My summer - The first week of July

Normally I would have to make a blog only for my summer, it was so much busy : there are too many thinks to say about it. To start I took part to the J80 world championship at the “Trinité sur mer” the first week of July. The J80 is a 8m long sailing boat, and you drive it with a 4 or 5 persons team. It’s a funny boat because you can have some feelings equal to those bring by a smaller boat, but you are on a crew.

The trip starts the Sunday to go from Nantes to the Trinité. The travel was 6 hours long. However it’s nice because you see all the coast and it was the same to the return to Nantes. The championship started Tuesday. The sun was shining although the wind was strong (25 knots) and it didn’t decrease during the whole week. To give you an idea of the wind strength, the first day 21 crews were allowed to repair their torn sails, 21 out of 124!!!!! Imagine?! The other days there were 3 rounds / days. It is tiring, because it's necessary to be at the harbour at 8 A.M, in order to be on the water at 9A.M, to start at 10A.M, and come back to the harbour at 4 P.M , with the wind, waves, sun, it’s hard; and this without eating because between the rounds you haven’t got the time to have lunch.

Besides there are the important race steps: On the boat, my job was to hoist and flop down the spinnaker (what a great job, but sometimes dangerous when there is a lot of wind but so fun!!!!) I remember, once , the skipper jibed and the wind was so strong the boat flattened when the spi changed side. And I tried to keep my balance on a boat that the mast was quiet parallel to the water. It’s not easy !!!!

The other steps were when you arrived on a buoy where there were 30 boats you have to scream “starboard!!!!!” or “water!!!” to get the priority during the jibe. It’s amazing. The last important step or the first on the chronological order: the starting. I have said we were 124 boats to the participate to the championship divided in two pools; the gold and the silver pool. So imagine more than 60 boats on a starting line with a maximum of 1m between two boats. Here my job consisted in to be kneel on the stem and told to the skipper if we were too near or too far from the starting line. And I can tell you when you heard the starting signal, the crew pulls on the ropes and you feel an adrenaline rise in your whole body . It’s so exciting!!!! So to conclude we finished 112th for the first time. There is worse!