Tuesday 29 .5.2001: Hervé finally arrived at home

 

It took finally 3,5 days for Hervé to complete the second leg of the Mini-Pavois from Portsmouth to Saint-Quay-Portrieux, at an amazing slow average speed of 2,5 knots per hour. This was certainly a good training for the doldrums.

Nothing to compare with the 26 hours that Hervé took to cross the Channel from Portsmouth to St-Malo with Barthelemy and Pascal at Easter, on almost the same course!

The big difficulty of this leg with such weather conditions was the very strong currents and the tidal gates along the English coast. The tide was so strong that the competitors had to anchor several times with 40 meters depth, in order to avoid being drifted back. There were also the shipping lanes to cross and the thick fog where one could not see more than 10 meters in front of the bow.

The ice on the cake was the rule set by the race organisers that a boat needed to finish 12 hours after the first one in order to get classified. Only 13 out of 64 managed to finish within this time limit, leaving the final ranking of the series with only 2 competitors! Hervé was unfortunately not one of this lucky two! However, with adding the two legs, Hervé would have finished 13th out of 29 at the start.

Finally, Hervé missed his plane on Monday afternoon and had to take the ferry from St-Malo to Portsmouth where all his little family was expecting him with fervent enthousiasm.

More details will follows this week when Hervé will give us his impressions of the race.