"Thought I'd test out my sea legs...."

Hey folks!

After our long journey travelling across the Atlantic we awoke Thursday morning to a beautiful and sunny La Rochelle. After paying the damage deposit for our 'Grand Surprise' we rigged up, briefed, and headed out to the Atlantic. Our first day consisted mainly of working on boat handling and learning the particularities of the boat. Despite the light wind we got a full day of training in and cannot wait for day two! The plan tomorrow is to concentrate on specific skills, fine tune our boat handling, and speed tuning with some of the other teams who arrived Thursday evening.

In other news, our weigh in is on Saturday morning and Julia has been strictly rationing our food intake. As a crew we cannot weigh more than 1168 pounds and as of two weeks ago we were about 24 pounds over. A week ago we had that cut down to about ten. Based on the winds here in 2007 we are hoping to weigh in as close to 1168 as possible so that we can keep our boat flat(er) in the heavy La Rochelle breeze. Carbs have been cut out and the team is being sustained on salad, chicken, water, and lots of sugar free gum. Our last meal before the weigh in (and our sweat run) will be tomorrow's lunch on the boat. We're hoping nobody gets too h-angry and so far, so good!

Cheers from La Rochelle,

Seth

P.S. A prize for the person who can identify the title quote. No, wikipedia, google, or 21st century cheats allowed.