Transat 6.50 Dominik Lenk 2011

Start of the 2009 Mini Transat in La Rochelle

Posted Sep 14, 06:28 PM · 0 Comments

I was meant to be skippering during the Little Britain Challenge Cup, but that job blew up a couple of days beforehand. A decision was quickly made to see the start of the 2009 Transat 6.50 instead. After a painfully slow ferry journey I met Jules Bänffer from the NKE Shorthanded Team in Le Havre on Thursday.

After finding the wrong hotel with the same name, we arrived in La Rochelle in the evening. The first trip took us to the Mini Transat race village, where I soaked up the view of 84 “pocket rockets” (as the Sailing Anarchy correspondent called them.)

I spent the next day wandering about a 100m worth of pontoon. (In my defense there was a lot to see.) After climbing the mast of Robert Rosen-Jacobson’s Pogo 2 to tape some last sharp corners, the skipper presentation started.

Everybody that had been on the pontoons (and they were packed) now strolled to the small stage to get introduced to the 84 skippers that would sail across the Atlantic tomorrow. Generous cheering for everyone who took the stage.

On the day of the start, I managed to get on one of the bigger press boats. (Not sure how I managed to pass as press, but thank you…) We had a glorious 18 to 25 knots of wind and blue skies. Towards Cape Finisterre the wind was supposed to build up to 45knots, so the Minis would have quick, rough, wet ride. in fact there was talk on the dock of getting to Madeira within 5 days. (That’s 250 mile days in a 21-foot boat!)

There was some confusion about the whereabouts of the top-mark after the start and a couple of boats ended up having to sail back after rounding the wrong one. (The race committee had laid orange tetrahedrons to keep the spectator boats back, but these buoys were happily ignored. The top mark was a red tetrahedron.)

Those that did round the right mark had a bit of a head start and were quickly followed by a gazillion of chase boats, two helicopters and me on the press boat with a bunch of wildly cheering French journalists.

Some of the pictures are down below. For more head over to the media section and find the event “Transat 6.50 Start 2009”.