The journey is starting, heading in right direction!

Time flies when you are having fun! It’s only a couple of weeks since we raced in Saint-Malo and already it is time to focus on Act 2 of the Ocean Fifty Series, and this time we are heading to southern Brittany and La Baule-Pornichet.

Act 1 was a really challenging yet massive learning opportunity for us as a team, and for me personally as a skipper. With only three full days of training as a group of five we arrived in Saint-Malo hungry to show what we can do on the race course. We didn’t have that many days on the water before we got there, but the talent that each crew member brought to the racing was super valuable and we did our best to find the best positions onboard for each of us according to our strengths and weaknesses.

The UpWind by MerConcept team in Saint-Malo © Gauthier Le Bec | UpWind by MerConcept

Elodie was trimming the front sails, Anne-Claire was the tactician and checking performance, Sara was on the bow, and Tiph was in the pit. All of them had to put on such a massive physical effort for every maneuver as the boat is quite hard to sail and we were racing against a lot of strong guys; I couldn’t be prouder on how everybody pushed from the start to the end of every day!

We managed to be always in the pack fighting against the eight other teams and put a couple of 5th places in the scoreboard early on in the Act which is really promising for the next events. But we also made a lot of mistakes that pushed us at times to the bottom of the leaderboard … but we are learning from them and each day debriefed solutions to be better in La Baule-Pornichet.

On the long journeys I find myself reflecting about how I am surrounded by such incredible sailors who come from multiple different backgrounds with a huge array of experiences. We are all working together to bring our expertise to the table and to maximize our learnings in the really short amount of time we have. Each of us is the ‘leader’ in our own departments, and we have massive trust between us in our capacity to lead our area alongside the tech team.

And for the tech team it was a big week too, working long hours to make sure the boat was in perfect conditions with early wake-ups each day to get us ready for racing. I can’t thank enough Louis, Fin, Seb, Sterenn, and Manon enough for all the work and the passion they bring each and every day!

So next up is Act 2! I’m back in Concarneau at MerConcept’s headquarters and we are tackling the job list to get the boat ready, excited for the new sails coming, and of course even more excited for the time on the water training with the team!

© Gauthier Le Bec | UpWind by MerConcept

We will deliver the boat on Monday 17 June to La Baule-Pornichet working on our racing maneuvers and keep ticking off the jobs list on the technical side.

The format of racing for Act 2 will be similar: two days of windward/leeward racing with five crew, followed by a 30-hour offshore race with a three-person crew onboard. It will be a really useful opportunity to test our configuration for the Route de Terre Nueva, where I will sail alongside Elodie and Anne-Claire.

The objectives I’ve put in place for the team is to practice what we learnt in Saint-Malo, improving our starts, finding the right mode off the line, and overall being more consistent around the race course.

We have so many nationalities onboard (French, Swiss, American, and Italian in Saint-Malo) and our communications skills really contribute towards performance. We try to simplify our calls while still being able to talk about the plan, but not an easy task when English is not the first language of most of the team!

I’m really proud to show how far this project has come so far and where we are headed to. We walk down on the dock as a team of strong, talented, and skilled (female) sailors, and we can show the industry that we can do hard things, and do it to the same level of the other teams, while also ensuring everyone is treated equally and fairly. It’s refreshing to see that some of the other teams also had a female sailor onboard and in key roles.

The journey is just at the beginning but we are heading in the right direction!

Andiamo!

Frankie