by her jam-making session; a huge wood-fired barbeque; astronomy sessions; a drama night; nature explorations of plants, insects, mollusks and seabirds native to the island; geology, and of course lots of sailing in dingies, catamarans and a larger cruiser. I think the best thing to do is just share some photographs...

helping out with supervision of the sailing classes

dingy sailing!

beautiful skies

pétanque

table tennis

on the ferry

the kids clowning around

spaghetti bolognese

wierd bugs

astronomy club

sunrise

Maggie's and Geraldine's supervisory groups

warm sunny weather all week

the larger cruising boat

coming into shore

the dance on the last night

The final big activity was the dance. For this type of music, Duncan is an expert; he listens to the European pop and dance radio stations all the time, so he spent hours in the few days leading up to our departure researching the right combination of songs for the dance. He even looked up all the lyrics online and weeded out any that had swear words or suggestive lyrics. It was a massive hit! Good job, DJ Dunc!

Maggie's group at Mont St. Michel

The kids were good about packing up and cleaning their rooms, and we got on the bus for the long trip back. We made a big stop for a couple of hours at Mont Saint Michel, and I took four of the boys in Maggie's advisory, who were interested in running, up the steps to the top. I'd never been there before. The architecture is impressive, as is the view but Mont Saint Michel itself has become one big gift shop, and so is a little too commercial for my taste.

the view from the top of Mont Saint Michel

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, brothers are doing it for themselves

While we were away the boys managed just fine. We had discussions about menu planning in advance of our departure, and as both are often sent off to purchase last-minute ingredients, they both know how to find things at the grocery stores. They each cooked two evenings while we were away, and also were invited out to dinner one night by our neighbours; Malcolm was considerate enough to text me to ask which bottle of wine from the rack he should take along. As well they managed to handle the first day of school on their own without any trouble. I’m really happy that they are turning out to be self-sufficient kids who don’t get freaked out about doing stuff on their own, and know how to shop, cook, clean up, set a table, and so forth.

But it's not surprising, because we tend towards do-it-yourself projects in this family. Maggie is always embroidering or quilting or sewing clothes. I wrote last time about the no-knead bread cooked in a dutch oven or cocotte; I've been experimenting with that process and have tweaked it a tiny bit, adding a little more water, and slightly reducing the cooking time after the lid is taken off. I also use 1/4 spelt flour instead of just wheat, which gives a nice complexity to the finished product. I end up making a loaf of bread every second day or so, and it tastes great with Maggie's blackberry or currant or apricot jam.

Duncan has also been inspired to make butter in a mason jar using cream from the grocery, and then adding his own selection of crunchy french sea salt.

He's calculated that as 1 litre of 40% cream (which costs around 2,50 EUR) makes about 500 grammes of butter, it means that with about five minutes of shaking, he can produce a kilogramme of butter for about five euros, whereas the per-kilogramme price in the store for the Beurre aux cristaux de sel de Guérande "Le Marin" is around 12 EUR.

A by-product of his mason jar process is buttermilk, which is nice in a marinade for tandoori chicken, or a base for waffles, pancakes or cakes.

Malcolm has been increasingly interested in guitars. He plays them all the time, and we have been accumulating gear slowly over the last few months. He practices periodically with his friend Simonas, who has a drum kit, a bass amplifier, a couple of guitars and amps; Malcolm uses my Godin electric guitar and a small Fender Champ Tweed clone amp when they play together. But he’s had itchy fingers and so has started to research and design his own cigar box guitar. With the advice and assistance of Benoit Meulle-Stef, the luthier at Ben’s Guitar Repair Shop here in Brussels, he has been building a tenor four-string guitar over the last month or so. The cigar box is a Partagas one from our preferred cigar store Boire et Fumer; the frets, tuners, nut and saddle are all things that Benoit has on hand; the rosewood fingerboard was ordered by Benoit, and we went to a big lumber store to select a piece of clear maple for the neck.