Sailing! – day minus one

Posted byolePosted inMonaco 22

Okay! So I’m here in Monaco, having a great time tourist-ing, but now it is time to sail … the reason I’m here.

Good morning, Monaco!

I meet Outlier, our mighty steed for the week (my friend Fede’s J/70, from Barcelona), and I meet Món, Matti, and Dario, my crew for the week.

Hi Outlier … some assembly required

There are a few things to do: rig the boat, get everything measured (serious stuff for the World Championship), launch the boat, and then … go sailing!

Outlier – sponsor logos attached
sail measurement – a big deal here at the Worlds

We had a nice practice sail in the bay outside Monaco … tuning with some of the other boats here … all well. Among other things, the new sails look perfect.

Món
Matti
Dario
who’s this guy? And why the smile?
heading back into the harbor

Sailing was just like sailing anywhere, concentrating on the boat, the crewwork, the sails … I suddenly pinched myself and thought “wait a minute, here I am, sailing in Monaco!” Pretty amazing.

I had brought my Velocitek with me – a sailing GPS instrument – which gives speed, heading, calibrates distance to starting line, etc. And it records a sailing track. Here’s the one from the day:

GPS track – day minus one

Most definitely the first track I’ve recorded off Monaco … you can see, it didn’t take long before we had left Monaco, passed France, and were headed for Italy 🙂

I also had my GoPro camera aboard – will see if I can post an edit – stay tuned for this.

Outlier ready for action – we are among all the Spanish boats here

After we put the boat away, hung out for a while with some of the other Spanish teams … my high school Spanish was put to the test as I gamely tried to follow the conversation.

Drinking beer in the wine bar w the Spanish teams

And then of course, had to wrap the day with a nice dinner, scallops, amazing…

So ends another day … onward!