A-Cat Europeans 2014 @Cercle Voile Bordeaux: Preparations

 

 

 

 

 

116 boats on the Entry List for the 2014 A-Cat Europeans organized by Cercle Voile Bordeaux & the French Association.
Lake Hourtin has seen nice sailing conditions pasts days, today Saturday we didn´t had any wind though.
My Scheurer was ready on arrival along Piet’s mast since Friday, when I could go out and have some good rides to get dial in with the As.
I want to thanks Andy Scheurer, Sandro & Daniel Caviezel for their disposition on giving me the chance to sail here with their boat.
Piet Saarberg & Jakub Kopylowicz for their help on setting up the Exploders / Saarbergs , and PJ & Arno to allow a Dna to become the 5th ARG boat to participate. We are here to learn and to put more boats in the Class , on sails we all have Landys provided by Felix Egner.

My only “”complain”” so far with the venue are the pines trees, that have branches at mast height! Launching the Scheurer I hit one… a piece of wood went down to the floor and a loud ‘clak’ got me wondering,  looked around and everything seemed Ok. I Continue to the ramp and someone pointed me out that a winglet was missing in action! Ha , that was a direct hit! Just a clean wipeout , a quite awkward/funny situation without a doubt..
Of course I went sailing either way, and later Andy got it fixed in no time for next day.
On the sailing the conditions were 8-10 knots with gust and lulls, but I got some downwind trapeze rides and get used to sail these lightweight performance machines.

Pro sailors / Designs:
The Club is full with top sailors, the racing is going to be high level , light weather conditions are expected for coming days with more breeze later in the week.
Ashby & Barker are here, Glenn is testing all design flavors and I saw him 2 hours ago coming back from the Registration deck with a Dna. Dean has an Exploder. Mischa is not coming due to some compromises with Texel participation. Steve Brewin I saw him with Dna need to check again as these two days were setting up our boats.
Landy & Scott Anderson with Exploder. Chris Field Dna. Francois Gabart, D3. Baier, Exploder.

On the Askell I learned from Dorian the fine work he is doing along his brother, to put such dedication to build the Askell 100% in house, including the sail.

Reporting:
I couldn´t update the sites latest days on the travel from BA, (we arrived Thursday late) and cause I forgot at home the charger of my ntbk…… although we have plenty pcs here, I need mine to work smoothly. I ordered a new one trough Amazon.fr that arrived today.

On the major sporting event Worldwide nowadays, the French fans were celebrating yesterday at the bars and  we just saw an awful match for Argentina with a last minute gem by Messi.

Europeans will start on Monday. I’m here to sail & learn but I will be reporting everyday at night.
Final note to  my good friend Esteban Daneri, for helping me out on coming to Bordeaux.
Video below by Philippe Presti onboard camera training with Francois Gabart.

Euros Official Website https://www.cerclevoilebordeaux.com/classeA/home.htm
Entry List at https://www.cerclevoilebordeaux.com/classeA/race-docA/listes-inscrits/entry-list.pdf
NOR and schedule https://www.cerclevoilebordeaux.com/classeA/document/ADC-final.pdf