On shore again – after only four days on sea, I have firm ground again after my feet after anchoring in Brest – an important harbour town in Brittany.
We arrived here Thursday afternoon after motoring the last 100 miles into harbour (see last post). Fresh on the dock we had to shorten our deep clean and rush off to the price giving ceremony. While a semi important city official gave their speech (the only english sentence was “welcome to Brest”) my eyes were screening already the rich buffet provided. And right I was – the speech was barely over when 240 hungry clipper crew threw themselves on to the provided dishes. Especially the local specialities – Crepes and Cidre went down very well. Vicky started to get very concerned about our crew uniform (white polos!) which got one or two red wine spots in the frenzy – ah well. It was nothing against the water fountain gliding competition that followed outside city hall. That gave our uniform the rest!
Friday saw me and three other crew members participating in a corporate sail – Two crews of employees of DLL (a dutch financial company) had booked our boat for a small morning and afternoon regatta – Problem was that none of them had any sailing experience – what a fun to run our big boat with just five people! But at least our clients enjoyed it as we reached third and fourth place in the two races. Such an exhausting day needed be finished off by local Cidre. As I am originally from the Austrian Mostviertel (Most is the Austrian equivalent of Cidre), I felt an obligation to do a proper testing 🙂
My reward for helping in the corporate sail was a day off on Saturday – I spent it mostly with organising things (toothpaste needed to be bought, laundry to be done), wandering the streets of Brest and working on the weather routing for our journey to Rio!
Today sees me back to the same old– getting the boat shipshaped before the journey to Rio tomorrow. That means: repairs, fixings, etc.. more important than ever, as i heard that some other boats had serious problems with their rigging.
More soon, when I am back on sea!
PS: While inspecting the great fort of Brest, which houses also the admirality I came across Admiral Redjacket – he seems to protect some treasure of sorts. Better no word to the pirates which seem to be living somewhere on our boat!
