Back on the horse, it's a Class 40! - Ep196 - The Sailing Frenchman

All right, race time !

Well about 4 days ago I was doing my thing

just laying some fiberglass into mold at Mer Concept,

when ?????? called me

because he was co-skipper on this boat
for the Normandy Channel Race

and the skipper had other things to do,
so they needed another co-skipper

and since then I arrived in Caen

prepared the boat and here we are,
going to take the start of the Normandy Channel Race

It's gonna be English Channel and Celtic Sea sailing at its best,

including squalls, they are coming already

and then a big low pressure over the Celtic Sea
that might make things interesting

So yeah it's going to be fun fun fun

Nice Class 40

that's actually the one we delivered a few months ago
back from Guadeloupe to France

Let's see how we do, cause we don't quite have satellite connection

So we don't quite have access to weather forecast
or course changes if there are any,

except when we get close to land and get onto the 4G network

So it's going to be fun

Okay that's 30 minutes 30 seconds ????? 4mn

3 2 one

All right 3 minutes

??????? minutes

All right let's get the ????????????

Yeah yeah yeah go for it go for it

?????????????

3 2 1

Get ready ???????????????????

Ready ? Yep
3 2 1 go !

Let's prepare for the next tack

Good, right where we want to be

All right that was a good start

But now that's where we're liking training to be ready
to have the kite high quick

Ryan the Sailor is working on that

Woo man balancing those sails behind you there it's super ??????

What ?
????????????????

Right, so wind is easing a little,

so I'm going to dump some of the ballast

We have 2 ballast tanks one on each side

and we can both close them in the middle
to fill either the forward or the back part

Now we have full rear part

Cool, and going to empty some of it

So I have these that are set to empty with gravity

I push the snorkell down with this facing rear, it's a little screw

that is going to go below the ??????? like this

and now I open this, there we go

and now water it pumping

gonna wait until it goes here

see now water is about half of the tank, so I close here,

pull the snorkell back up and done!

All right ????? all the tank ?????? empty

So half full
And half one ??????

Forward one is empty
oh okay

just half one half of the rear one

So see, even ?????????????????? confusing

So part of our [ __ ] ?????? on the start

was because we could not get the spinaker on because the bucket you know there it's a sock the bucket came down from the head

So making a new stroke and this should not happen again

We're doing good now, catching up

So yeah hope it stays this way

That's it new loop is done, I'll go install it now

Ryan loves getting wet

All right it's going be ?????????????

gonna be a bit tricky

not sure how long we'll hold it but all the boats are holding it,
so we must try, let's see

So this is quite scary there is like massive lightning like
on both sides of us as we entering the solent

which is not a place you want to be like messing up

And we have like 2 competitors like within 20 meters

How far to the jybe ?

??????????? get ready

So it's been about an hour that we're in England

It's pouring rain, thank a lot UK

We've Gosport in the back

How much do you like England Ryan ?

[ __ ] love it man

????????????????????

Well we had the kite up

and now because there's this massive thunderstorm squall
around us

just snuffed it into the sock

and playing it safe

Playing it safe to live another day

and fight another day another time

That's crazy

Alright the night has been quite hectic,

the solent we went through it
with like a dozen thunderstorms happening

It was really beautiful and quite scary at at the same time

Ryan said he got hit by a lightning,
we'll have to double check this information

But we did quite good on that despite all the storm

After the Needles we struggled for a few hours
to find a good speed

????????? a few spots
but now back in running

beating along the south coast of England

and we'll see how it goes

Hopefully we'll be by Lands End tonight or during the night

All right so that's the English Channel leaving up to its reputation

We're down to J2 and 2 reefs

It's not exactly the most fun,

but it is what it is...

Just finished to take the J2 ??????? and the 2nd reef
pretty sweaty

The English Channel has really been a bitch, as it's most of the time

We've been doing like really good game in the Solent
in the beginning of the night

but then lost huge ground today

got unlucky with the wind shifts

probably didn't take the good options either

and now it's just like going upwind, beating

We had 30 knots earlier, now it's fine it came down to like 15/20

but yeah ??????????? we're just banging in the waves,

not fun at all

Alright so, all this mess cause I was sitting here in the sprayhood

taking a break from ????? Ryan was below sleeping

and then suddenly we felt like a ???????,
we went ???????? for a few seconds

and then bam the boat slammed,

on the slamming the running back stay cover broke

so went off the constrictor

this probably caused the mast to pull forward

and the constrictor of the main halyard to break
and the the whole main sail to fall down

Surprisingly we haven't broken too much important ?????
but we've just been reorganizing lines

and now doing a few safety ???????? stuff like this

and now we need to fix the computer because also
we don't have any more internet on ????????????? software

and we don't have that many charts either

So we need to do some fixing

and now some ????????????

Hey look with that little swell it's crazy how bad it is

?????????????? this way

??????????????????????????

downloading the ??????????????