The morning after the night before...

The Bastille party went on well into the night - the disco was a blast from the past (80's to be precise) with some French euro pop thrown in. Outside the wind was whistling throu the rigging and luckily most of the yachts were alongside rather than the traditional TDP 10 x 10 raft. The morning dawned bright but still blowin' - the TDP organisers aka Le Committee decided to bin the racing for the day on grounds of weather. This had several outcomes - namely the final leg would now be up to Cherbourg And if we wanted to make St Vaast we'd have make our own way there. As Dielette was more of a 1 horse village that had lost its horse we decided to make a break for it and sail to Cherbourg... This decision was met with much shaking of heads by the French sailing sages - big seas, strong tides and 20 kts of blow were tres formidable et tres tres dangerous. The reality was that by having wind and tide in our favour it would mean it would be lumpy, but ok. Our departure (prob the only one today) was watched & filmed by plenty of peeps - once out of the harbour the first few waves did make me wonder if we'd made the right call - 3m waves sound pretty innocuous until you're in a 12m yacht climbing up the front and tipping off the back of wave after wave after wave... Eventually it settled into a kinda rhythm - steer left, climb up, steer right, slide down, blink the sea water out of eyes, curse that wave that drenched you, steer right etc. Eventually we'd rounded the corner and it calmed down save for the odd evil wave that crept up and dropped in on us. Yet again the beer in Cherbourg tasted good & as the only TDP yacht to make Cherbourg we must, by definition, be the first yacht and therefore the winner of today's leg of the TDP!!!! :-)