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15
October 2006 • St. Malo, France:
What came first
the chicken or the Crepe? Welcome to St. Malo.
My sister speaks French
and Spanish. My brother speaks German and Japanese. I feel I have compensated
for their achievements nobly. My tour of France has been a celebration
of my own ignorance and couldn’t be more successful, even if I
were trying.
It’s been a week since Kip arrived in St. Malo and left me with
Artforms to gnaw on the maturing work list. He seemed to have had a
pretty nice ride and was chipper when he arrived, and even more so when
Arnaud and I sat him down in front of some raw oysters and wine, and
then slightly less so when we made him pay for it. But it was great
to see him and it was a good thing that he did the passage solo because
a few goblins were discovered that would not have shown up were I on
board. Most notably the autopilot ram started packing up during the
later part of his trip refusing to steer in the demanding downwind conditions.
This would have been quite bad for his Route du Rhum because the race
is mostly demanding downwind conditions. We have a new ram on order.
It’s lonely being here and not knowing the town, its language
and its people. I’ve managed to get by on my Pictionary talents
and had a nice game of Charades with Bob and Servane Escoffier, who
have been very kind despite the linguistic canyon that separates us.
They say that communication is 80% facial expression. Yeah, sure, try
and locate 30’ feet of 12mil Dyneema simply by twisting your face!
Anyway, as a handful of you may have guessed, Bob and Servane are doing
the RDR, along with family members Frank-Yves and Loic. You cannot have
a shorthanded trans-Atlantic race here without at least two Escoffier’s.
Funny way for a family to spend time together, but they are quite impressive.
Each one of them represents a boat on the start line!
In my lonely state I decided to go for a walk. I grabbed my camera to
take pictures, like Katie Triplett told me to, and hopped off the boat
to gawk at the sky, the birds and the French. When I was about 100 yards
from the boat my extra special preparateur’s sense picked up a
signal. I turned around to see an intruder climbing onto the boat. We
sometimes have specialists come to the boat unannounced, so I didn’t
want to jump to conclusions, but something seemed wrong. I ran down
to the boat just as this dude was climbing into the boat, a cigarette
burning between his fingers. I knew by the cigarette that he was not
our kind of specialist. His head was in the cabin when I jumped down
onto the dock which was very loud and I actually did it to get his attention,
but he was focused on whatever gypsies focus on when they are pilfering
Open 50’s. I yelled at him to get his attention and he simply
smirked and shrugged his shoulders saying “hey what wrong, I just
wanted to look what the boat made from” I told him to get off
and he actually got defensive, like I was blocking his sun at the beach.
I shoved him and yelled at him in front of the crowd of onlookers that
had gathered above the dock, which they do every seven minutes anyway.
It didn’t take long to get him off the boat, but I was totally
pissed off, because this meant that I couldn’t leave the boat
until the race village was finished and security was on staff 24/7.
Artforms has no toilet. Fortunately they had begun assembly earlier
that day and are almost finished with the village as I write this.
A funny thing I’ve noticed is that the thief and the few homeless
people I’ve run into speak better English than anyone else I’ve
met here. That’s not totally true, some of the guys on the Delta
Dore team speak English pretty well and have been very pleasant and
helpful, but for the most part I got to give it up to the homeless and
criminal folks. So, if you are lost in France and don’t speak
French, find an Open 60’ team and they will help you. If you cannot
locate one look for a homeless guy or a criminal in that order.
On another note, the famous and all powerful Tim Sadler arrives tomorrow.
He signifies many good things for the Artforms program and one great
thing for my program. I get to move out of the boat and into our apartment
in St. Malo! The apartment was reserved months ago for Tim’s scheduled
arrival. My schedule was never so firm. It will be great to be working
with him again and have some company.
It will also be nice to wake up in the morning without a crowd of 4-8
people looking at me though a window and commenting in French about
how I brush my teeth or what I might be making for breakfast. If I spoke
French I’d tell them “I’m not making breakfast you
fools, I’m waiting for my master to come feed me”.
Thanks Kip for this wonderful opportunity, and thanks to my friends
a family for being so supportive.
More next week.
- Ryan Finn
