The Road to Hyeres
Written by Hannah Stodel | 23 April 2011
Well what a trip to Hyeres we have had! 900 miles, 18 hours, 14 redbulls and a lot of ipod action, and my sister and I finally arrived in the south of France! It was a pretty slow and boring journey, but saying that, we were travelling with a very precious cargo!
The boys joined us a few days later, only to find that on rigging the boat, the mast had been damaged on the crane, so we had to swap that out, so rig number 2 is now in the boat, and we’re off! Sadly though, our luck has yet to fill in, and I had managed to get rather sick so I spent the next 2 days in bed! It’s not all bad though, our Coach Mark Rushall decided to become a sonar crew for the day to get the boys out on the water. Now despite what he may say, my jib sheets really aren’t that long, but apparently they are the cause of his little mishap. Lets just say he was testing his new RYA issue life jacket and he’s now drying out a few of his clothes :-) So there I am sitting quietly in my room, when the boys come in to see how I was feeling, only to see a rather wet looking Mark, John looking utterly exhausted, and Steve is now missing a tooth. I was only off for 2 days!! You can imagine the giggles.... That said, we still haven’t managed to get out on the water as a team, as the weather here in Hyeres just hasn’t been playing ball :-( It’s not the best preparation we’ve ever had for an event, but in the end you can only do what you can do. Luckily, we’ve been very lucky over the last few weeks in the run up to this event to have gotten some really good hours in on the waters of Weymouth. Racing starts tomorrow, there is a lovely 15 knots forecast, which is going to be a great start to the Regatta! So stay tuned for more updates, but above all, keep everything crossed for us! H x