It didn’t take long to exhaust La Turballe and so we ventured on to L’herbaudiére for our second visit. We were shoved into a corner due to the imminent arrival of the Pen Duick’ fleet who were having an organised race weekend based at the same marina.
These beautiful boats were the design of Eric Taberley who, to the French, is nothing less than their national sailing hero with a museum dedicated to him in Lorient. He was instrumental in French domination of the offshore and round the world races for over thirty years from the 1960’s winning all of the big events such as the Fastnet, Whitbread, Sydney to Hobart, Ostar and the list goes on and on. He sadly died on passage to Scotland in 1998 when he was knocked overboard and drowned.
With many of the pontoons taken by race boats, the visitors were piled on top of each other, and we soon found ourselves buried with our immediate neighbours being Gary & Sarah on Santosha. ‘Pop over for a drink’ Sarah muttered. Staggering back on board about 11pm I realised that although dinner was never going to happen, I’d at the very least found a new captive audience for my volumes of thrilling stories from the archives of Stuart Davis.
In between the rubbish weather a window of opportunity arrived and we both decided to travel to île d’Yeu. We left at the same time, we both had boat and an agreed final destination. No race was discussed but it was always going to be one. As Gary arrived at Port Joinville, I was there to catch his lines. 1st and 2nd place was never spoken of – until corks were popped the result of which was the inevitable loosening of tongues and we enjoyed deep discussions about sail trim whilst Nina and Sarah slowly slipped into a coma.
As luck would have it, and for the very first time, Becky, one of his trusty crew, took some pictures of LJ in full sail. This was the first time we’d actually had some pictures of our boat in full flight. Unfortunately, but quite understandably, they only showed LJ’s rear aspect!
27th July 2023
Trip Mileage 24 miles
Mileage Completed 2101 miles