Arrival

We had an excellent sail from Portsmouth to St Malo, all the best trips start with a ferry in my book and this one was really luxurious compared to the Scottish Islands ferries we have taken in the last few years with ensuite cabins and French cuisine. We awoke refreshed and raring to go, we docked and were on the road by 9.30 French time.
I got to experience my first attempt at driving on the right and was soon overtaking on the excellent and empty autoroutes. We arrived about 2pm into La Rochelle and went straight to the commissioning quay in the Old Port to find our new boat! She was looking lovely, we think we are the first Mahe to take the optional Spifurl sail which involves an additional bowsprit (protruding pole / spar), so it was good to see it all put together. The dingy was inflated and hung from the davits and again it was great to see that too. It seemed there were a few Mahe's sold under the Boat Show deal as there were a number with similar extras all lined up on the quay. It was great to see her finally with all her plastic wrapping still on looking shiny and new.
We were a little concerned to see that there was still some work ongoing on the boat and we were worried that it was not ready for our trial sail the next day. However, we managed to speak to Karen from MI Cats (our broker), who it seemed we'd just missed at the boat as she'd gone to sort out the paperwork at the factory, who assured us that the majority of work underway was the snagging points that they had picked up on their review that morning and we were still on for 9am tomorrow for our handover sail. We decided not to panic about it and checked into a hotel with secure parking as planned and headed out for our favorite restaurant.