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We arrived in
St Lunaire late Thursday afternoon after a nine-hour drive. We delivered the
boat to the beach and then met up with the others for a nice dinner in Dinard.
The local Nacra dealer had arranged us a very good house in St Lunaire. A
practice race was scheduled for Friday but that didn’t happen because there was
too much, so we spent the day playing football, surfing and swimming instead.
We really enjoyed the beautiful weather in these amazing surroundings. We spent
the evening preparing our navigation Apps on the Iphone. As we had already
prepared the boat earlier that day, we were all set to race on Saturday.
Saturday
morning saw beautiful weather. The race started in light weather after a
two-hour wait, but during the race the wind kept on increasing: full-speed
double trapeze reaching along Cape Fréhel. The 70-mile race was shortened a bit
but we had plenty to see, what with all the fortresses, rocks and steep cliffs.
We got quite close to the rocks, so we had to pay attention to our navigation
all the time and look after our centerboards as well!
We are not
really used to sailing long-distance regatta, but we really enjoyed it because
of all the different skills it requires. It was also quite new to us to be in awe
of the surroundings the whole time – what a beautiful place this is! All in
all, we were quite pleased with our 6th place, just behind our team
mates Gunnar and Frank.
The race on
Sunday morning took us the other way, towards St Malo. We had to negotiate a
lot of waypoints – it was a tricky 50-mile course with plenty of rocks to
avoid. It was great to see how the local guys sailed a course in between the
various rocks and islands – places where we were afraid to go! Our favorite leg
was the long downwind one with large waves and between 15 and 25 knots of wind.
However, that also meant that we had a long way to go back – by the end of the
upwind leg we were pretty tired! Then a short stretch to the finish at the
beach, resulting in an 9th place.
We were the
7th F18 team overall, and 1st mixed F18 team – a result
we were pretty pleased with. We learnt a lot, and we would love to come back to
St Lunaire next year!
Froukje and
Mischa
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