Fun about to begin

Kip Stone's Open 50 reaches St Malo

American Kip Stone's Owen Clark Open 50 Artformsis tied up to the dock in St. Malo, while her skipper is back in his office in the US for a while before returning to France for the 29 October start of the Route du Rhum...

With five days of 25-30 knot breeze from the west, the last half of my trip from Halifax to St. Malo went quickly. Last Friday morning, after crossing the English Channel in steep following seas and with visibility regularly reduced to a hundred yards in squally conditions, the north coast of France finally emerged through the mist and my tenth Atlantic crossing was complete. Once I was close to the shore, the incoming tide added 6-8 knots to my boat speed and quickly swept me the last 40 miles to the St. Malo harbor entrance. I arrived just in time to catch the last lock of the day and by sunset I was tied to a dock in the perfectly protected Bassin Vaubin beneath the towering walls of this medieval fortress city. After 11 days at sea, the final hours complicated by reduced visibility, fishing fleets, and shipping lanes, I can tell you it felt like a pretty nice place to be.

30ft tides sweep in and out of St. Malo, creating rip currents through the well-marked but rocky channel leading into the harbor - no place for the faint of heart. I was grateful for the assistance provided by Bob Escoffier, a competitor in last year’s Transat Jacques Vabre (and the father, brother, and uncle to three other competitors!), who sent a RIB to escort me in. My lines were caught at the dock by shore team members Ryan Finn and Arnaud de Corbiere, and after a hot shower and a change into clean, dry clothes, it was off to dinner for the first meal in awhile that didn’t come out of a foil packet - French cuisine never tasted so good! It was with a sense of deep satisfaction that I crawled into the bunk that night, knowing that the job of moving Artforms to the staging point for the Route du Rhum was complete.

After a day of cleaning up, I was off to the airport and six hours later more or less back where I’d started. It’s hard not to feel a real sense of compression when you hop on a plane so soon after stepping off the boat and I found myself re-living the trip in reverse, hour by hour counting backwards through the days as the digital winged icon on the seatback in front of me traced its way back across the Atlantic. Transatlantic flights are no picnic, but there are more difficult ways to get across!

In ten days, it’s back to St. Malo for the final countdown to the 29 October start. Stay tuned - after a summer of preparation and the warm-up trip to St. Malo, the fun is just about to begin.