LUCIE made it to France, last minute some may say as she got held up in transport a bit. We spend the earlier part of the week putting her together, dressing the mast, sorting thru all gear and getting accustomed to the local pace and how things are being done in France. By Tuesday evening LUCIE was back in her element, first time touching water since Falmouth last August.
The rig went in the next morning and we spend the better part on Wednesday to rig everything, get back to last years settings – and of course a lot of meet and greet with all the other 6 Metre crews showing up one after the other. Every year it feels like a big reunion. And by Wednesday night most of the trusted LUCIE crew arrived in La Trinite sur Mer, all in good spirits despite a long journey across the Atlantic, via Paris and then several trains down to the southern Brittany.
And although everyone was a bit tired we still celebrated the start of this get-together with a nice meal at our crew house, tried some of the local vines and had plenty of tales to tell.
Thursday was mainly used to prepare the sails inventory, get equipment from launch site to the basin where all 6 Meters are berthed, prepare the chase boat, and then have a several hour run-in with the local Customs Officials. In late morning two Douane Officers showed at the docks and started coming from boat to boat, requesting original registration papers – which obviously no one carried with them, but supposedly paper copies were not good enough. This went on for several hours, plenty of discussions on the docks amongst crew with the armed officers, eventually some strings got pulled in the background and by mid afternoon the officers retracted and it all went away…
We still managed to get thru the prep work list by the end of the day, LUCIE is now ready to race and we will go out today for some practice runs before we start with the pre-regatta (REGATE ANNUELLE EN MER OF THE SOCIETE NAUTIQUE DE GENEVE) on Saturday.
Stay tuned…
Jens
Lucie back in the water
Lucie on Tuesday evening
Stepping the mast
Lucie rigged and ready to go
This is what the French boats uses as internal ballast?
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