As part of the Gentoo youth program, I was due to spend the weekend onboard a Sunfast 3300 racing to Eastbourne and back. But on Sunday night I received a WhatsApp from James, it said due to a change in plans he had to bring his IMOCA back to the UK early. So would we like to join him for 5 days leaving on Tuesday to sail her from Lorient in France to Gosport on the south coast of the UK? Or we could stick to the original plan and race on the Sunfast, and he would go next week.

I could not believe it, I read and re-read it. After I calmed down and stopped jumping up and down with excitement, I messaged back to say I was up for going to France. Next, I had to phone Taff, the boss, to say I was last minute going to be off for the week. I know he wouldn’t be happy but at the same time, he was excited for me and knew I couldn’t possibly pass up the opportunity. So that was all sorted and I had one day of work before driving down. I picked up Michael from the airport and had a bit of time to kill before meeting James who was driving us, via the ferry. We met James and all went smoothly until we went to get on the ferry, where I had a little trouble with my covid passport. I managed to sort it out and met everyone on the ferry. We chatted in the bar for a bit before heading to bed. We were on the overnight ferry so shared a cabin. In the morning all went smoothly, we got out the other side and found a bakery for breakfast before driving for 3 hours to La Base in Lorient. I couldn’t believe my eyes, James drove us on a tour around pointing out the different boats and teams. It was like being in a boat park full of Toppers or Lasers except they were Minis, Racing catamarans and IMOCA 60s. It was incredible and I will never forget it. We then walked to the boat and climbed on board for a look around, before meeting her old skipper. Monsieur Stephane Le Diraison. We then put all the sails we would need onboard and motored over to another Marina, where we saw Ellen McArthur’s boat Kingfisher, it’s amazing how much the design has changed. This whole time I was completely starstruck by the surrounding, the boats let alone the sailors themselves, I definitely fell back into my shell a little bit.

On Thursday we when arrived we went straight to the boat and started carrying out jobs onboard. Around midday, Dee Caffari arrived, and we carried on preparing including all the little things like filling up on fuel, water and food. I loved just being surrounded by such beauty in the landscape, but also in the boat around us. We went back to the Air BnB before heading out for pizza, it’s their tradition before going offshore. I was very shy around Dee especially, but I loved just listening to her and James talk. Their relationship was definitely a mentoring one but they were constantly laughing and joking with each other. It’s amazing how they took it all very seriously and at the same time not at all.

Friday we left early, but last-minute kerfuffle’s meant that we didn’t leave the marina until about 10. We motored out of Lorient and began to raise the sails. The boat was almost as new to James as it was to us. Although he had spent countless hours on board he had only sailed her once or twice with her old skipper. So trying to discover what all the different ropes did was difficult, as they were all labelled in French. We also practised reefing and discovered we couldn’t raise the sail to the top of the mast. We must have raised lowered the sail 5-6 times, we even raised James to the top of the mast to see if he could find what was wrong and fix it. He couldn’t, so we ended up sailing the whole trip with 1 reef. Once the sails were up and we were happy, we had baguettes for lunch and settled in. We had around 10 knots of wind, and although the sea state was flat calm, it took my body a few hours to get used to its motion. We were due to pass through Brest through the night, so settled into watches. We were on 4 hours off 4 hours but spilt so I would be on the watch for 2 hours with James then 2 hours with Dee. My first watch was 6 til 10, we mostly used the autopilot so our main job was to keep an eye out, watching our course, the weather and other shipping. Night fell and with the wind dropping we turned the engine on.

Once my watch was over I went below to get some sleep, as the boat is designed to be sailed solo there was only one bed so I climbed forward and in my sleeping bag I burrowed into the sails. I actually slept really well onboard, I loved that if I opened my eyes you could see all the way back through the hatches and even see the water.

We settled into life onboard and time seemed to fly by. In the morning we started to enter the channel where we found heavy fog. At points it was so bad you couldn’t see the bow of the boat, after all, it was 60 feet away! Mostly though it was just patches. I learned how to use AIS and radar to monitor collision risks. We even had dolphins at one point, they were playing with the brightly coloured keel. As the wind picked up a little we had a go at adjusting the canting keel and moving the foils in/out as well as adjusting the angle. Before long it was night again and as we neared Portland bill the tide turned and we spent a good few hours tacking back and forth without gaining much distance. I then woke up at sunrise as we entered the Solent. The sensible decision would have been to pass outside the Isle of White and enter from the east, but instead we entered from the west, encouraged greatly by James, who wanted to show off his new toy, and really who could blame him! We sailed past the needle at sunrise and tacked upwind before mooring the boat in Gosport. Not an easy job as the foils stick out about a meter, and even with every large fender, getting the mooring lines ashore was difficult. But all went smoothly and we climbed ashore to find a real toilet, a luxury we didn’t halve onboard. We packed up and waved goodbye to Dee. We met James’s dad and more importantly the dog. We then said goodbye to James and obviously thanked him for the insane opportunity, I can’t put into words what it meant to have the chance to do something like this.