It was a little after 1800hrs this evening when Dominique Wavre (SUI) and Michèle Paret (FRA) enjoyed a warm welcome back to Barcelona on their Owen-Clarke designed Mirabaud, completing their delivery from La Rochelle. The duo, who finished third in the first of the edition, chose to do the whole of the delivery with no other crew, non-stop to get themselves into race mode.
Mirabaud is the 13th member of the 15 boat Barcelona World Race fleet to now be in the start city. It proved a challenging trip with winds up to 47 knots at times, two gales, bashing most of the time to windward. It was quite a tough trip in fact.”commented Wavre, “But it is good to be back in Barcelona and nice to be welcomed by our team and lots of friends.
We are looking forward to going for a beer and some tapas.” “It was all upwind with two gales, quite hard going and so we are glad to get here not having broken anything.” “We had planned to leave a week earlier but had a problem with something at the very top of the mast which meant we had to go back into La Rochelle, take down the rig and have five days and nights of work to laminate it properly to fix it.” “But it is all good now.
We had light winds since the Alboran Sea and so we have had plenty of rest the last few days.” “We decided it was a good thing to do it with just Michèle and me to train and get a good rhythm and so that worked well.” He finishes: “We have quite a lot of things to do, but just small details. We have a good team here and things are very good.”
