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Daily report, October
1st (Paris)
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Return to the origins
Position at 7H00 (Paris) :
10° 10 S / 124° 23 W
A lot of excitement yesterday
afternoon at the PC. Guy came by before flying off to Tahiti,
Pierre-Louis Castelli reassured us about Maud Fontenoy who
is in stable condition. Raphaëla admires such steadfastness
before adversity.
- "Hi Raphaëla how are you? You must be getting
tired of freeze dried food …".
- "Yes ,but I add spices. Actually I add so much now
that I don’t even taste them any more and that is fine…
I probably have 3 months supplied ahead of me so nothing
to worry …".
Guy wonders how Raphaëla
remains permanently glued to the 10th parallel. "I
just stare at the sun and stars. In the morning it’s
intuitive and then the rest of the day I rely on the sun.
Whatever it is I just don’t understand what the compass
is doing. Maybe it’s reacting strangely to the foot
of the spare mast that is put away in the small central locker
that could be perturbing it, I have to check.
- " Raphaëla, as you can imagine I arrived on the
PC on Anne’s motorbike. And that is a real expérience…"
- "OK, I hope she avoided the ring roadthat’s really
terrible!".
Everyone laughs and Dominique, Raphaëla’s sister
in law, throws "don’t get here too quickly,
the mill is under construction still! I read Tavae’s
novel, next to this you are taking a walk…".
Raphaëla approves.
The day was a good one. "The
wind was a little weak at one point, apart from this it was
ok (I am not the one to say this…). The only
thing that bothers me (as if there were only one thing…)
are those bloody Goiot handles, the board is not completely
watertight at the moment. If she capsized now there would
be water that would seep through". She is probably
going to have to start implementing Guy’s suggestions,
replace the screws with bolts, make new holes in the handles,
a little work!.
This evening she steered for
the constellation that she noticed a couple of days ago, we
go through books to try and pinpoint a namebut it’s
about as difficult as names of birds..
"We are getting close
to the duration of the crossing on the Atlantic now (she is
also thinking about this and I must say I am less exhausted
than 3 years ago. If there was a lot of wind it would be more
difficult but I am in better shape than at the end of my trip
across the Atlantic.. I did not have 3 weeks of lack of wind,
I cleaned the goose barnacles and I do my stretching exercizes
much more seriously". Getting to be an adult no
doubt…
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Photo : Odyssée du vent
2003 |
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