It was early this morning that we slipped our mooring lines in La
Rochelle to (I still cannot believe it) Rio de Janeiro. Unlike our race
from Hull to La Rochelle, this one had by no means a flying start. We
were escorted to the start area in the bay by Joshua which is the yacht
of the legendary french sailor Bernard Moitissier. While waiting for our
start the wind started to come down and down and down. Not mucgh
exitement when going over the line because all boats were trying to
maintain some speed and not cross the line early. We had our spinaker up
amd manage to stay ahead of the competition. After 3 hours of very
light winds and a flogging spinaker finally the wind picked up abit
and we quickly changed to a windseeker (a very special light winds
sail) and then on to our yankee 1 (our biggerst fore sail out of the 3)
Just before a heavy tide would turn against us when we were sailing ourt
of the little bay La Rochelle is located on the wind really picked up
and we managed to pull away from the fleet. Now we are sailing in
beautful circumstances into the sunset on the Bay of Biscay. The
channel and north sea chop is slowly changing into the atlantic swell.
Not sure I really like it though... The shepherd pie is in the oven and
Australia are on our heels as we head into our first night of many at
sea/ocean.
