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Published: September 8th 2013
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Out With the Big Boys!
291 meters long = 318 yd –a little over the length of 3 football fields What do you do to celebrate your 39th wedding annniversary ? We decided to set sail from Boulogne to Dunkerque France. We normally prefer to get up and get going early but in the land of high tides and strong currents you travel with the current. This means heading out at 11:30 AM so we can catch the current going in our direction (a 1 to 2 knot push in the right direction) . The upside was that we had a nice leisurely breakfast, the downside was we got to our next port later than we like. When we left Boulogne, there was little wind so we motor sailed. The day was beautiful and the seas were gentle. During the afternoon there were even fewer clouds and the wind died but we were still able to motor at over 6 1/2 to 7 1/2 knots thanks to favorable current. All in all a good day on the water.
The coastline has changed as we move toward Belgium . The tall white cliffs are now rolling hills ending in long sandy beaches. The coastline has modern buildings and signs of major industry. During World War II this is where Hitler believed
Some Differences/Some Similarities
The high cliffs are gone, but lighthouses & evidence of the Germans is still here. the invasion would occur, not much farther south in Normandy. As a result you can still see the concrete bunkers and remains of the radar installations which made up the German Atlantic Wall defense all along this coast.
We arrived at Port Grand Large (yes it is redundant, but that is the name of the marina) at 6 :30PM. Our 39th anniversary wound up being a very quiet day with time to do some reading, cleaning stainless and just enjoying our day on the water.
We did get a little bit of a surprise when we noticed on the chartplotter a symbol that we hadn’t seen before. It looked like an exclamation point. We clicked on it and were surprised to discover it was the location of a minefield. Now that’s a notation we hadn’t seen on Lake Ontario or Cayuga Lake.
What strikes you first when you are approaching Dunkerque is how industrialized it is with refineries and the large ship port with cranes covering the skyline. As you enter the port on the right-hand side there are huge ships, an enormous refinery and a great deal of other types of industry but on the left
Others Out Here With Us
A few of the ships that we are sharing the waters with along the north coast of France. is a beautiful long sandy beach with resort hotels stretching out on the horizon.
The marina we decided to go to was not the closest to town, but it was the easiest to get into and it is relatively new and not as crowded as the one in town. Even though it wasn’t a hard day at sea, we do find that being out on the water tires us out so we didn’t bother with going into town the first night and left that for the next day.
Dunkerque (Dunkirk –English spelling) has seen its share of destruction during its history. What you see when first entering the port is a very modern city with a few older structures mixed in. The current city hall was built in 1901, however, it stands on the ruins of the first hotel in Dunkerque dating from 1233. It was destroyed by attacking armies in 1558, fire in 1562 and again in 1642. The next building lasted a couple of centuries, but they demolished it to build a much larger place in 1896. Damaged by WWI and WWII it was restored again in 1955 to be identical to the pre-war building. We
More Industrialized Area
It is very industrialized here with obvious refineries. always are amazed when we read about places that had been in existence as cities since before the 12th century. We are reminded once again at how young the US is when we think of Williamsburg as old.
The Cathedral of Saint Eloi has seen its share of destruction during its history. It is amazing the amount of effort that has gone into reconstructing it and returning it to its former grandeur. Although they are able to reconstruct the stonework the one area that seems to suffer the most long term damage are the stained glass windows. Although there have been many efforts to restore these windows you can always tell immediately that the windows are not original. In this cathedral like many others that were able to save a few of the smaller windows but the vast majority needed to be replaced. In some cases they are simply replaced with colored squares, in others new artists have been brought in to create more modern stained-glass windows. What we have learned is with modern tools, stone cutting is considerably less labor intensive and therefore affordable but still expensive. With stained-glass windows the techniques have not changed and therefore replacement
When sunny or grey
there is time for reading while on "duty" is extremely labor intensive and amazingly expensive.
We walked over to see the beach area and our first thoughts were of Coney Island . It was a very touristy area with lots of activities going on, plenty of fast food places and a great place for people watching. The water is shallow here so warm enough to swim and there were plenty of life guards. It was warm enough that we were sorry we didn’t come prepared to jump in.
Most Americans are familiar with Dunkirk because of the fact that in the spring of 1940 British troops were trapped on the beach after being forced to retreat by the stunning attack of the German Army. The French after World War I had built a large fortification along the German border. The belief was that this would stop the German invasion, however the Germans having developed combined air and mechanized ground assault simply went around the French defenses and moving at astonishing speed were able to overwhelm the French and British forces. During the “miracle of Dunkirk” as Winston Churchill called it (only the British can turn an incredible military disaster into a miracle) a total of
One of Two Marinas to Chose From
This marina that we chose was a little farther from town, but still an easy hike. 338,226 soldiers (198,229 British and 139,997 French) had been rescued by the hastily-assembled fleet of 933 boats. One of those boats was on display at the Maritime Museum in the harbor. The Princess was built in 1926 as a pleasure yacht and during the evacuation was responsible for saving 1,673 men from the Dunkerque beaches. Some of the ships involved in the evacuation were as small as 14 foot. As if this was not amazing enough it was all done during the constant bombardment and aerial assault of the Germans.
This would be our last stop in France. Next we head to Belgium.
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