We were really in two minds whether to leave this morning. It was still grey and windy, though not quite as bad as yesterday, we thought. There was a strong temptation to stay, and do some more exploring in Le Havre, which is supposed to have some excellent art galleries, museums and other “rainy day” activities on offer.

What decided us to move on is that only two more days of westerly winds are promised by the forecasters, before another (brief) high pressure passes through, bringing motoring conditions. We’ve burned more than enough diesel this summer, and thought we ought to make the most of the favourable wind direction to cover the 60 miles to Dieppe and then the 50-odd to Boulogne.

So off we set. The sea was no longer breaking over the pier, but once we got outside we found it was still rather rough. But we soon had the mainsail up with a reef in it, and unrolled a tiny piece of the genoa, and set off on the broad reach to the Cap d’Antifer at blistering speed.

Great progress always minimises any sense of discomfort. Antifer has a port designed to accommodate the supertankers too large for the relatively shallow and narrow entrance to Le Havre. Other craft are required to cross the approach channel about four miles to seaward, to avoid interfering with these huge and relatively unmanoeuvrable ships.

For the first time we can remember, there was actually a supertanker in the port – obviously having already unloaded its cargo, and so maybe on the point of leaving. So we felt we ought to cross the channel in the right place, even though a fishing boat coming the other way ignored the rule completely.

The supertanker didn’t move, so we made the rather long detour unnecessarily. No matter, the sea was heaping up on that corner, as it always does on headlands, so perhaps the “offing” was no bad thing.

And now we had the wind behind us and the tide underneath us as we hurtled along the alabaster coast – so named because of its seemingly endless chalk cliffs – towards Dieppe.

In fact the wind was so much right behind us that we couldn’t sail the direct course, we had to “downwind tack” to keep the sails full. So we were sailing 30 degrees of the course we wanted, heading out to sea, until we decided we wanted to go back inshore to enjoy the scenic cliffs, when we gybed and headed in, 30 degrees off course – until we started to get too close to the shore, when we turned and headed out again, and so on.

For the first gybe, the autohelm steered while the skipper ran the mainsheet. In so much wind, it gave him a nasty rope burn on two fingers, so after that we “wore round” – making a complete circle up wind, rather than turning across the wind – each time. It’s ungainly, but it puts a lot less strain on crew and gear.

Even when the tide turned against us, with so much wind we were still making good progress over the ground. And despite our misgivings before setting out, we were actually enjoying one of the best day’s sailing of the summer. There was just one worry.

After deciding to miss out on Fecamp, closed for a regatta, we’d been alarmed to learn in Le Havre that Dieppe too had only restricted space for visitors because it was hosting the Solitaire du Figaro this weekend.

There’s really no alternative to Dieppe along this coast, for our draft. If they turned us away, we’d have no option but to carry on overnight to Boulogne, and after such a lively day at sea, we really didn’t want to have to do that.

The Figaro is the one design class in which young, mostly French sailors – there are international entries as well – serve their apprenticeship in the hope of becoming celebrated skippers in single-handed round-the-world big boat races like the Vendee Globe.

The Figaro class is huge – there would probably be 40 or 50 of them in Dieppe, effectively taking up all the visitors’ space. But to our relief, as we approached the port, we could see a steady trickle of them leaving (easily identified from afar by their identical-sized mostly carbon racing sails.)

Phew. We radioed in and asked for a berth for the night, and a man from the harbour office came along the pontoon and directed us into a space which must have been just vacated by one of the boats we had seen. Brave looked just a little incongruous, the only sober cruising yacht among a gaudy flock of Figaros, emblazoned in sponsors’ colours and logos in every colour under the sun.