Day 9 – The Guest Arrive

The first wave of our guest have arrived, both Chris and Paul have flown over together from Manchester and meeting up at the other side in La Rochelle airport to share a taxi, Jo had given both Chris and Paul a description of each other, having never met before and they had to try and work out if they could match the description with the person, sounds like the making of a fun game, anyway Paul admitted to having a go and failing on his first attempt, he explained that upon approaching a single woman standing at the airport who he thought matched the description. This ended up with some poor women wondering if she was the target of some weird chat up line. Chris did not admit to any such adventure and they both arrived at the boat bringing the long awaited sunshine.



Mean while Jo was heading down via the ferry in the car with some more additional kit for the boat, arriving a bit later than planned, but safe and sound.

We had a brief interval to decide on what the next stage of events would be, well it was simple, we now have enough crew to help move the boats, which have been pinning us to the pontoon rafted up. We were soon free from our Jail and on our way out of the marina, only to be confronted with the return of the international optimist boats, which basically consisted of about 2 to 300 small boats containing children with kamikaze like tendencies, you think you are bullet proof at that age, and I was impressed with boats ability to quickly come to a stop and avoid the mass murder, which was now possible.



Jo and Paul did what they could in alerting the mini yachts people to our presence, this did not seem to matter as our boat was only about 100 times bigger than them and they out numbered us anyway, Paul later likened it to a swam of killer bee’s attacking. Chris was just amazed with the chaos, shouting encouragement to the skipper on the helm (me), useful phrases, like lookout they are also coming from behind, thanks Chris!

Once clear of the swarm we headed out to the open sea with fair winds and glorious sunshine, raising the main then unfurling the genoa left us all with a big smile on our face, Alex was soon on the helm grinning from ear to ear. We stayed out for a couple of hours trying out the boat on all points before heading back to the marina. This without a doubt had cleared the cob webs from people’s long journeys to get here.







On rafting up to our location, this time on the outside the weather returned back to its normal state and the heavens opened pouring down with torrential rain, which we now all had to endure helping out unloading the car. Upon completing this task we treated ourselves to a meal out at the ‘La Globe Trotter’ a little bit damp but in high spirits.

After the meal, 3 courses for 12 euros and it was wonderful French cuisine, so no complaints all round. We retired to the boat with Paul continuing on into La Rochelle to see the sights and feeling the need to contact his girlfriend by phone in the early hours to regale his tale of the day in his new found state of happiness.