I enrolled myself as soon as possible for this delivery.
Everything suited me: last week-end of June, short
nights, surely some sunshine. Douarnenez-Portsmouth,
240 milles. On top of that, I found a wonderful
baby-sitter for our children.
This week-end also showed me what Hervé
went trhough during these last months. The report
was the following: not a minute to lose, your time
was always counted. However, between the rush of
the start and the stress of the arrival, there is
the sailing. And the crossing that I made was just
wonderful.
Thursday June 28th:
17:00 I left the house, carrying our sailing gear.
The bag was heavy even if I only took one T-shirt,
one short and my swimming suit (which I will not
use!) The tube did not work really well. I was going
to miss the plane for sure! At the exit Hervé
was waiting for me. He left his suit at work and
had all the rest of our equipment. We ran..I stopped
the bus. We were inside... ouf
19:00 We checked the luggage in. From experience,
Hervé wanted us to eat something at the airport.
He was right! In the plane, I saw our neighbours
throwing their sandwich after having smelt them
with a strange expression on their faces.
22:30 We landed in Rennes... The capital of Brittany..Could
we have a pancake? No, we had so many thing to do...
We took our renting car and drove straight to Lorient.
24:00 The key was under the pot of flowers. I had
to dig out a little bit of sand. Here it was ! I
was now in a barn with a torche, andwas looking
for some delivery sails. Hervé left them
to a friend in April (Thank you Yves from Demi-Clé)
to lighten his boat.We put everything in the car
with the battens coming out of the window. We could
now drive to Douarnenez.
Friday June 29th:
02:00 I wanted to sleep! We were in the marina.
This was where Hervé left Children Action
at the end of the Mini-Fastnet. We could see one
Mini, another one. I could count 5 of them now.
But where was ours?
02:45 We walked on every pontoons with the torche.
Not a sign from our boat. This was not possible.
The boat could not have been stolen. Where was the
number 175? We needed to sleep. We decided to go
on a prototype which was not closed (Thank you Gaël
! ). We shared one sleeping bag (the other was on
Children Action) and found a little mattress. This
was my 4 stars hotel !
08:00"WAKE UP... I have found the boat"
said Hervé.The harbour master moved some
of the boats in another harbour situated up the
river. We took our car, here was finally Children
Action. Now, we could do the shopping for the crossing,
give back the Argos beacon to recover the caution
of 12,000 FF, make the fuel if we have no wind.
I could also have a croissant with a coffee, lucky
me !
11:00 We saw that Mike, one of the English who
will take part in the next Mini-Transat, was here
with his car. We borrowed it to go to Qimper. Doing
so, we did not need to take the bus or hitch back
to Douarnenez. In Quimper, I stopped in a pharmacy
to buy some Coculine (homeopatic drug against the
seasickness. They had forecasted some fresh wind.
It meant we could be shaken and knowing that I was
already a little bit seasick!
13:00 Hervé was now on the top of the mast.
He had to replace the windex. It broke during the
strong winds in the Mini-Fastnet. But up there Hervé
saw that all the piece was broken. The windex would
cross in the boat. I did some sewing on the mainsail
so that we did not lose the battens.The sail was
so thick that I had to take the pliers to take the
needle out. The neddle broke... quick , here was
another one.
14:00 Last limit to get out of here and passed
the lock. The tide came down. We put on our sailing
gear and let's go to England. But Hervé discovered
another hole in the (delivery) mainsail. 15mn later
everything was sewed. The wind blew from behind
: spinnaker ! We chose the small one because it
was blowing quite strongly and we wanted to start
quietly.
Here we are... I was sailing again. The coast was
really nice. I looked a little bit at the chart.
Hervé wanted me to do the navigation, but
I did not want to. I wanted to enjoy the crossing,
not to be the skipper. However, I looked at the
chart to see the names of the lighthouses and places.
Some had even the same names (like la Jument, la
Chèvre - the mare- the goat)
We had a sandwich, some tomatoes and pancakes with
Nutella. Coke and water. We bought a bottle of cider
but would end drinking it at home.
Children Action was flying on the water, still
under spinnaker. It was absolutely fantastic. Tonight
the menu was fresh tortellini. We had each one spoon,
one fork and a small frying pan which was too small
to cook two portions at the same time. The luxury
was that I made Hervé buy two new bowls so
that we had at least one for each. A little bit
of parmesan and olive oil, life was wonderful !.
21:00 We started doing shifts of two hours. I
took the first shift but it started to rain ! Damned,
I was wet . Hervé, after having given me
my jacket, shut the doors and went for a power nap.
The night was nice. Stars came back quickly. It
was light until very late and then we had the moon
until 4 o'clock in the morning The boat went fast.
It was Robin at the helm (Robin is the nickname
of one of the autopilots and this is also our son's
name). With the autopilot on, one could tune the
spinnaker all the time.There was a lot of phosphorescent
plankton and this was really nice. We decided to
stay north of the shipping lanes and therefore did
not see a lot of cargos.
Saturday June 30th :
Fantastic ! So much fun ! The pogo went so fast
at an incredible speed. We spent our day trying
to beat the record. We both held it with Hervé
at 13.6 knots. It was when surfing the waves that
you had the maximum speed, come on Children Action,
go faster ! It was absoluteoly forbidden to go under
6 knots. Hervé changed the small spinnaker
for the big one during the night so that we kept
a maximum speed. This big spinnaker belonged to
our old yacht X-CAPE which meant that we had French
numbers on the mainsail and English on the spinnaker.
At the end of the day, we could see an Island :
Great Britain ! We were heading now for the Needles,
at the south-west end of the Isle of Wight. We resumed
our shifts.
Sunday July 1st
02:00 We passed in front of the Needles and the
air was much ligther in the Solent. We did our best
to keep the spinnaker up as we did not want to put
it down so closed to the end.
03:00 We saw Cowes on starboard, the Mecqua of
sailing. Everything was calm. I saw just another
boat. On the sea, you are rarely alone.There is
always at some stage some company.
05:00 Hervé woke me up for the finish. We
dropped the spinnaker. This was great to have the
kyte up during 240 miles. It took us 40 hours and
we averaged 6 knots. Not too bad for such a crossing
even if for the earthlings, this is only 7 miles/hour
06:00 It was too early to have breakfast. We then
decided to sleep a little bit as the night was short.
10:00 A good shower for both the crew and the boat.
12:05 When we went out of the Gosport ferry, we
just missed the coach to London. The next one was
at 14:00. I was happy as this meant that we could
have a real lunch on the terrace.
17:30 We just survived the most risky part of the
whole week-end : the bus journey from Hammersmith
to Fulham. It was harder to stand in the bus than
on the boat surfing the waves.
17:40 We arrived at home. We could even play with
our children who had also spent a good week-end
with their baby-sitter.
Thank you Hervé. It was a wonderful week-end.
Muriel
