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

oh yeah hope it stay this way

that's it new Loop is down I'll go

install it now

Ryan loves getting

wet all right it's going to be going to

be Dr time I think it's going to be bit

tricky not sure how long we'll hold it

but all the boats are holding it so we

must try let's

see that's

up yes

sir a few moments

later 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

soooo and we have like two competitors

like within like 20

M how far to the

drive minutes all right so get let's get

ready

so it's been about an hour that we in

England it's pouring

rain thank you a lot thanks a lot

UK with go sport in the

back how much do you like England Ryan

[ __ ] love it

but doesn't love get hit by lightning

and pouring rain

well we had the kite up and

now because there's this

massive Thunder thunderstorm scho around

us just snuffed it into the

sock

and playing it

safe play is safe to leave another day

and fight another day another time

that was

crazy w

s

right the night has been quite

actic uh the solent we went through it

with like a dozen

thunderstorms happening was really

beautiful and quite scary at at the same

time uh Ryan said he got uh hit by a

lightning we'll have to double check

this

information um but yeah know we did

quite good on that despite all the

sunstorm and after the needles we we

struggled for a few hours to to find a

good speed this goed us a few a few

spots but now back and running it's uh

beating along the south coast of of

England and uh yeah we'll see uh we'll

see how it goes um hopefully we'll be uh

by L in tonight or or during the

night so yeah going

good all right so that's the English

Channel leaving up to his reputation

we're down to J2 and two

rfts uh it's not exactly the most fun

but it is what it

is just finished to take the J2 on and

the second re pretty sweaty

well the English Channel has really been

a beach as it's most of the time but

we've been doing like really good Gams

in the solent in the beginning of the

night but then lost huge ground

today got unlucky With the Wind shifts

probably didn't think the good options

either and now it's just like going up

wind beating or certainly not earlier

now it's fine it's came down to like

1520 but yeah just the English chel you

know banging in the

waves not fun at all

right so all these Mas CU I was sitting

here in this

sprayhood

uh taking a break from eling Ryan was

below sleeping and then suddenly we felt

like a roller Co poster we went airbone

for a few seconds and then B the boat

slammed uh on the slamming the running

back stay cover broke so went off the

constrictor uh this CS probably the m to

pull

forward and the constrictor of the main

Hood uh to break and the the whole main

Cil to fall

down surprisingly we haven't broken too

much important beats but we've just been

reorg reorganizing lines doing a few

safety stropes stuff like this and now

we need to fix the computer because also

we don't have any more internet on adren

on the nav

software and we don't have that many

charts

either

so we need to do some

fixing and now some spicing

yeah even with that little swell it's

crazy H but it

is yeah I current like through a hard

this way

a few moments

later I downloaded it but I'm still

working on new

phone 10 minutes

downloading the

GFS fire

okay