#fullirish – With five days to go to the start of Leg One of the 2013 Solitaire du Figaro Ireland's David Kenefick reports in from Bordeaux, the start port.
There is so much to do during this week before the start of the Figaro. I hadn't realised how intense it would be in spite of being told over and over again by those around me. I guess that is experience. Interestingly many of the French skippers aren't even in town for the first few days of the week, leaving all the formalities to their shore crew. The Rookies are all here, getting it together, and I'm one of them and its great.
So safety checks, measurement checks, sealing of heavy weights in the boat, radio checks, AIS checks, nav equipment checks, and that's just the organisers and scrutineers. Its all for a reason, our equipment has to work and there would be remorse and liability if anything happened and in hindsight things were not done to best practice Protocols.
'I won't be drinking much wine but it will be interesting to see how these vineyards work'
I have sponsor obligations too. This could be seen to be inconvenient but that would be to miss the point. Our sponsors are amongst the reasons why we have been able to get to this stage and this is their time as much as ours to get the return, sell the products and be talked about. One of our sponsors is Patton Watches and I proudly wear one on my wrist. They have a stand in the village and everyday one of the six non-French skippers spends some time with the staff there signing posters and postcards of us racing our boats. They have made a significant contribution to our logistics pool for which we are all extremely grateful. And it gets better. Which ever of the six of us does the best in the event on points wins their top of the range sailing watch, a rather smart analogue chronograph produced in association with Harken.
Last week my team secured some more sponsorship for me and we will announce this later this week. It is very exciting to now be able to partially justify my existence commercially and this is the best possible training ground for me to learn how it works in the big bad world of professional/commercial sailing ventures.
David (right) Signs photographs of Ireland's 'Full Irish' campaign in Bordeaux. Photo: Brian Carlin
We are in Bordeaux and tomorrow night all 41 skippers have been invited to dinner at one of the famous wine Chateaux. It is Chateau Pichon and the guy who runs it, Yannick Evenou, and invited us is himself an ex-Figaro sailor from the 1990s.
I won't be drinking much wine but it will be interesting to see how these vineyards work.
More soon
