Today marks the end of the sailing season, for my club. So the plan was to finish by the traditional "raid" which means sailing all the way to the îles de Lérins (located outside Cannes), have a picnic there and then head back. Kind if challenging, since the trip is 4 hours one way, and that’s assuming the winds are good! I’d prepared a carrot cake for the occasion (last minute as always, due to the Cranberries concert the previous night, thankfully Mathilde helped me out a bit…).
I arrived on the dot, 8:30, as planned. And, found myself all alone… So I initially thought I was there on the wrong day or something. Thankfully, other people showed up eventually, so we quickly prepared the boats and got ready to set off. Unfortunately, the weather didn’t look very favourable, with weak winds forecast for the morning, and storms for the afternoon (apparently not very compatible weather for our catamarans). So, we had to reduce our ambitions somewhat, and decided to have our picnic in Antibes instead.
I ended up with my buddy Norbert, like last time. Not sure we make ideal partners, since he has about the same body mass as me. Meaning we tend to move with less speed than the others (well, that’s the excuse we use anyway). So, as on other days, we made up the rearguard of our group. In the end, the winds were just too weak, and Marie decided to take 1 person off each boat. That seemed to make all the difference, as I much to my surprise overtook pretty much everybody (even the experts with their “race boats”). I was rather pleased with myself, I tell ya…
We arrived in Antibes just in time for lunch. And it was a very nice lunch indeed, with everything from aperitif cake, BBQ’d chicken, melons and pizza on offer. Accompanied by a fair few bottles of wine, and followed by a rather tasty collection of deserts (including my carrot cake, which was actually quite a success!).
Our stomachs filled, we headed out of our little cozy beach, and made way back for Cagnes. We had very good winds on the way back actually (but less sun, on the other hand), so we had great fun. There was also a big regatta of big sail yachts outside the port of Antibes, which was pretty cool. We eventually pulled into Cagnes about 3:30, more than happy with a great day of sailing! Great way to end the sailing season, even if we didn’t make it all the way to the Lérins…
For the evening, we’d been invited to celebrate Ismael’s birthday in Nice. Time flies, young Ismael is already pushing 30 (it seems almost like yesterday when I met him on the shuttle bus to work, when he was starting his career). ;-) The part was great fun. What I really liked about it was that it was a nice mixture of locals and foreign folks (quite a few Irish, since Ismael’s girlfriend Sarah is from the Emerald Isle…). Kind of brings back memories from life back in the UK (where in my experience the social life is a bit more cosmopolitan and “international” than here on the Cote d’Azur, something I miss).
A Spanish friend of Ismael’s even put up a very impressive magic show. No matter how hard we looked, we weren’t able to figure out his tricks… As always, we were forced to leave just as the party was getting good, since we had our last train to catch. We really have to find a solution for this rather annoying dilemma…
I arrived on the dot, 8:30, as planned. And, found myself all alone… So I initially thought I was there on the wrong day or something. Thankfully, other people showed up eventually, so we quickly prepared the boats and got ready to set off. Unfortunately, the weather didn’t look very favourable, with weak winds forecast for the morning, and storms for the afternoon (apparently not very compatible weather for our catamarans). So, we had to reduce our ambitions somewhat, and decided to have our picnic in Antibes instead.
I ended up with my buddy Norbert, like last time. Not sure we make ideal partners, since he has about the same body mass as me. Meaning we tend to move with less speed than the others (well, that’s the excuse we use anyway). So, as on other days, we made up the rearguard of our group. In the end, the winds were just too weak, and Marie decided to take 1 person off each boat. That seemed to make all the difference, as I much to my surprise overtook pretty much everybody (even the experts with their “race boats”). I was rather pleased with myself, I tell ya…
We arrived in Antibes just in time for lunch. And it was a very nice lunch indeed, with everything from aperitif cake, BBQ’d chicken, melons and pizza on offer. Accompanied by a fair few bottles of wine, and followed by a rather tasty collection of deserts (including my carrot cake, which was actually quite a success!). Our stomachs filled, we headed out of our little cozy beach, and made way back for Cagnes. We had very good winds on the way back actually (but less sun, on the other hand), so we had great fun. There was also a big regatta of big sail yachts outside the port of Antibes, which was pretty cool. We eventually pulled into Cagnes about 3:30, more than happy with a great day of sailing! Great way to end the sailing season, even if we didn’t make it all the way to the Lérins…
For the evening, we’d been invited to celebrate Ismael’s birthday in Nice. Time flies, young Ismael is already pushing 30 (it seems almost like yesterday when I met him on the shuttle bus to work, when he was starting his career). ;-) The part was great fun. What I really liked about it was that it was a nice mixture of locals and foreign folks (quite a few Irish, since Ismael’s girlfriend Sarah is from the Emerald Isle…). Kind of brings back memories from life back in the UK (where in my experience the social life is a bit more cosmopolitan and “international” than here on the Cote d’Azur, something I miss).
A Spanish friend of Ismael’s even put up a very impressive magic show. No matter how hard we looked, we weren’t able to figure out his tricks… As always, we were forced to leave just as the party was getting good, since we had our last train to catch. We really have to find a solution for this rather annoying dilemma…
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment