Knot Normal - The Adventure

We will be hunkering down at the marina in La Rochelle for a few days at least.  Winds at 20 knots now and expected to hit gale force just off shore by tonight.  We will be rocking and rolling all night long.  We stocked up on food for the holiday weekend and I caught a proper fish for dinner tomorrow.  It looks like a striped bass but has a smaller mouth.

Dockside blues - Gale force wind due to move in right from the direction we want to sail and my love has departed for the states leaving me lonely.  My crew and I will stay snug in our safe harbor until it clears.  Looks like we will not set sail until after the new year.  Two members of our crew have arrived: A Brit named Robin and an Estonian of Russian heritage.  Both are great mates to spend time with and very capable as we sort out things on the boat.  We are making considerable progress getting the boat in shape despite not leaving the dock. For example we have applied the boat name decals which are a legal requirement.  We have been working on rigging the asymmetrical, taking inventory of the equipment. and assembling a ditch bag for abandoning the boat (hope not). Peter on left, Robin on right, and my nephew standing

One more day and our crew arrives.  We have been hunkering down for days of cold wet wind hoping  for a mild weather window for the crossing of Biscay Bay, the first leg of the journey.  We are also waiting on delivery of our engine spares and other missing items. In the mean time we have been enjoying La Rochelle.  We shop for the boat and shop for our daily food.  Yesterday we placed our wine order with our new best friend, the wine guy, at the old market.  We take our newly purchased entree to him and he pairs it with the correct wine and tells us the region it comes from and the temperature it should be drunk.   He is a delight. We ordered 7 cases for the boat.

The christening happened at 9:20 AM.  We were there at the crack of dawn to see them raise the boom, then the mast.  Following that, the huge lift motored into place and hauled her to the harbor and splashed her in. We did not waste a bottle of champagne as that would be alcohol abuse.  Instead we went to our favorite wine store later that morning and ordered 5 cases of French wine to haul back to the Caribbean.

Every day we walk to the market from our neat little apartment and buy fresh vegetables, cheeses, wine and meats.  They do their best to speak English for us.  If only the sun would come out.

 We went to Cognac for a tour of the distillery. The oldest barrels we saw were put down in 1903! Interesting process of blending to make cognac. This year they started making rum because it is gaining popularity while cognac is contracting.

We made it to the Fountaine Pajot factory and found our boat floating in a test tank nearly done.  It is still scheduled to fully rigged and placed in the water on December 20th and ready to sail before Xmas.  My crew and I are planning to depart about December 30th weather permitting.

First photos of the boat from the factory in La Rochelle, France!

Check out our decal : This is the decal that will appear on the bow of the boat. My cousin Jay Williams help me design and create the file for the graphics producer and for the embroidery file for sheets and towels.

The Ocean Crew: For the crossing I have hired a professional crew from England. The captain is Robin Kenny, 49 years old with 178,000 logged sea miles and 25 Atlantic crossing.  He will have three additional crew members of which I will be one.  For a short while, Rocky Keyes will join the crew as we depart La Rochelle and sail down the coast of Europe.  We will drop him off as his college holiday closes and he will fly back to Austria.

LOCKED AND LOADED Just packed 870 pounds of boat stuff in a 4'x4'x4' crate and sent it by truck to New Jersey then on a ship to France.  It should be there when we arrive in La Rochelle.  It is absolutely amazing the stuff you have to buy for a trip like this.  In addition to all the nautical equipment, you need everything for your domestic life such as pots, pans, ice maker, knives, spoons, towels, blankets, sheets, pillows, and on and on.  It is like coming home one night and your wife serves you divorce papers and you need to move into an empty apartment.  You need everything.  In my case I am keeping the wife but she needs everything too. Barry

The Boat - A Brochure with great photos   (click to see brochure)

We sit here in Elizabeth City, NC so excited we don't know what to do.  Departure to France is December 1, 2017, the Paris boat show December 3rd and a tour of the factory in La Rochelle, France, December 5th.  We will see our boat, Knot Normal, coming down the line almost complete.  We are hoping to have it by mid December with rigging, outfitting, sea trials and provisioning through to Xmas.  My dear nephew, Rocky, and the professional crew will join me for the cruise across the ocean to Grenada. Rocky will depart along the coast of Europe to go back to graduate work in Austria.   Mary Anne has more sense than me so she will flying back home and will meet me in Grenada.  We will be greeted there by our cousins Deb and Ben Unger who live in Grenada a short distance from Le Phare Blue, our marina and home for a month or so.