French tailgating at the Vendée Globe

This past weekend was a fun one filled with ample servings of sailing, travel and good food.  We flew to France on Ryan Air (round-trip tickets were $77 each!), and then drove from Beauvais (north of Paris) to Les Sable d’Olonne to see the start of the Vendée Globe nonstop, round-the-world sailboat race.  We had learned the day before we arrived that the docks were to be closed to the public a few days before the start, so we never had the opportunity to look at the boats up close.  We arrived at the Race Village in the early afternoon on Friday, along with thousands of other people – seriously.  The French are serious about this race!

The next morning, we arrived 2 hours before the start of when the race boats would leave the harbor, confident that we would be able to find a place along the water where we could watch the boats.  There is a lot of real estate along the water, we figured.

We were quite wrong – some reports said that 300,000 people showed up to watch, too!  

We couldn’t complain too much – we were more astonished that there were people as excited as we were to see the start of such an epic race.  Plus, people around us generated some warmth in the chilly weather, and the smell of the croissants and warm wine that these smart French folks had brought with them was rather cozy.

Below are pictures of all 20 boats in the race – as of today, Saturday (17 November), 4 boats have withdrawn – 2 from collisions with fishing boats, 1 from hitting an object that broke the keel, and 1 from a dismasting (poor Sam Davies!) – the Vendée is a race of attrition and endurance.