La Rochelle's old harbour is beautiful. It's even more beautiful when you are sailing into it illegally flying your spin and a Julia up the mast for the fun of it. The crowds lining the boardwalks call out and cheer, children look up in wonder and harbour police hover nervously while cursing french words somewhat under their breath.
How did we find ourselves in this particular situation? Well, it all started with a fantastically nonchalant-french-charter-boat-repair-man rolling out to the docks at ten minutes to cast-off time that morning, doing 5 repairs in under five minutes as we are looking on with twitchily, then waving us off the dock telling us that the motor is "en panne" and zere iz nothing he can do about eet now, but he will have to think about eet and don't utilise ze motor much. Off you go.
We slowly putt-putted out to the race course and proceeded to have a day of good short course sailing but mediocre results. We were usually within shooting distance of top five, but critical mistakes at the top marks and a double protest situation with Ireland at the leewoard mark of the second race nullified our fast sailing. We placed eighth in both short course race and were in bad shape on the long distance when they finally abandoned the race due to lack of wind.
So, there we were, a leg out on the long distance course with a half working motor and everyone else hightailing it back to the dock. Before long, we were alone on the glassy water with only our consciences to guide us. Naturally, Zoe and Julia were soon found hanging from the end of the boom having their heads dunked in the water. When that game tired, we decided to ignore monsieur boat-repair-man's instructions and try to motor along just a touch faster. Of course the motor dies and we are still half an hour away from harbour. Up goes the spin, with Skipper Dirk and Tactician Ethan being the foredeck and crew. We will never, ever let them near those areas of the boat in a race. Their heart was in it....
Of course once the spin is up, Julia wants to take pictures of the two towers gurding the harbour, so up goes Julia. The plan is looking better and better to us by the minute.
We get into docj without a hitch, the harbour police shuffle off with a grumble and we procede to accept offerings of post-race beer from the Norwegians (our European counterparts). It was brilliant.
Other Wednesday news: Our headcam arrived and was used for the first time. The footage from it was then used in a protest hearing to great success. Also, our two redresses for equipment failures from yesterday were unfortunately tossed out.
An interesting day... here's hoping for results to match our good boat speed tomorrow!
JYD
